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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Decoding the Unknown. Today, the Phantom

Time hypothesis, for 300 years that never happened, except they totally did. I'm slightly familiar to this one. This is about the, um, wasn't there some Roman emperor or some shit who was just like, yeah, no, I want to be around for the like first millennium. That doesn't make sense. There was some weird thing about this. Emma, who wrote today's episode, is going to tell us all about it. The former of the show, if you've never been in before, I've never read this. This is brand new to me, and to you as well, and let's just jump in.

When the Western Roman Empire fell in a 476 AD, Western Europe entered what's now referred to as the Dark Ages.

Roman civilization had come to an end, and the territories they'd ruled over were left to fend for themselves.

For almost 500 years, life in Western Europe was defined by plague, poverty, famine, and frequent wars.

Which is always why you should be grateful for living in...

I know the present's not perfect.

The presents all sorts are fucked up. But you know what? We don't have bubonic plague. Famine. I mean, some places have famine. But, like, in Europe, it's been a long time since there's been famine. Over the span of 300 years, several groups of Germanic people, including the Saxons, Visigoths, Franks and and Lombards established their own kingdoms in the ruins of the Western Roman Empire. By the end of the 8th century, they were conquered by the legendary Charmaine. At the start of the 9th century, he was the King of the Franks, the King of the Lombards, and the Emperor of the Carolingian Empire, Western Europe once again flourished under his rule. Charlemagne, by the way.

Apparently, that's the correct pronunciation.

I always called him Charlemagne, my whole life.

And I hear a lot of other people calling him Charlemagne, but I looked it up and it's Charmaine.

Like, hang on, I feel like people don't believe me whenever I say this.

So we'll just look up my pronunciation, God.

Charlemagne. Maybe there's two acceptable pronunciations. Let's see. Off we go.

Charlemagne. French. Shallemagne. Oh, see, there you go.

So it's Charmaine in English, or Charlemagne in French. No Charlemagne. At least that's what we've been told for the last 19th centuries, but what if it was a lie?

The Great Time Heist.

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