Editing Anachronism

{{short description|Chronological inconsistency}}
{{For|the card strategy game|Anachronism (game)}}
[[File:Cesare Gennari Orfeo.jpg|thumb|[[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] [[Orpheus]] with a [[violin]] (invented in the 16th century) rather than a [[lyre]]. A 17th-century painting by [[Cesare Gennari]]]]

An '''anachronism''' (from the [[ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|ἀνά}} {{lang|grc-Latn|ana}}, 'against' and {{lang|grc|χρόνος}} {{lang|grc-Latn|khronos}}, 'time') is a [[chronology|chronological]] inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a [[juxtaposition]] of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a plant or animal, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period that is placed outside its proper temporal domain.

An anachronism may be either intentional or unintentional. Intentional anachronisms may be introduced into a literary or artistic work to help a contemporary audience engage more readily with a historical period. Anachronism can also be used intentionally for purposes of rhetoric, propaganda, comedy, or shock. Unintentional anachronisms may occur when a writer, artist, or performer is unaware of differences in technology, terminology and language, customs and attitudes, or even fashions between different historical periods and eras.

==Types==
The metachronism-prochronism contrast is nearly [[Synonym|synonymous]] with parachronism-anachronism, and involves postdating-predating respectively.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last1=Landwehr |first1=Achim |last2=Winnerling |first2=Tobias |date=2019-10-02 |title=Chronisms: on the past and future of the relation of times |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642529.2019.1677294 |journal=Rethinking History |language=en |volume=23 |issue=4 |pages=435–455 |doi=10.1080/13642529.2019.1677294 |issn=1364-2529}}</ref>{{Rp|page=3}}
[[File:Aristotle in Nuremberg Chronicle.jpg|thumb|upright|The ''[[Nuremberg Chronicle]]'' (1493) shows [[ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] philosopher [[Aristotle]] in scholar's clothing of the book's time, 1,800 years too modern for Aristotle.]]
[[File:Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig (1723) (crop).jpg|thumb|upright|1723 depiction of the Irish High King [[Brian Boru]] (died 1014) showing him wearing plate armor (developed in the 15th century) and holding a [[coat of arms]] (only introduced after the [[Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland|Anglo-Norman invasion]]). In the background is the [[green harp flag]] (first used in 1642) and the [[Comerford Crown]], which dates from the [[Bronze Age]].]]

===Parachronism <!-- 'Parachronism' redirects here-->===
A '''parachronism'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> (from the [[ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|παρά}}, "on the side", and {{lang|grc|χρόνος}}, "time")<ref>{{cite web |title=parachronism {{!}} Etymology of parachronism by etymonline |url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/parachronism |access-date=2024-09-12 |website=etymonline.com |language=en}}</ref> postdates.<ref name=":0"/>{{Rp|page=9}} It is anything that appears in a time period in which it is not normally found (though not sufficiently out of place as to be impossible).

This may be an object, idiomatic expression, technology, philosophical idea, musical style, material, custom, or anything else so closely bound to a particular time period as to seem strange when encountered in a later era.  They may be objects or ideas that were once common but are now considered rare or inappropriate.  They can take the form of obsolete technology or outdated fashion or idioms.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Parachronism, n. meanings, etymology, and more |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/parachronism_n?tab=meaning_and_use#31846971 |url-access=subscription |access-date=28 February 2025 |website=Oxford English Dictionary}}</ref>

===Prochronism <!-- 'Prochronism' redirects here-->===
A '''prochronism'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> (from the [[ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|πρό}}, "before", and {{lang|grc|χρόνος}}, "time")<ref>{{cite web |title=Definition of PROCHRONISM |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prochronism |access-date=2024-09-12 |website=merriam-webster.com |language=en}}</ref> predates.<ref name=":0"/>{{Rp|page=7}} It is an impossible anachronism which occurs when an object or idea has not yet been invented when the situation takes place, and therefore could not have possibly existed at the time. A prochronism may be an object not yet developed, a verbal expression that had not yet been coined, a philosophy not yet formulated, a breed of animal not yet evolved or bred, or use of a technology that had not yet been created.<ref>{{Cite web |date= |title=Prochronism, n. meanings, etymology, and more |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/prochronism_n?tab=meaning_and_use |url-access=subscription |access-date=28 February 2025 |website=Oxford English Dictionary}}</ref>
===Metachronism===
A '''metachronism''' (from the [[ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|μετά}}, "after", and {{lang|grc|χρόνος}}, "time")<ref>{{cite web |title=Metachronism |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metachronism |access-date=26 January 2024 |website=[[Merriam-Webster]]}}</ref> postdates.<ref name=":0"/>{{Rp|page=7}} It is the use of older cultural artifacts in modern settings which may seem inappropriate. For example, it could be considered metachronistic for a modern-day person to be depicted wearing a [[top hat]] or writing with a [[quill]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Metachronism, n. meanings, etymology and more |url=https://www.oed.com/dictionary/metachronism_n?tab=meaning_and_use#37032543 |url-access=subscription |access-date=28 February 2025 |website=Oxford English Dictionary}}</ref>

==Politically motivated anachronism==
Works of art and literature promoting a political, nationalist or revolutionary cause may use anachronism to depict an institution or custom as being more ancient than it actually is, or otherwise intentionally blur the distinctions between past and present. For example, the 19th-century Romanian painter [[Constantin Lecca]] depicts the peace agreement between [[Bogdan III cel Orb|Ioan Bogdan Voievod]] and [[Radu cel Mare|Radu Voievod]]—two leaders in Romania's 16th-century history—with the flags of [[Moldavia]] (blue-red) and of [[Wallachia]] (yellow-blue) seen in the background. These flags date only from the 1830s: anachronism promotes legitimacy for the unification of Moldavia and  Wallachia into the [[Kingdom of Romania]] at the time the painting was made.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} The Russian artist [[Vasily Vereshchagin]], in his painting ''[[Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English]]'' ({{circa|1884}}), depicts the aftermath of the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857]], when mutineers were executed by being [[blowing from a gun|blown from guns]]. In order to make the argument that the method of execution would again be utilized by the British if another rebellion broke out in India, Vereshchagin depicted the British soldiers conducting the executions in late 19th-century uniforms.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Art in December: M. Verestchagin on his Critics – Art and Politics |date=1878–1904 |page=ix (following p. 430) |volume=11 |series=November 1887 – October 1888 |url=https://archive.org/details/magazineofart11londuoft/page/9 |journal=The Magazine of Art |publisher=Cassell}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=December 2024|reason=source does argue that British would use brutal methods again, but doesn't say anything about anachronistic uniforms.}}

<gallery widths="200" heights="200" class="center">
File:Constantin Lecca - Infratirea moldovenilor si muntenilor.jpg|''Moldavians and [[Muntenia]]ns become Brothers'': 19th-century flags in a 16th-century scene
File:Vereshchagin-Blowing from Guns in British India.jpg|''[[Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English]]'': events of the 1850s with soldiers in uniforms of the 1880s
</gallery>

==Art and literature==
[[File:Alma-Tadema The-flower-market-1868.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] (1868). Flower market in Roman times, with a cactus and two agaves.<ref>[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Succulenta_Alma-Tadema.pdf Succulenta 2017]</ref> Cacti and agaves are [[Columbian exchange|originally American]] plants.]]
[[File:Lorenzo Lotto 017.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Lorenzo Lotto]]. (c. 1480 – 1556/57) Birth of Jesus with a crucifix on the wall.]]
Anachronism is used especially in works of imagination that rest on a historical basis. Anachronisms may be introduced in many ways: for example, in the disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods, or in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and other facts of history. They vary from glaring inconsistencies to scarcely perceptible misrepresentation. Anachronisms may be the unintentional result of ignorance, or may be a deliberate aesthetic choice.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.popmatters.com/feature/174817-for-infidelity-reconsidering-aesthetic-anachronism/ |title=For Infidelity: Reconsidering Aesthetic Anachronism |last=Potthast |first=Jane |work=[[PopMatters]] |date=2013-09-18 |access-date=2014-06-11}}</ref>

Sir [[Walter Scott]] justified the use of anachronism in historical literature: "It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age we live in."<ref>{{cite book |first=Walter |last=Scott |author-link=Walter Scott |title=Ivanhoe; a Romance |place=Edinburgh |year=1820 |volume=1 |page=xvii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zzQJAAAAQAAJ}}</ref> However, as fashions, conventions and technologies move on, such attempts to use anachronisms to engage an audience may have quite the reverse effect, as the details in question are increasingly recognized as belonging neither to the historical era being represented, nor to the present, but to the intervening period in which the artwork was created. "Nothing becomes obsolete like a period vision of an older period", writes [[Anthony Grafton]]; "Hearing a mother in a historical movie of the 1940s call out 'Ludwig! [[Ludwig van Beethoven]]! Come in and practice your piano now!' we are jerked from our suspension of disbelief by what was intended as a means of reinforcing it, and plunged directly into the American [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] world of the filmmaker."<ref>Grafton 1990, p. 67.</ref>

It is only since the beginning of the 19th century that anachronistic deviations from historical reality have jarred on a general audience. [[C. S. Lewis]] wrote:
{{blockquote|All medieval narratives about the past are ... lacking in a sense of period.... It was known that [[Adam]] went naked till he fell. After that, [medieval people] pictured the whole past in terms of their own age. So indeed did the [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethans]]. So did [[John Milton|Milton]]; he never doubted that "[[capon]] and white broth" would have been as familiar to Christ and the disciples as to himself. It is doubtful whether the sense of period is much older than the [[Waverley novels]]. It is hardly present in [[Edward Gibbon|Gibbon]]. [[Horace Walpole|Walpole]]'s ''[[The Castle of Otranto|Otranto]]'', which would not now deceive schoolchildren, could hope, not quite vainly, to deceive the public of 1765. Where even the most obvious and superficial distinctions between one century (or millennium) and another were ignored, the profounder differences of temper and mental climate were naturally not dreamed of.... [In [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]''], [t]he manners, the fighting, the religious services, the very traffic-regulations of his Trojans, are fourteenth-century.<ref>{{cite book |first=C. S. |last=Lewis |author-link=C. S. Lewis |title=The Discarded Image: an introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1964 |pages=182–84 |ol=5918225M}}</ref>}}

Anachronisms abound in the works of [[Raffaello Santi|Raphael]]<ref>{{cite book |title=Raphael Santi: His Life and His Works |last=von Wolzogen |first=Alfred Freiherr |publisher=[[Smith, Elder & Co.]] |year=1866 |page=[https://archive.org/details/gri_33125007717719/page/n251 232] |url=https://archive.org/details/gri_33125007717719}}</ref> and [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]],<ref>{{cite book |title=Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity: An Introductory Essay |last=Martindale |first=Michelle |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2005 |isbn=9781134848508 |pages=121–125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PDwrK5FNnN0C&pg=PA121}}</ref> as well as in those of less celebrated painters and playwrights of earlier times. [[Carol Meyers]] says that anachronisms in ancient texts can be used to better understand the stories by asking what the anachronism represents.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.npr.org/2014/02/14/276782474/the-genesis-of-camels |title=Archaeology Find: Camels In 'Bible' Are Literary Anachronisms |last=Montagne |first=Renee |publisher=[[NPR]] |date=2014-02-14 |access-date=2014-06-15}}</ref> Repeated anachronisms and historical errors can become an accepted part of popular culture, such as the belief that Roman legionaries wore leather armor.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2011-03-31/time-meddlers-anachronisms-in-print-and-on-film |title=Time meddlers: anachronisms in print and on film |last=Cole |first=Tom |work=[[Radio Times]] |date=2011-03-31 |access-date=2014-07-31 |archive-date=2021-04-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210429200312/https://www.radiotimes.com/ |url-status=dead}}</ref>

<gallery widths="200" heights="200" class="center">
File:Lucas van Leyden - Lot and his Daughters - WGA12932.jpg|''[[Lot and His Daughters (anonymous)|Lot and His Daughters]]'', a painting of {{c.}}1520, shows Biblical [[Sodom and Gomorrah|Sodom]] as a typical Dutch city of the painter's time.
File:Pedro Berruguete Saint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fe 1495.jpg|[[St Dominic]], active in the 13th century, shown presiding over an ''[[auto-da-fé]]'' ceremony of a kind only instituted more than two hundred years after his death<ref name="Prado">[http://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/online-gallery/on-line-gallery/obra/saint-dominic-presides-over-an-auto-da-fe/ Saint Dominic presiding over an Auto-da-fe] at [[Museo del Prado|Prado Museum]]</ref>
File:Claude Lorrain 008.jpg|''[[The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba]]'', a 1648 painting by [[Claude Lorrain]] showing the arrival of the [[Queen of Sheba]] on [[17th century|17th-century]] [[sailing ship]]s, with [[Renaissance architecture|Renaissance-style]] buildings.
File:Charles I, Holy Roman Emperor.jpg|[[Charlemagne]] wearing the [[Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire]], by [[Albrecht Dürer]], {{circa|1512}}. The crown was made a century and a half after Charlemagne's death.
</gallery>

[[File:Harikalar Diyari Flintstones 06029 nevit.jpg|thumb|[[Dinosaurs]] co-existing with [[hominid]]s, as in ''[[The Flintstones]]'', is a relatively common anachronistic depiction in comics and animated cartoons.]]

===Comical anachronism===
[[Comedy]] fiction set in the past may use anachronism for humorous effect. Comedic anachronism can be used to make serious points about both historical and modern society, such as drawing parallels to political or social conventions.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.popmatters.com/feature/174969-hollywood-history-and-the-art-of-the-big-anachronism/ |title=Hollywood, History, and the Art of the Big Anachronism |last=van Riper |first=A. Bowdoin |work=[[PopMatters]] |date=2013-09-26 |access-date=2014-06-11}}</ref>

===Future anachronism===<!-- Section is linked from the redirected [Future anachronism] article; use caution. -->
{{See also|Retrofuturism}}
[[File:Amazing stories 193107.jpg|thumb|left|upright|A 1931 ''[[Amazing Stories]]'' cover has future [[space technology]] advanced enough for a large-scale [[colonization of Mars]] alongside [[propeller (aeronautics)|propeller airplanes]].]]

Even with careful research, [[science fiction]] writers risk anachronism as their works age because they cannot predict all political, social, and technological change.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction |last1=Athans |first1=Philip |author-link1=Philip Athans |last2=Salvatore |first2=R. A. |author-link2=R. A. Salvatore |publisher=[[Adams Media]] |year=2010 |isbn=9781440507298 |pages=167–170 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R8DrDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT167}}</ref>

For example, many books, television shows, radio productions and films nominally set in the mid-21st century or later refer to the [[Soviet Union]], to [[Saint Petersburg]] in Russia as [[Leningrad]], to [[Cold War|the continuing struggle between the Eastern and Western Blocs]] and to [[history of Germany (1945–90)|divided Germany and divided Berlin]].{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} ''[[Star Trek]]'' has suffered from future anachronisms; instead of "[[retroactive continuity|retconning]]" these errors, the [[Star Trek (2009 film)|2009 film]] retained them for consistency with older franchises.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cnet.com/culture/living-the-star-trek-life/ |title=Living the Star Trek life |last=Glaskowsky |first=Peter |work=[[CNET]] |date=2009-05-08 |access-date=2014-06-11}}</ref>

Buildings or natural features, such as the [[World Trade Center (1973–2001)|World Trade Center]] in [[New York City]], can become out of place once they disappear,<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2002/12/06/AR2005033116653.html |title='Empire': Gangster Tale Sleeps With the Fishes |last=Hornaday |first=Ann |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=2002-12-06 |access-date=2014-06-11}}</ref> with some works having been [[List of entertainment affected by the September 11 attacks|edited to remove the World Trade Center]] to avoid this situation.

Futuristic technology may appear alongside technology which would be obsolete by the time in which the story is set. For example, in the stories of [[Robert A. Heinlein]], interplanetary space travel coexists with calculation using [[slide rule]]s.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lyons |first1=Michele |title=Sliding Through Science History, Part 2 |url=https://irp.nih.gov/blog/post/2016/06/sliding-through-science-history-part-2 |website=NIH Intramural Research Program |date=9 June 2016 |access-date=April 9, 2021}}</ref>

===Language anachronism===
[[Language]] anachronisms in novels and films are quite common, both intentional and unintentional.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.npr.org/2013/02/26/172955182/historical-vocab-when-we-get-it-wrong-does-it-matter |title=Historical Vocab: When We Get It Wrong, Does It Matter? |last=Nunberg |first=Geoff |work=[[NPR]] |date=2013-02-26 |access-date=2014-06-11}}</ref> Intentional anachronisms inform the audience more readily about a film set in the past. In this regard, language and pronunciation change so fast that most modern people (even many scholars) would find it difficult, or even impossible, to understand a film with dialogue in 15th-century English; thus, audiences [[suspension of disbelief|willingly accept]] characters speaking an updated language, and modern [[slang]] and figures of speech are often used in these films.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/26/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-3-26-00-on-language-anachronism.html |title=The Way We Live Now: 3-26-00: On Language; Anachronism |last=Safire |first=William |author-link=William Safire |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=2000-03-26 |access-date=2014-07-31}}</ref>

==Unconscious anachronism==
[[File:RR5011-0017R Освобождение Европы от фашизма. Встреча на Эльбе.gif|thumbnail|right|A Russian commemorative coin of 1995 depicting Soviet and American troops meeting at [[Torgau]] in 1945. It shows the 50-star [[flag of the United States|U.S. flag]], first used in 1960, instead of the 48-star flag used at the time.]]

Unintentional anachronisms may occur even in what are intended as wholly objective and accurate records or representations of historic artifacts and artworks, because the perspectives of historical recorders are conditioned by the assumptions and practices of their own times, in a form of [[cultural bias]]. One example is the attribution of historically inaccurate beards to various [[Middle Ages|medieval]] [[effigy|tomb effigies]] and figures in [[medieval stained glass|stained glass]] in records made by English [[antiquarian|antiquaries]] of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Working in an age in which beards were in fashion and widespread, the antiquaries seem to have unconsciously projected the fashion back into an era in which they were rare.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Harris |first=Oliver D. |title=Beards: true and false |journal=Church Monuments |volume=28 |year=2013 |pages=124–32}}</ref>

==In academia==
{{See also|Presentism (historical analysis)}}
In historical writing, the most common type of anachronism is the adoption of the political, social or cultural concerns and assumptions of one era to interpret or evaluate the events and actions of another. The anachronistic application of present-day perspectives to comment on the historical past is sometimes described as [[presentism (historical analysis)|presentism]]. [[Empiricism|Empiricist]] [[historian]]s, working in the traditions established by [[Leopold von Ranke]] in the 19th century, regard this as a great error, and a trap to be avoided.<ref>{{cite book |first=Stephen |last=Davies |title=Empiricism and History |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |place=Basingstoke |year=2003 |page=29}}</ref> [[Arthur Marwick]] has argued that "a grasp of the fact that past societies are very different from our own, and ... very difficult to get to know" is an essential and fundamental skill of the professional historian; and that "anachronism is still one of the most obvious faults when the unqualified (those expert in other disciplines, perhaps) attempt to do history".<ref>{{cite book |first=Arthur |last=Marwick |author-link=Arthur Marwick |title=The New Nature of History: knowledge, evidence, language |place=Basingstoke |publisher=Palgrave |year=2001 |isbn=0-333-96447-0 |page=63}}</ref>

==Detection of forgery==
The ability to identify anachronisms may be employed as a critical and forensic tool to demonstrate the fraudulence of a document or artifact purporting to be from an earlier time. [[Anthony Grafton]] discusses, for example, the work of the 3rd-century philosopher [[Porphyry (philosopher)|Porphyry]], of [[Isaac Casaubon]] (1559–1614), and of [[Richard August Reitzenstein|Richard Reitzenstein]] (1861–1931), all of whom succeeded in exposing literary forgeries and plagiarisms, such as those included in the "[[Hermetica|Hermetic Corpus]]", through – among other techniques – the recognition of anachronisms.<ref>Grafton 1990, pp. 75–98.</ref> The detection of anachronisms is an important element within the scholarly discipline of [[diplomatics]], the critical analysis of the forms and language of documents, developed by the [[Maurist]] scholar [[Jean Mabillon]] (1632–1707) and his successors [[René-Prosper Tassin]] (1697–1777) and [[Charles-François Toustain]] (1700–1754). The philosopher and reformer [[Jeremy Bentham]] wrote at the beginning of the 19th century:
{{blockquote|The falsehood of a writing will often be detected, by its making direct mention of, or allusions more or less indirect to, some fact posterior to the date which it bears. ... ''The mention of posterior facts;'' – first indication of forgery.<br>
In a living language there are always variations in words, in the meaning of words, in the construction of phrases, in the manner of spelling, which may detect the age of a writing, and lead to legitimate suspicions of forgery. ... ''The use of words not used till after the date of the writing;'' – second indication of forgery.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jeremy |last=Bentham |author-link=Jeremy Bentham |title=A Treatise on Judicial Evidence |editor-first=Étienne |editor-last=Dumont |editor-link=Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont |place=London |publisher=Baldwin, Cradock and Joy |year=1825 |page=[https://archive.org/details/atreatiseonjudi00dumogoog/page/n160 140] |url=https://archive.org/details/atreatiseonjudi00dumogoog}}</ref>}}

Examples are:
* The exposure by [[Lorenzo Valla]] in 1440 of the so-called [[Donation of Constantine]], a decree purportedly issued by the [[Roman Emperor|Emperor]] [[Constantine the Great]] in either 315 or 317 AD, as a later forgery, depended to a considerable degree on the identification of anachronisms, such as references to the city of [[Constantinople]] (a name not in fact bestowed until 330 AD).
* A large number of apparent [[anachronisms in the Book of Mormon]] have convinced critics that the book was written in the 19th century, and not, as its adherents claim, in [[Pre-Columbian era|pre-Columbian]] America.
* The use of 19th- and 20th-century [[antisemitism|anti-semitic]] terminology demonstrates that the purported "[[Franklin Prophecy]]" (attributed to [[Benjamin Franklin]], who died in 1790) is a forgery.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.adl.org/special_reports/franklin_prophecy/print.asp |title=Anti-Semitic Myth: The Franklin "Prophecy" |publisher=Adl.org |access-date=2013-02-01}}</ref>
* The "[[William Lynch speech]]", an address, supposedly delivered in 1712, on the control of slaves in [[Colony of Virginia|Virginia]], is now considered to be a 20th-century forgery, partly on account of its use of anachronistic terms such as "program" and "refueling".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/question/may04.htm |title=Is Willie Lynch's Letter Real? |last=Cobb |first=W. Jelani |year=2004 |access-date=27 July 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160219014338/http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/question/may04.htm |archive-date=2016-02-19 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

==See also==
* {{Section link|1812 Overture|Anachronism of nationalist motifs}}
* [[Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon]]
* [[Anatopism]]
* [[Evolutionary anachronism]]
* [[Invented tradition]]
* [[List of stories set in a future now in the past]]
* [[Retrofuturism]]
* [[Skeuomorph]]
* [[Society for Creative Anachronism]]
* [[Steampunk]]
* [[Tiffany Problem]]
* [[Whig history]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Bibliography==
*{{cite book |last=Grafton |first=Anthony |author-link=Anthony Grafton |title=Forgers and Critics: creativity and duplicity in Western scholarship |place=Princeton |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1990 |isbn=0691055440 |url=https://archive.org/details/forgerscriticscr00graf_0 |url-access=registration}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* {{Wiktionary-inline}}
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Anachronism}}

{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Anachronism| ]]