500? Rookie numbers, gotta pump those down. I'd give it 130-150 years. Maybe even 250. At most 400. They lie about what is happening today and people believe the lies, it must have been so much easier with only a few newspapers and radio programs, or before when most weren't literate.

Phantom Time theory is proven with celestial eclipses. /r/cultrallayer is on the right track. The Roman Catholic Church controlled all reading and writing in Europe. They rewrote history from 1670-1710ish. The middle ages never happened, they added 1000 years. None of that 1000 years of history they added makes sense, or even adds up to 1000 years of history. Pompeii exploded in 1631. The Roman empire never fell, it changed its name. Wall Street stock exchange looks exactly like a Roman building in the front with the triangle on top of columns. The Bull symbology is all over the place. The statue of liberty is actually Apollo. It is also man in drag.

The supposed history of Columbus, Britain, and America doesn't make any sense. Supposedly the first permanent settle of the English at Jamestown happened over 100 years after land across the Atlantic was discovered. I've never believed that an island nation with a huge navy didn't start colonies, or the the first one was abandoned.

There is also the Worlds Fair theories, that the buildings already existed. That was a civilization in America before. There were stone buildings of Roman designs all across America. They claim most of the buildings were temporary, but they were so grand and elaborate for something temporary out of cheap materials.

I think there was a power change in the late 1800s. After the American civil war, a group discovered or took over something. There were train cars of redheaded children all across north america. Technology exploded so quickly in so many areas. Look at the navy ships during WW1. Somehow so many countries developed completely different looking and advanced ships in the 1900 decade, compare them ironclads or the first submarines.

Even the American Civil war is suspicious. As is the War of 1812, supposedly a tornado hit Washington DC and changed the war.

Just think about the Cold War. Supposedly the Soviets stopped trying to put a man on the moon despite being ahead most of the space race. During Pearl Harbor the American air craft carriers were out at sea. But also none of the Japanese planes targeted the massive fuel reserves at the navy base. I don't think any war in the past 100 years was unplanned by TPTB before hand.

If you really want to dive deep into Phantom Time and alternative history, look into The Greenland Theory. It combines phantom time with other theories, and explains a lot about Roman symbolism we have today, and the Greco-Roman-Egyptian-Babylonian power dynamic.