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Chronology #2
History: Fiction or Science?
According to author Anatoly T. Fomenko, so-called consensual history is a finly woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events preceding the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of firm written evidence or artifact that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the sixteenth century. The archaeological, dedrochronological, paleographical, and carbon methods of dating ancient sources and artifacts are both non-exact and contradictory. Nearly all of the methods of dating components are blatently untrue!
- GenresHistory
527 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
52 people want to read
About the author
A.T. Fomenko
62 books21 followersAnatoly Timofeevich Fomenko is a full Member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Full Member of the International Higher Education Academy of Sciences,Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Professor, Head of the Moscow State University Section of Mathematics of the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics.Solved Plateau's Problem from the theory of minimal spectral surfaces. Author of the theory of invariants and topological classification of integrable Hamiltonian dynamic systems.
Author of 200 scientific publications, 28 monographs and textbooks on mathematics, a specialist in geometry and topology, calculus of variations, symplectic topology, Hamiltonian geometry and mechanics, computer geometry.
Author of a number of books on the development of new empirico-statistical methods and their application to the analysis of historical chronicles as well as the chornology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Many Russian scientists do not accept the "New Chronology" declaring it pseudoscientific, yet no mathematical calculations on which the New Chronology is based have been proved wrong. The supporters of the New Chronology include Garry Kasparov, a former chess champion, whom many consider the greatest chess player of all time.
Author of 200 scientific publications, 28 monographs and textbooks on mathematics, a specialist in geometry and topology, calculus of variations, symplectic topology, Hamiltonian geometry and mechanics, computer geometry.
Author of a number of books on the development of new empirico-statistical methods and their application to the analysis of historical chronicles as well as the chornology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Many Russian scientists do not accept the "New Chronology" declaring it pseudoscientific, yet no mathematical calculations on which the New Chronology is based have been proved wrong. The supporters of the New Chronology include Garry Kasparov, a former chess champion, whom many consider the greatest chess player of all time.
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January 21, 2019
For people who don't know what these books are (ie. sensible non-Russian adults) you're looking at the dry scholarly tomes of a mathematician who decided he was unhappy with the unimportance of Russia in ancient history and decided that this meant it must be all wrong. Now I'm not dissing Russia here. These ideas have rightly been dismissed by Russian experts, except for the occasional eccentric mathematician and celebrity. That's why he's searching for a new audience: his books have run just about as far as they ever will in Russia.
These books are a statistician's attempt to combat established history using page after endless page of charts and diagrams in the hope that people won't actually check through all these figures. At fifteen volumes in length it's a fairly safe bet, even though these books are extremely short (by my math, this one's only about 40 pages long, though it claims to be 282). But what's really amazing is how little digging it actually takes to find the repeated and lethal errors in his work. The man is so certain that he must be right that he sees no problem with forcibly altering the facts to fit his "theory" or accepting huge margins of error when seeking a parallelism.
And now the history of the world as outlined in this book: History begins when Andronicos Comnenos dies and becomes Jesus. History records him as an unsuccessful Greek emperor with no real successes who was beaten to death by the mob and not a poor prophet from Nazareth who was crucified but hey, what do they know. It's not like the crucifixion was an important part of the story or anything. Immediately all of Europe decides that they're Christian and march against the Muslims. It may sound confusing why they'd blame the Muslims for what was an internal coup but they were probably just confused because Mohammed wasn't born yet. At some point they changed their minds and decided to skip the first three crusades and jump straight onto the Fourth (except that they didn't. It was actually the same as the First. Obviously. Please try and keep up). They then sacked Constantinople which was also Rome which was Troy which was Jerusalem. At some point they get confused and occupied the Holy Land as well and then forget all about Constantinople and let it fall back to the Greeks since Jerusalem was now Constantinople which was Troy which was Rome. People back then had very short memories often forgetting why they did something before they even did it. This is probably due to their lack of statisticians. During the First Crusade the Greeks decide to avenge the kidnapping of their queen by... also sacking Constantinople. After sacking their own city they quietly vanish for a few years, probably in embarrassment. Some time later Erasmus wrote the New Testament confusing generations of scholars who wondered what they had been copying out for all that time. Having now written a New Testament it was decided that they needed an Old one. I'm sure the reasons for the reversed order are as obvious to everyone else as they are to Fomenko. Some time in the 15th Century David rose up, except that he was Turkish and ruled in Constantinople. Despite the many wars with the Turks Europe had never warred with the Turks and accepted all of these events as holy writ. After all, the Turks were really Russian in funny hats and the Russians ruled the world. The Byzantines were secretly ruling in England. After the death of Solomon (Suleimon) the Jews split off from Christianity because they were tired of not being persecuted because of something they didn't do and decided that being hunted by the Inquisition was more fun. In the confusion the Catholics and Orthodox Christians split apart as well because everyone else was doing it and it seemed a good idea at the time. They were to regret this later when the Catholics sacked their city but that had already happened so it was fine.
It turns out that Russia has dominated the world since the earliest recorded history (what a shock!). The Mongols were not from Mongolia because the people there are nothing but worthless servants of the Russian Empire (it's ok. Fomenko assures us that the Mongols never knew of Genghis Khan until some pesky monks told them that they used to rule the world). Russia was actually the major Empire that the Romans were based off of and has existed since the dawn of civilization. Silly Georgians thinking they are anything but the personal property of Russia! Ha ha. They also controlled America, Europe and North Africa by 1300 so I guess that we should all submit to the Russian yoke as is our hereditary duty. Occasionally a czar would allow the governors of Europe (kings hah!) to wage war on each other if they pleased him. Presumably the English sucked up to him better than France which is why they did so well in the Hundred Years War but then lost his favor again which resulted in the French winning. Joan of Arc was probably the czar's sister or something. The czar could summon anyone to his court and they had to obey which is why Moscow is renowned the world over as being filled with better artwork and architecture than such dives as Paris and Rome (which isn't the REAL Rome after all). After Russia fell in the 1600s (through internal troubles. No one could EVER conquer Russians) the rest of the world immediately conspired to hide that they ever existed lest they should try to rule over them again. Thus they erased this empire from the history books and replaced it with such lies as Rome and the Holy Roman Empire (couldn't they even pick a new name? Obvious!). Thus the treacherous Romanovs rose to power (did I mention that he first published this under the Soviets?) and they too decided to forget there had ever been a Russian Empire of such a scale. Many "Roman" documents are simply Russian ones with a few name changes. Latin is merely a corrupted form of church Slavonic, despite bearing no similarity to that language. The Russians probably invented it to confuse future generations of schoolkids. They had after all had it engraved all over the southern part of their empire on specific styles of buildings which they immediately buried and built medieval cities on top of to confuse archaeologists. It never showed up in Russia itself. Perhaps they punished the provinces by making them write everything in Latin. Oh those cruel Russians. After the late 18th Century things begin to return to what is normally called history.
As you can see it is far less confusing than the 'conventional' timeline. You might think I'm making this up but that is what you get when you put all his history together. Minus the sarcasm perhaps.
You don't even have to wait for the book to begin for the errors to creep in. The title alone presents a false dichotomy. Fiction or Science? As if those are the only two options. And I have no doubt that Fomenko does indeed see it that way given his haughty dismissal of anything even loosely connected to the Arts. History is too close to the Arts and must be purged of anything that isn't a string of exact, quantifiable numbers. All similar number strings must be combined into the same string, and any "facts" or "historical personages" attached to those numbers must be purged as well. Nice, clean math. But it's more disturbing than just that. These books are a vast horde of Russian nationalic propaganda. Apart from ridiculing any non-Scientists (AKA people unqualified to form proper conclusions) the main goal of these books is to establish that Russia ruled all the world from North America through Europe into China and the Middle East, and they did so for most of recorded history. So his two assumptions about the world are:
1. All Non-Scientists are either liars or idiots.
2. Everything in the world originated in Russia.
One of these two assumptions is underlying every single one of his conclusions. He treats his random and unsupported speculations with just as much respect as ones that have been established through years of research backed by hard evidence. Linguistically too he is a dunce since he views all languages as being mere corruptions of the original Russian. Linguistics after all, is not a science. Neither is Art, Archaeology, Sociology, Genealogy, or Anthropology. Thus they are worthless as sources of information and aren't even worth mentioning unless to state (not argue or prove) that they are wrong.
And man is this book the least interesting of the lot. This book contains Fomenko's challenging of astronomical methods of dating, which is about as exciting as you might expect. Tedious, tedious stuff. Titles like "The strange leap of parameter D" in the theory of lunar motion" are exactly as dull you might expect. Why can't he get straight to the parallelisms? Oh right, he needs to draw readers in with the relatively sane stuff before he ambushes them with the truly nutty ideas.
While it might be tedious, this shows exactly how Fomenko (and all conspiracy theorists really) work. He overloads you with facts, charts, pictures, debates, and as much technical vocab as he can. Those looking for a new star to follow will treat this as evidence of superb research and hang on his every word. Those more mistrustful of authority may look at all this and recognize some of the contradictory arguments but regard the mass of data and tone of unshakeable certainty as proof that something is wrong in the field of history. Those who know anything about the topic just stare in astonishment at the fanatical confidence with which unfounded or completely false claims are treated as unquestionable truth. It's star charts now, but soon it will be dynasties and artwork. And I personally find those much more fun.
These books are a statistician's attempt to combat established history using page after endless page of charts and diagrams in the hope that people won't actually check through all these figures. At fifteen volumes in length it's a fairly safe bet, even though these books are extremely short (by my math, this one's only about 40 pages long, though it claims to be 282). But what's really amazing is how little digging it actually takes to find the repeated and lethal errors in his work. The man is so certain that he must be right that he sees no problem with forcibly altering the facts to fit his "theory" or accepting huge margins of error when seeking a parallelism.
And now the history of the world as outlined in this book: History begins when Andronicos Comnenos dies and becomes Jesus. History records him as an unsuccessful Greek emperor with no real successes who was beaten to death by the mob and not a poor prophet from Nazareth who was crucified but hey, what do they know. It's not like the crucifixion was an important part of the story or anything. Immediately all of Europe decides that they're Christian and march against the Muslims. It may sound confusing why they'd blame the Muslims for what was an internal coup but they were probably just confused because Mohammed wasn't born yet. At some point they changed their minds and decided to skip the first three crusades and jump straight onto the Fourth (except that they didn't. It was actually the same as the First. Obviously. Please try and keep up). They then sacked Constantinople which was also Rome which was Troy which was Jerusalem. At some point they get confused and occupied the Holy Land as well and then forget all about Constantinople and let it fall back to the Greeks since Jerusalem was now Constantinople which was Troy which was Rome. People back then had very short memories often forgetting why they did something before they even did it. This is probably due to their lack of statisticians. During the First Crusade the Greeks decide to avenge the kidnapping of their queen by... also sacking Constantinople. After sacking their own city they quietly vanish for a few years, probably in embarrassment. Some time later Erasmus wrote the New Testament confusing generations of scholars who wondered what they had been copying out for all that time. Having now written a New Testament it was decided that they needed an Old one. I'm sure the reasons for the reversed order are as obvious to everyone else as they are to Fomenko. Some time in the 15th Century David rose up, except that he was Turkish and ruled in Constantinople. Despite the many wars with the Turks Europe had never warred with the Turks and accepted all of these events as holy writ. After all, the Turks were really Russian in funny hats and the Russians ruled the world. The Byzantines were secretly ruling in England. After the death of Solomon (Suleimon) the Jews split off from Christianity because they were tired of not being persecuted because of something they didn't do and decided that being hunted by the Inquisition was more fun. In the confusion the Catholics and Orthodox Christians split apart as well because everyone else was doing it and it seemed a good idea at the time. They were to regret this later when the Catholics sacked their city but that had already happened so it was fine.
It turns out that Russia has dominated the world since the earliest recorded history (what a shock!). The Mongols were not from Mongolia because the people there are nothing but worthless servants of the Russian Empire (it's ok. Fomenko assures us that the Mongols never knew of Genghis Khan until some pesky monks told them that they used to rule the world). Russia was actually the major Empire that the Romans were based off of and has existed since the dawn of civilization. Silly Georgians thinking they are anything but the personal property of Russia! Ha ha. They also controlled America, Europe and North Africa by 1300 so I guess that we should all submit to the Russian yoke as is our hereditary duty. Occasionally a czar would allow the governors of Europe (kings hah!) to wage war on each other if they pleased him. Presumably the English sucked up to him better than France which is why they did so well in the Hundred Years War but then lost his favor again which resulted in the French winning. Joan of Arc was probably the czar's sister or something. The czar could summon anyone to his court and they had to obey which is why Moscow is renowned the world over as being filled with better artwork and architecture than such dives as Paris and Rome (which isn't the REAL Rome after all). After Russia fell in the 1600s (through internal troubles. No one could EVER conquer Russians) the rest of the world immediately conspired to hide that they ever existed lest they should try to rule over them again. Thus they erased this empire from the history books and replaced it with such lies as Rome and the Holy Roman Empire (couldn't they even pick a new name? Obvious!). Thus the treacherous Romanovs rose to power (did I mention that he first published this under the Soviets?) and they too decided to forget there had ever been a Russian Empire of such a scale. Many "Roman" documents are simply Russian ones with a few name changes. Latin is merely a corrupted form of church Slavonic, despite bearing no similarity to that language. The Russians probably invented it to confuse future generations of schoolkids. They had after all had it engraved all over the southern part of their empire on specific styles of buildings which they immediately buried and built medieval cities on top of to confuse archaeologists. It never showed up in Russia itself. Perhaps they punished the provinces by making them write everything in Latin. Oh those cruel Russians. After the late 18th Century things begin to return to what is normally called history.
As you can see it is far less confusing than the 'conventional' timeline. You might think I'm making this up but that is what you get when you put all his history together. Minus the sarcasm perhaps.
You don't even have to wait for the book to begin for the errors to creep in. The title alone presents a false dichotomy. Fiction or Science? As if those are the only two options. And I have no doubt that Fomenko does indeed see it that way given his haughty dismissal of anything even loosely connected to the Arts. History is too close to the Arts and must be purged of anything that isn't a string of exact, quantifiable numbers. All similar number strings must be combined into the same string, and any "facts" or "historical personages" attached to those numbers must be purged as well. Nice, clean math. But it's more disturbing than just that. These books are a vast horde of Russian nationalic propaganda. Apart from ridiculing any non-Scientists (AKA people unqualified to form proper conclusions) the main goal of these books is to establish that Russia ruled all the world from North America through Europe into China and the Middle East, and they did so for most of recorded history. So his two assumptions about the world are:
1. All Non-Scientists are either liars or idiots.
2. Everything in the world originated in Russia.
One of these two assumptions is underlying every single one of his conclusions. He treats his random and unsupported speculations with just as much respect as ones that have been established through years of research backed by hard evidence. Linguistically too he is a dunce since he views all languages as being mere corruptions of the original Russian. Linguistics after all, is not a science. Neither is Art, Archaeology, Sociology, Genealogy, or Anthropology. Thus they are worthless as sources of information and aren't even worth mentioning unless to state (not argue or prove) that they are wrong.
And man is this book the least interesting of the lot. This book contains Fomenko's challenging of astronomical methods of dating, which is about as exciting as you might expect. Tedious, tedious stuff. Titles like "The strange leap of parameter D" in the theory of lunar motion" are exactly as dull you might expect. Why can't he get straight to the parallelisms? Oh right, he needs to draw readers in with the relatively sane stuff before he ambushes them with the truly nutty ideas.
While it might be tedious, this shows exactly how Fomenko (and all conspiracy theorists really) work. He overloads you with facts, charts, pictures, debates, and as much technical vocab as he can. Those looking for a new star to follow will treat this as evidence of superb research and hang on his every word. Those more mistrustful of authority may look at all this and recognize some of the contradictory arguments but regard the mass of data and tone of unshakeable certainty as proof that something is wrong in the field of history. Those who know anything about the topic just stare in astonishment at the fanatical confidence with which unfounded or completely false claims are treated as unquestionable truth. It's star charts now, but soon it will be dynasties and artwork. And I personally find those much more fun.
December 18, 2015
A surreal revision of history with a fascinating & compelling thesis. Though I skimmed books 1 & 2, I lack scientific background & the patience to make a proper critique. These books should be widely read & analyzed in the U.S. Also, there's a need for a graphic novel & idiot's guide to this huge 7-volume heavily-footnoted series. Author is a mathematician born in Ukraine & he uses astronomy, etc. to drastically alter medieval history dates & often personages. Also shocking changes to ancient history.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews