History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
`History: Fiction or Science?` is the most explosive tractate on history and chronology ever written. This book is not another conspiracy theory – every hypothesis it contains is backed by solid scientific data. The book is well-illustrated, contains 446 graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: – That the chronology universally taken for granted is indeed wro
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Review by Dr. PhD Bela Lukacs for History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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This is a most unusual book, one that undermines the very foundations of History. According to the author and his team of researchers, History as it has been taught in Europe ever since the Renaissance is fundamentally false, verified history beginning around 1250 AD the earliest. Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086, the First Crusade being an immediate reaction to his Crucifixion. Homer identifies an an anonymous poet of the second half of XIII century AD, and the event led to the creation of the Iliad had been the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261 AD. The list goes on and on.
Historians generally oppose the author’s views without making much commentary. The author is not a historian, they say, period. He is only a leading differential geometrician, successful and respected, author of many advanced textbooks. A. Fomenko is also a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; his main argumentation is of a statistical and astronomical nature. I happen to be a physicist myself and not a historian. However, astronomy and differential geometry are known to me well from the area of general relativity, and I cannot recommend this book enough, since its author approaches History, usually a highly emotional discipline ascribed to the field of humanities, armed with impartial mathematics.
History is collective memory; yet even our own memory errs at times, and no real memory extends beyond three generations. There are written sources, but each one of those might easily prove a forgery. There are material remnants of archaeological nature, but they may be misadated and misinterpreted.
Astronomy is precise by definition, and a historical dating that can be calculated from information about eclipses should satisfy any researcher. Yet the XIX century astronomers did not use the lunar tidal friction value in the equations of lunar motion, which would make ancient lunar eclipses appear several hours off the mark and relocate completely several total eclipses of the sun geographically (assuming tidal friction value has remained the same all the time but there is no reason to believe it hasn’t). How could XIX century calculations have conformed to consensual history?
I must say that a methodical recalculation of ancient eclipse datings shall invariably bring surprises; in the unlikely case these datings are correct, we shall prove the existence of erratic changes in telluric rotation over the last 4,000 years instead. Both possibilities are highly alarming.
Fomenko demonstrates the incompatibility between consensual history and modern astronomy. This incompatibility is a sad fact. (He exposes a number of other contentious issues as well, but those do not fall into my professional scope). Which is more reliable – history or hard-boiled scientific facts? Science cannot afford subjectivity; most of us would feel the same way about history as well.
Chronological problems are very serious indeed; Fomenko offers a viable solution to most of them, and a radical one at that – a “Copernican revolution” of history, no less. I am not using the term to predict the final and total victory of his version; that is a matter for a multitude of scientific and scholarly discussions to come. But the contradiction between history and astronomy that becomes graver with the day cannot and must not be tolerated, in the best interests of both history and the theory of telluric rotation.
Dr.PhD B. Lukács
Review by Timothy Horrigan for History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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This book presents a wildly radical restructuring of the timeline of world history. It is written by an outsider to the world of historical scholarship: Fomenko is a non-historian (a renowned mathematician) and an non-Westerner (from Russia.)
Fomenko’s theory says, basically, that everything we are told about history pre-1600 is BS. Ancient history is, according to Fomenko, based on evidence quote-unquote “discovered” since the 15th century and arranged into a spurious standard timeline in the 18th century. (In some cases, the evidence was discovered much more recently: some Eastern religious texts were only uncovered in the 20th century.) Fomenko collates this evidence to argue that all those ancient chronicles are different versions of events which really happened roughly between 1000 AD and 1400 AD. The key event in Fomenko’s timeline is the life of Christ (who was born in 1053 AD rather than 6BC, Fomenko believes.) After a relatively short-lived Eurasian empire disintegrated, each nation made up their own version of the empire’s history, and generally each new version of the story was set farther back into the past than the previous one. (The newest version is the Hindu Krishna myth which is set about 10,000 years before the present day.)
This is an appealing theory, since it eliminates the various “dark ages” which blemish the conventional chronology. On the other hand, this is an appalling theory, since it creates one big dark age extending from the beginning of time till 900 AD or so.
The book is translated from the Russian. There is no index, and the bibliography is rather annoyingly arranged in the original Russian alphabetical order (so for example, B’s and V’s are mixed together.) But the translation is extremely readable, more readable than most historical works originally written in English.
This is the first book in a projected 7-volume set.
The online bookstore entries for this volume rather amusingly show easily history gets mixed up. The translator is someone named Michael Jagger who is almost certainly not the singer Mick Jagger (whose full name is Michael Phillip Jagger.) However, some online bookstores do list Mick Jagger as a coauthor. Amazon.com says the translator is someone named Mike Jagupov. This is hard enough to keep straight while the singer is still alive, and a few decades from now, I am sure that many sources will say that the legendary Rolling Stones frontman translated this book into English.
(I have no idea if Mick Jagger speaks Russian or not. Although he is an educated man— an alumnus of the University of London— one would assume that he doesn’t. Certainly, in all the millions of words which have been written about him, no one has commented on his knowledge of the Russian language. And, if he actually was the person who translated this controversial text into English, the book’s publishers would presumably be aggressively advertising that fact.)
Review by for History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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Sky&Telescope Magazine confirms results, but does not buy Fomenko’s theory
Fomenko uses astronomy data to support his argument that history is too long and that many historical events happened more recently than we thought. The temple walls and sarcophagi of some Egyptian ruins are decorated with depictions of the sun, moon, and planets as observed in the different zodiacal constellations. If a given depiction is accurate – that the celestial bodies were observed and placed correctly in the constellations – a horoscope can be used for dating. Fomenko has deciphered over a dozen Egyptian horoscopes. He claims, that the latter show dates that are 2-3 thousand of years later than conventionally thought. Most well-documented ancient eclipses actually took place in the Middle Ages.Roger Sinnott, studied astronomy at Harvard and is an editor at the respected Sky & Telescope Magazine checked Fomenko’s calculations for the famous trio of eclipses from Thucydides’s account of the Pelopponesian War. The three eclipses are conventionally dated to 431, 424, and 413 BC. Fomenko finds these dates as non adequate to narrative of Thucydides’s and finds exact solutions as late as in 1133, 1140, and 1151 AD.The second example is the eclipse of 190 BC described in Livy’s history
of Rome. Fomenko redates this event to 967 AD.Fomenko`s dates accommodate details from ancient descriptions that the conventional dates do not. For example, Thucydides wrote that the first of his three eclipses was solar and that the stars were visible, that means that the eclipse was total. The accepted solution of August 3, 431 BC involves an eclipse that was only partial in Greece. Similarly, the Livy eclipse is supposed to have happened five days before the ides of July, which by our conventional reckoning would date it July 10. Fomenko’s 967 AD solution nails that date, while the conventional 190 BC eclipse actually occurred on March 14. Sinnott confirms that eclipses did take place on the dates Fomenko has chosen and concludes, “Even though Fomenko has found valid eclipse dates that seem to fit the descriptions, I think it is far-fetched in the extreme to conclude that the chronology of the ancient world is ‘off’ by more than one thousand years.” Free country, isn’t it?
Check Fomenko’s calculations with ANY sky mapping software, professional or amateur, you’ll get his results confirmed.
Review by LordMord for History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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You learned history when you were a young lad from someone who learned it from someone who….. but who started it all?
What’s wrong with asking this question? Some people would burn Mr. Fomenko at the stake for saying the Earth isn’t flat.
I bought this book as a novelty but I ended up being quite impressed with it. I wouldn’t say I’m totally sold on all the crazy ideas Mr. fomenko puts out but they certainly are more plausable than you might think. He does a thorough job of showing how early “historians” were really working for the pope. Most were monks with limited resources, personal and religious agendas, and a willingness to fudge it whenever they didn’t know (or like) the truth. You’ll be amazed at how meticulously he presents his evidence that the dark ages were so dark because they never happened. Your head will probably start to ache when you get to the section where he analyzes historical timelines statistically (at least mine did). However, the parallels truly are startling.
The first four chapters alone are worth the price of the book. Even if you don’t believe any of it I’m sure you will at least question why we take the foundations of historical knowledge so seriously without solid justification. There’s more to this book than you could know without actually reading it!
Review by A. Audette for History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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I do not agree with everything written in this book. For example, I do not agree with the idea that ankhs are supposed to be Christian crosses. I also disagree with the observations that different objects look like crescents and symbolize Islam. But there are a great number of valid observations contained in the book. Radiocarbon dating is not the science most of us think it is, as put forth in the book. I also have to agree with the author’s idea that many pieces of evidence taken from old books and used to date people or events were either false and inserted by later editors, or otherwise erroneous. Let’s face facts: the majority of ancient history is conjecture, or “educated guessing”. It’s about time an author came along and, in the author’s own words, “called a spade a spade”. Is this book 100% correct? Who knows? Do many of the theses contained within deserve further study? Yes, if history is to be a record of events and not propaganda or fuel for dogma. The more accurate we can make our history books, the better off other sciences will be, especially the humanities and any sciences concerned with gauging human progress in different areas throughout the ages. I give the book three stars mainly because I find some of the ideas put forth to be less than credible (the author shoud enlist other researchers with expertise in those areas besides math and physics), the translation to be not quite perfectly clear in some areas, and I dislike the organization of the book. The three stars are for the rest of the ideas and theories in the book that do make sense and deserve further exploration, or a reasoned rebuttal, especially the mathematical analysis of ancient texts. To the academics who summarily dismiss the book as rubbish…please point us to reasoned explanations. Us grown-ups who can read big words and read a book longer than a paperback novel deserve that much. Also, as an adult in this day and age, I will never just “take someone’s word for it”. How’s that song go..”won’t get fooled again!” I am especially waiting for someone to convince me that radiocarbon dating is worth using on objects less than many thousands of years old. I doubt it’s going to happen!