History: Fiction or Science?, Vol. 1

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 v

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!

Sky & Telescope Magazine confirms results, but does not buy Fomenko's theoryFomenko 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 historyof 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.

Earth was flat. Humans saw that it was flat, books were telling scholars that it was flat, teachers were teaching students it was flat; scientists knew it was flat. There was some disagreement about the way it was kept afloat, most common versions were elephants, whales and turtles, but that was subject for scientific discussion. Until Magellan sailed around the globe and proved all this science wrong. This book is precisely about same situation. Although it is written for casual reader, it still bears all the traits of scientific research. I was suspicious about credibility of this book, because of the scandalous 10,000.00 bet placed as advertisement here (you can beat math only by math, and guy who posted the ad knows this). I've studied math using Fomenko's textbooks as supplementary source at Fraser university (there are around 14 textbooks on math, at least known to me, written by Fomenko and translated to English, pretty expensive and rare as all advanced textbooks, but I'm pretty sure it is possible to fish something at your local university, here is the one for the start - ISBN: 0792326067). I've run some of the statistical examples in SPSS (of course simplified and using data from the book) and results were similar. Math doesn't lie, but there is old saying "garbage in - garbage out", so take my results as is. Anyway, history as a science is based on books written by previous generation of historians, who based their works on works of previous generation of historians, supplemented by archeological digs (great deal of assumptions was made there too, as people didn't usually mark their belongings with dates), so it definitely needs some mathematical treatment.It is very difficult to digest the new version of history from Fomenko without getting allergic shock. Official timeline is accepted in the same way as gravity, and movement of the sun; many nations have developed their identity based on official history. Literally speaking chronology is in our culture, in our roots, personal identity. Someone said here that this book was written by Russian nationalist to reassure Russian national identity. May be so, but I think for Russians will be very difficult to swallow that they were actually Mongols and Tatars too. This book will turn your world upside down. Literally.