I call ... BULLSHIT

[unixronin]

I was very disappointed to see in New Scientist, of all places, a full-page ad for a book by Anatoly T. Fomenko (an ad across which is "stamped", in large red letters, "SOLD 3.8 MILLION COPIES IN RUSSIA") titled "History: Fiction or Science?"  The gist of the ad is that Fomenko, self-proclaimed "leading mathematician of our time", "proves" that history as we know it is lies from end to end, and "demonstrates", "armed with computers, logic, astronomy and statistics", that the history of humankind is "both dramatically different and dramatically shorter than generally presumed".

(I'm awfully curious to know how you can prove historical dates using statistics.  But we'll let that go for the moment, because it gets much better.)

Among Fomenko's assertions:

• All methods of dating of ancient sources and artifacts are erroneous.  (Interesting claim.  One wonders how he derived correct dates, since he can't have used any method, since all methods are erroneous.  Wait, I have it -- he made the "correct" dates up!  What genius!)
• Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were crafted during the Renaissance.  (And then, presumably, placed in their "correct" places in the historical record using a time machine built by Leonardo da Vinci....?)
• Jesus Christ may have been born in 1053 and crucified in 1086 AD in Rome.  (Uh-oh.  Then what were all those early Christians worshipping?  I'm sure the compilers of the Domesday book in 1066 would have been greatly surprised to find that none of the Christian churches whose parishioners they were so busy taking census of actually existed, because the savior they were dedicated to hadn't actually been born yet.)
• The Apocalypse was written on the Isle of Patmos after October 1, 1486 AD.  (Wait .... historical revisionism in the Bible comes as a shock to him?  No wonder the poor man's confused.)
• The Old Testament was compiled after the New Testament as a rendition of mediaeval events.  (Odd how it doesn't actually match any mediaeval history accounts, isn't it?  Oh, wait -- of course, I understand: All those mediaeval accounts were actually written in 1920... presumably by Fomenko's father, following in his unborn son's footsteps.)

In summary, I suspect the only true words in the entire ad are the ones stating it sold 3.8 million copies in Russia.  There's got to be at least 3.8 million ignorant suckers in a country that big.  Gospodin Fomenko, I strongly suspect, is one or more of a complete charlatan and fraud, utterly deluded, or straight-out barking mad.  Mr. von Daniken, paging Mr. von Daniken, your dinner guest is here.

Comments

[databeast.livejournal.com]

it was worth reading through all that, just for the Von Daniken reference :)

We need to build Earth 2 ; Real Soon Now

then we can ship all these nutbags off there to deal with each other directly.

Kinda like George Carlin's "Big Square State, like Colorado, with a hundred-foot fence; and all the scumbags inside"

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Egypt, during the Renaissance? Heavens, if he's checked his sources he should know that Egypt was made up by the Rosicrucians, and put in place by the Napoleonic conspiracy. I mean, who ever heard about most of those temples before Napoleon?

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

If he's the guy whose statistical proof of the error of history is that he looked at the birth patterns of kings and popes (number of years separating them), and concluded that where you find a repeat, it's actually a redundant listing?

There was one guy who asserted that. Looked at the dates of popes, which is one of the proofs of what year we're in, and said that some 1000 years worth of pope listings were just the same ones repeated over and over again. There was someone who "proved" the technique as a way of refuting dynastic claims about kings, I think. But I don't recall the information about the proof of concept... and it still sounded fishy even then.

Anyways, the author I'm thinking about used that refutation of the 1000 years worth of popes to say that 1000 of the years of our history didn't happen. So, it's not that JC lived from 1053-1086, it's that JC was born 953 years ago, and we're _really_ in the year 953 AD; and that you can/should basically ignore anything from about 400 or 500 AD to 1400 or 1500 AD as being pure fiction. I think the nutjob also implied that the Roman Empire still exists (though, in an abstract way, you can make comparisons about the structure and organization of the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman govt, as well as it explaining some of the political power grabs attempted by the RCC during the middle ages, using that as a justification that just as a chicken is a dinosaur, the RCC is the modern surviving element of the Roman Empire ... but it being the ACTUAL Roman Empire?? That's like saying a chicken is a T-Rex).

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

So, it's not that JC lived from 1053-1086, it's that JC was born 953 years ago, and we're _really_ in the year 953 AD; and that you can/should basically ignore anything from about 400 or 500 AD to 1400 or 1500 AD as being pure fiction.

Heh. It's an interesting idea, and it'd make a pretty cool SF novel, I think. Kinda Matrix-y. I mean, I certainly can't prove it's been 2,006 years since the birth of Christ, but I do imagine that collectively, all over the world, people have managed to keep slightly better track than that. If someone tried to sell me that the calendar was off by 5 years over the span of 2000, I'd be far more inclined to perhaps believe it. But not a whole thousand.

-Ogre

[koyote.livejournal.com]

You may recall from the 70s and 80s, but Russia has had a HUGE history with this- from taoist MAGIC MASTERS, to psychic powers, etc. (For that matter, we do, too)

The assorted reasons are deabtable, and my explanation of why I think it is (that there IS a fundamental spiritual aspect to humanity and that trying to repress it nets you loco yokels with fat wallets and 3.8 million copies sold..) isn't very popular. But whatever, it's still interestng to see Russia still exporting this.