New chronology (Fomenko): Difference between revisions

The New Chronology of Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko is an attempt to rewrite world chronology, based on his conclusion that world chronology as we know it today is fundamentally flawed. The ideas of the New Chronology are a direct continuation of earlier theories of Nikolai Morozov. The theory is commonly associated with the name of Fomenko, although it is, in fact, a collaboration of Fomenko with several other Russian mathematicians, most important being Gleb Vladimirovich Nosovsky.

"New Chronology" is considerably more compact than conventional history, because all of the ancient Greek/Roman/Egyptian history is "folded" onto the Middle Ages, and the antiquity and Dark Ages are eliminated. According to Fomenko, the history of humankind goes only as far as AD 800, we have almost no information about events between AD 800-1000, and most historical events we know took place in AD 1000-1500.

Reduce hearsay, add valid facts - respect NPOV

Salutations Gentlemen Wikipedians,

Anti-Fomenko “Damage Control” WiKiPedia page is openly biased; valid pro-Fomenko arguments are not admitted. Suggest the strict respect of NPOV.

NB:

Frederick Barbarossa allegedly missed by Fomenko in “dynastic parallelism” fig.r6.5.1. is explicitly mentioned in the descriptive part of Annex 6.5. on p.534 of “History..”, ISBN 2913621058..

The Lecture 2002 of H.Jeffreys vividly shows that in order to suite “ancient” datings of eclipses Moon-Earth system parameters have to be artificially twisted (fig.6). Tidal friction parameter stays strict linear constant, if Fomenko’s datings used. Astronomical software calculates exact date to a minite, eclipse path to a meter and phase of solar eclipses up to 16800 years backwards or forwards. These exact calculations do not fit the any of the datings provided by allegedly “ancient”, in fact mediaeval astronomers. To suite “ancient” datings they stage a convoluted astronomical circus with unknown forces at play. There was NO TOTAL ECLIPSE in Babylon on 15.04.136 BC, look at fig.4 qv. Therefore the whole chronology attached to it is not valid. [1].

The Lecture 2002 of H.Jeffreys also mentions the same source as Fomenko, i.e. translations of Babilonian datable texts by A.J.Sachs. Any astronomer will confirm that the number of astronomical units, i.e. planets and constellations quoted in these texts is not sufficient for a unique dating of such horoscopes.

“Moscow as III Rome is a formula”, recognized by official history of Russia. Was in use under Ivan III, alleged reign 1452-1505, introduced by Filofei (Philoteus), Russian monk.

Fomenko's claims

Brief summary

Fomenko claims

1. That the chronology universally taken for granted is simply wrong;
2. That this chronology was essentially invented in the 16th-17th century;
3. That archaeological, dendrochronological, paleographical and carbon methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact;
4. That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the 11th century;
5. That Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were crafted during the Renaissance by humanists and clergy;
6. That Jesus Christ may have been born in 1053 and crucified in 1086 AD or even later;
7. That the Old Testament is probably a rendition of Middle Ages events.

Sample Fomenko parallelism

Detailed description

Fomenko's theory claims that the traditional chronology consists of four overlapping copies of the "true" chronology, shifted back in time by significant intervals (from 300 to 2000 years), with some further revisions. For example, Fomenko claims that Jesus is a reflection of the same person as the Old-Testament prophet Elisha (850-800 BC?), Pope Gregory VII (1020?-1085), Saint Basil of Caesarea (330-379), and even Li Yuanhao (also known as Emperor Jingzong or "Son of Heaven" - emperor of Western Xia, who reigned in 1032-1048). Further, John the Baptist baptized Jesus, someone named Maxim baptized St. Basil, the prophet Elijah was the predecessor of Elisha, and John Crescentius was in some way a predecessor of Pope Gregory VII; consequently, according to Fomenko, all of them are also 'reflections' of the same person.

Critics point out that the evangelical Jesus is believed to have lived for 33 years, and he was an adult at the time of his baptism. On the other hand, Pope Gregory VII lived for at least 60 years, and he was born 8 years after the death of John Crescentius. Fomenko writes this off as a mistake of official history. Merging together the biographies of the aforementioned people requires also to merge cities, because conventional history places them throughout the entire ancient world, from Jerusalem to Rome. Fomenko identifies all their cities: "New Rome" = Constantinople = Jerusalem = Troy. The Biblical Temple of Solomon was not completely destroyed, says Fomenko - it is still known to us as the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Historical Jesus may have been born in 1053 and crucified around 1085 AD on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. The city that we now know as Jerusalem was known prior to the 17th century as a nondescript Palestinian village of Al-Quds.

On the other hand, according to Fomenko the word "Rome" can signify any one of several different cities and kingdoms. The "First Rome" or "Ancient Rome" or "Mizraim" is an ancient Egyptian kingdom in the delta of the Nile with its capital in Alexandria. The second and most famous "New Rome" is Constantinople. The Italian Rome is at least third in the list of cities known as "Rome"; it was allegedly founded around 1380 AD by Aeneas.

Parallelism between John the Baptist, Jesus, and Old-Testament prophets implies that the New Testament was being written simultaneously with the Old Testament. Fomenko claims that the Bible was being written until the Council of Trent (1545-1563), when the list of canonical books was established, and all apocryphal books were ordered destroyed.

As another unrelated example, according to Fomenko, Plato, Plotinus and Gemistus Pletho are one and the same person - according to him, some texts by or about Pletho were misdated and today believed to be texts by or about Plotinus or Plato.

Supporting evidence

Astronomical evidence

Fomenko names several solar and lunar eclipses described by allegedly "ancient" authors and suggests that they fit their descriptions more accurately if these eclipses ( and thus the documents they appear in ) are medieval. Note that solar eclipses are relatively frequent events: total solar eclipses occur on average every 300-400 years at any given point, and much more often if we consider, say, all partial eclipses visible somewhere within the borders of ancient Roman Empire; thus multiple datings of any given eclipse or even sequence of eclipses are possible. Further, lacking the accurate knowledge of Delta-T parameter during pre-telescopic era ( before 1600 ), we have a lot of freedom in determining when and where any particular historical eclipse would be visible. Nevertheless, it appears that a large number of Babylonian and Chinese eclipses can be dated consistently with conventional chronology as far back as 500 BC, contradicting Fomenko's claims [2].

Fomenko associates the Star of Bethlehem with supernovae observed in 1054 AD and the Crucifixion Eclipse with full solar eclipse of 1086 AD., such pair of astronomical events is extremely rare. He argues that the Almagest star catalogue, ascribed to the ancient astonomer Claudius Ptolemy, was actually created between 600 and 1300 AD.

He repeats Morozov's analysis of some ancient horoscopes, most notably, the so-called Dendera Zodiacs - two horoscopes drawn on the ceiling of Hathor temple - and comes to the conclusion that they correspond to either 6th or 14-15th centuries AD. Traditional history usually either interprets these horoscopes as belonging to 1st century BC or suggests that they do not have to match any date at all. The controversy arises because of ambiguous interpretation of symbols on the horoscopes and Morozov/Fomenko's unconventional choices.

Dynastic parallelisms

Fomenko's lists a number of pairs of seemingly unrelated dynasties - for example, dynasties of kings of Old Israel and emperors of late Western Roman Empire ( 300-476 AD ) - and claims demonstrates correlations between their reign durations. claims to demonstrate correlations between their reign durations. He also claims that the reignal history of the 17th-20th centuries never shows correlation of "dynastic flows" with each other, therefore Fomenko insists history was multiplied and outstretched into imaginary antiquity to justify this or other "royal" pretentions. Fomenko's critics respond that these parallelisms are often derived by forcing the data - rearranging, merging, and removing monarchs as needed to fit the pattern.

History of New Chronology

The underlying idea of the existence of duplicates in conventional chronology can be traced back to Isaac Newton in the early 18th century and Nikolai Morozov in the early 20th century. Newton restricted his attention to chronology of ancient Egypt and Israel. Several historians in 18th and 19th century ( such as Jean Hardouin (1646-1729), Edwin Johnson (1842-1901) ) suggested that many ancient historical documents were much younger than commonly believed to be. Morozov was the first to claim the existence of correlations between the dynasties of Old-Testament kings and Roman emperors and to suggest that the entire chronology prior to the 1st century BC is wrong.

Fomenko became interested in Morozov's theories sometime in 1973-74. In 1980, together with a few colleagues from the mathematics department of Moscow State University, he published several articles on "new mathematical methods in history" in peer-reviewed journals. The articles stirred a lot of controversy, but ultimately Fomenko failed to win any respected historians to his side. By 1990 Fomenko gave up trying to convince the scientific community and focused on publishing popular books.

By 2005 his theory had grown to cover all of the Old World, from England and Ireland to China.

Conclusion

Fomenko is a well-respected mathematician; as such he does not have any formal education in history. He voices in his books unfavorable opinions of professional physicians on carbon-14 and other modern methods of dating and tends to use statistics and astronomy in his historical research. His critics claim he chooses only the facts that he finds convenient for his theory and ignores the rest. His views on history are not shared by historians, and his theory is considered to be pseudoscience.

Fomenko has published and sold millions of copies of his books in Russia. The list of his supporters includes such famous figures as Chess World champion Garry Kasparov. Fomenko's theories became accessible to the Western public with publication of "History: Fiction Or Science?" in English, ISBN 2913621058

see also

• Heribert Illig

External links

• http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/01098.htm
• http://www.revisedhistory.org/Investigation-eng-history.htm
• http://www.univer.omsk.su/foreign/fom/fom.htm
• http://www.jesus1053.com/en/index.html
• http://lib.ru/FOMENKOAT/engltr.txt
• a debunking of Fomenko's theories