History: Fiction or Science?

Rating:
Summary: Don't review if you haven't read
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Revealing opus about history's greatest hoax
Review: A book that certainly is worth reading! I gulped the more than 500 pages down in one week and still feel the urge to have some more of its merciless revealings about history as we are taught. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that after having read this one, you don't believe neither in "ancient" Rome, Greece etc., nor in "Dark" ages! It is very well written - academically, and not boring at all. Extremely interesting illustrations and quotes that prove the author's really daring conclusions. I hope the next volume will be published soon!

Rating:
Summary: A better written explanation
Review: About 10 years ago, I ploughed through Fomenko's two-volume Kluver set of independent papers that, taken together, form the outline of the current volume. It was tough going (non-idiomatic translations, lots of repetition, often written like a mathematical proof). I became instantly disoriented, thought about it long and hard for years, reviewed the volumes on Amazon, and spent bunches of hours in a local university library following odd leads and trying to see if there was any possibility that any of Fomenko's theorizing could be grounded in reality.
I read Robert Newton's condemnation of Ptolemy; Anthony Grafton's dissertation on Scaliger (and other writings about Medieval forgeries); F.F. Arbuthnott's peculiar disquisition (ca. 1900) on English history and the probability that the further back from Henry VIII you go the less you know (and why the Irish monks who "saved civilization" may have had other agendas); about Isaac Newton's chronological explorations; about the inconsistencies in radio-carbon dating; about an odd series of parallel "dark ages" in circum-Mediterranean cultures ca. 1200-to-800 BCE that can best be explained by positing that the period in question didn't exist; and a volume about the relatively late evolution of the concept of "absolute time." Taken together with the astronomical and mathematical data presented by Fomenko that, to this educated non-scientist, seems eminently plausible, I have pretty much concluded that there is a lot of room for irregularity in the received chronology of history.
This first (of seven!) volumes of Fomenko's work explains in far better English and more detail what his earlier papers explicated. It should be approached critically, will be derided and dismissed everywhere (and is not aided by Fomenko citing Velikovsky as one of the early "fellow travellers" along this path), but lays out a fascinating possibility that will take more than one reading and a lot of deep thought to assimilate and form any judgment about.
But it gives new lives to the common aphorism "History is written by the winners," Henry Ford's offhand dictum "History is more or less bunk," and Napoleon's prescient (?) "History is fable of fiction agreed upon."
I suddenly don't look at anything that happened before the Renaissance with anything like the certitude I once did.


Rating:
Summary: I really don't know whether I must laugh or cry.
Review: According to this chronology (which we can name "Ultra High Revised Chronology"), Jesus died in 1086 AD. More or less, in this time, the Cid was fighting against the Moors in medieval Spain.
Taking this theory to extreme, then Jesus/Joshua would be Rodrigo Díaz alias "the Cid, the Champion Knight" (el Cid Campeador in Spanish), who took Valencia (i.e. Jericho), because he was exiled from the kingdom of Castilla (i. e. Egypt) by King Alphonse VI (i.e. the Pharaoh of Exodus)!!!. We don't have to forget that, according with Spanish medieval legends, the Cid rode after his own death and won a battle (resurrection???).
Ergo Jesus/Joshua was the Cid.
On chronology, I am arranged to think anything.

Rating:
Summary: I really don't know whether I must laugh or cry.
Review: According to this chronology (which we can name "Ultra High Revised Chronology"), Jesus died in 1086 AD. More or less, in this time, the Cid was fighting against the Moors in medieval Spain.
Taking this theory to extreme, then Jesus/Joshua would be Rodrigo Díaz alias "the Cid, the Champion Knight" (el Cid Campeador in Spanish), who took Valencia (i.e. Jericho), because he was exiled from the kingdom of Castilla (i. e. Egypt) by King Alphonse VI (i.e. the Pharaoh of Exodus)!!!. We don't have to forget that, according with Spanish medieval legends, the Cid rode after his own death and won a battle (resurrection???).
Ergo Jesus/Joshua was the Cid.
On chronology, I am arranged to think anything.

Rating:
Summary: A Hardbound Boldfaced Lie
Review: Anyone stupid enough to buy this book deserves to loose there money. Written by a mathematician from Russia ( a country famous for its verisimilitude and intellectual honesty) this book is pure, unmitigated tripe, fabrication and illogical presumption. I don't know about Russia but in the rest of the universe the half life of Carbon 14 is 5730 years. That means that when the organic carbon 14 is found to be half over 37% decayed in a the wooden foundation of the Pantheon, it was built in 2nd century...no two ways about it its a law of physics. Fomenko is lying to you and charging you for it. He claims the Egyptian empire is only 100 years old. Tell me Anatoly you lying rat, how do you explain the geophysical correspondence in flooding patters from 500 years ago to those written, in stone on the walls of Matsabas. How do you explain the presence of organic remains with Carbon 14 decayed 50% in Egyptian tombs...that makes them almost 3000 years old. How do you explain the recording of Alexander the Greats empire as being approximately 2300 years ago in Indian, Egyptian, Arabian and Central Asian records if all the fabricating historians were European. How do you explain the reference to Plato and Aristotle in Muslim ORIGINAL records from 700's ad, marking the year as 87 in the Muslim calendar no less.

His most ridiculous claim is that Christ was born 100 years ago. Well, how do you explain that the armies of Mohammed and Abu Bakr, armies of the 7th century (a FRIGGIN d) recorded storming and burning Christian churches. Whets even better is that we have multiple independent verification, through carbon records, astronomical records and cultural records of Islams birth 1400 years ago.

Mr Fomenko. Im 19 years old and I wrote this review of the top of my head. I didnt even have to research it. If i did i could provide numerous more examples of why your work is absolute tripe. You have the brain of a retarded monkey. I truly pity you, you sad sad fool.

Rating:
Summary: History as profession
Review: Bravo to the reader from the USA! Bravissimo!
You are a professional historian. Very high grade venom.
Yes, history is a PROFESSION, a MYSTERY, not a Science.
After 300 years of good run for their money historians are invited to produce facts.
Will make anybody scream. Shame on Fomenko for unveiling History, for naked it stands.
Bravo!Encore!

Rating:
Summary: Cool Historian
Review: Dear Diamond Robert of Princeton,
Don`t be rude, just add more venom in your argument. Otherwise no Princeton lecturer of history will give you extra credits for attacking Fomenko the Heretic. For Christ`s sake don`t touch C14, it is both radioactive and contradictory, there too many of +/-1000 anno dating errors. Tell all your friends and relations NEVER talk, read or even think about FOMENKO, it is a real thought crime.

Rating:
Summary: Do Search Inside before reviewing!
Review: Dear prospective Reviewers and/or Readers,
Certain reviewers submit their negative reviews without even looking inside the book. Free country. Earth Is Flat. Period. Radiocarbon dating proves it. Period. Kindly use the feature "Search Inside" before your go on the air with killer proofs. On radiocarbon: type 'radiocarbon dating' in the Search Inside window and see for yourself why radiocarbon is really too crude for historical dating. Type other keywords you are curious about. Thanks to the `Search Inside' feature your decision to buy or not to buy "History: Fiction or Science?" will be your own.
Thank you for your interest,
Franck Tamdhu
Publisher


Rating:
Summary: Earth is flat
Review: 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.