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: 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: 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: The dam is falling apart
Review: History should be a Science. Eventually, it will be! Orvell has said: Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past. We, the people, must control our future.
In my younger years, my biologists co-workers, derived mostly from The Moscow State U, were complaining: "How dare you describe living systems with math?" I know they were naive.
A large group of physicists had run Cold Fusion into underground. Fifteen years later, CF is a well proven phenomena (DOE is anoncing some funding, but it actually will be another Manhatten Project, very soon). That was protecting the "hot fusion" turf = funding. I do not believe the "protectors" were naive!
Starting from Scaliger and Petavius, historyans have produced the "story line" paid for by the power (Roman Pope, Kings, "Elected" potentates (including Stalin, Hitler, and Idi Amin). The the European inquisition (expanded with the great help of Poland into Russia) helped a lot by destroying the physical artifacts, including the great library of the Ivan the Terrible (wrong translation of Groznyi), and disagreable people. Russians cannot claim the invention of Gulag. Gulag was also the means of writing the right history. Most historyans of that time have satisfied the need of the payees by burning books and people - that, I think, was a crime. Those who did not servant got burned (or gulaged).
Modern hystorians have learned the "story line" and they cannot switch to other jobs, they collectively stack in consentual and incestual relationships. This, I think, is prostitution.
The future historians will learn math (as biologists already did) and transform their story line into the science.
Fomenko is (1) destroying the "story line", and (2) creating a large set of hypothesis. Some hypothesis are better developed, others will be either rejected by facts, or modified, or proven as is. The X-ray image of the whole skeleton of his work is more or less accurate. It will take several hundreds (thousands?) of Ph.D. dissertations to create the "whole picture" and to establish the new body of academicians capable of writing and dissimenating the scientific history.
I have read several Fomenko's books in Russian. I highly recommend his <UNFUNDED> WORK and his books.
To the "modern" historyans, brothers of Scaliger: "It had been worse on the pile of burning Dark-Age-woods".
Rating:
Summary: Deals with a very serious issue
Review: History: Fiction Or Science? is a quite scholarly expose of the extreme limitations of our understanding of human history. So few physical records have survived hundreds, let alone thousands of years that it casts even the most conventional understanding of what really happened into doubt. Chapters address the problems of historical chronology in general, astronomical datings, astronomy in the Old Testament, methods of dating ancient events via mathematical statistics, the construction of a global chronological map, the Dark Ages, and much more. Black-and-white illustrations add a vivid touch to this scholarly work that may appear controversial yet deals with a very serious issue directly affecting humanity's comprehension of its own past.
Rating: 
Summary: Before You Buy This Book...
Review: I will admit- when I first started reading about this book, and its reviews, I was a bit nervous. Then again, I tend to be slightly gullible when it comes to whacko theories such as this one. As soon as you begin to think about this book, none of it makes sense. There is a massive amount of solid evidence that supports real history; evidence like the roman roads, artifacts that are obviously older than the middle ages, and the countless aincient cities that litter Europe and the middle east. The many examles provided in the reviews are paper-thin themselves. The story about El Cid, for example- this particular story is so mixed up that the man who came up with it should be slapped. Any similarity between Jesus and Moses and El Cid is coincidence- if anything, it is El Cid who should be called into question (I'm not saying he's not real; there's just less evidence of his exisence). And as for the Bronze age being a myth- there is such a thing as "lost knowledge"; in other words, the bronze age certainly did exist, it's just that, after the end of the age, the people who began using hardened iron would not have bothered to remember how to make bronze. If you dont believe in lost technonogy, consider this: even after centuries of refinement, we still cannot produce seel of the quality found in the aincient Damascus blades.
In short, do not buy this book; instead, spend your money on something that has a basis in reality.
If you remain a yaysayer, please direct your attention to the reviews written on April 22, 2004 and March 2, 2004. Both provide some rather telling evidence.
Rating:
Summary: TOTAL RUBBISH.Untrue.
Review: If I could give it minus stars I would. So the entire Edifiace of all historians at The University of Oxford and the entire Western World are wrong and this chap is right. NO.I don`t think so. Not thought provoking..Mythological pseudo scientific clap trap as a what IF. Don`t even waste your money. I have never condemned a book so much..I have only praqised books on amazon. This severely anoyed me this book as a Ph.D. After this you may as well start buying David Icke and conspiracy theories and all else. Useless.Books like this can upset me. Go and be a alchemist or something. USELESS RUBBISH..flight of fANCY. AND SCIENTIFCALLY USELESS. EVERY DECENT HISTORIAN SHOULD BE OFFENDED. WE hAVENT BEEN DUPED NEITHER HAVE been professional historians..Only people who have been duped are readers of this book. Total nonsense. Offenesive.
Rating:
Summary: More fuzzy Russian "science"
Review: Isn't sad that so many intellectuals in Russia have so completely lost all credibility? It's also sad that Amazon pairs this book up with "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize winner and serious academic. Just try to keep from laughing when you read "From the Author" and "From the Inside Flap" in the "Editorial Reviews." People who buy this line of "reasoning" must also believe man never landed on the moon.
Rating:
Summary: Sky&Telescope Magazine confirms results
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: the dating of turin shroud is correct?
Review: The dark ages were dark, but not so dark that a 1000 years went missing. too many writings, books, buildings and navylogs contain dates too bridge most of the period between the fall of the roman empire and the renaissance. when did people collectively adapt to a fake date?
5 stars for starting a discussion
|
