|
History: Fiction or Science? Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics....
Product 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. 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 requirements 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. --New Book Review, 03-03-2007 (CA, USA) 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. --Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) Product 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. --Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) Reader Reviews This review is from: History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1) (Paperback) This book presents a wildly radical restructuring of the timeline of world history. It is written by an outsider to the world of historical scholarship: Fomenko is a non-historian (a renowned mathematician) and an non-Westerner (from Russia.) Fomenko's theory says, basically, that everything we are told about history pre-1600 is BS. Ancient history is, according to Fomenko, based on evidence quote-unquote "discovered" since the 15th century and arranged into a spurious standard timeline in the 18th century. (In some cases, the evidence was discovered much more recently: some Eastern religious texts were only uncovered in the 20th century.) Fomenko collates this evidence to argue that all those ancient chronicles are different versions of events which really happened roughly between 1000 AD and 1400 AD. The key event in Fomenko's timeline is the life of Christ (who was born in 1053 AD rather than 6BC, Fomenko believes.) After a relatively short-lived Eurasian empire disintegrated, each nation made up their own version of the empire's history, and generally each new version of the story was set farther back into the past than the previous one. (The newest version is the Hindu Krishna myth which is set about 10,000 years before the present day.) This is an appealing theory, since it eliminates the various "dark ages" which blemish the conventional chronology. On the other hand, this is an appalling theory, since it creates one big dark age extending from the beginning of time till 900 AD or so. The book is translated from the Russian. There is no index, and the bibliography is rather annoyingly arranged in the original Russian alphabetical order (so for example, B's and V's are mixed together.) But the translation is extremely readable, more readable than most historical works originally written in English. This is the first book in a projected 7-volume set. The online bookstore entries for this volume rather amusingly show easily history gets mixed up. The translator is someone named Michael Jagger who is almost certainly not the singer Mick Jagger (whose full name is Michael Phillip Jagger.) However, some online bookstores do list Mick Jagger as a coauthor. Amazon.com says the translator is someone named Mike Jagupov. This is hard enough to keep straight while the singer is still alive, and a few decades from now, I am sure that many sources will say that the legendary Rolling Stones frontman translated this book into English. (I have no idea if Mick Jagger speaks Russian or not. Although he is an educated man--- an alumnus of the University of London--- one would assume that he doesn't. Certainly, in all the millions of words which have been written about him, no one has commented on his knowledge of the Russian language. And, if he actually was the person who translated this controversial text into English, the book's publishers would presumably be aggressively advertising that fact.) Comments (2) | | (Report this)
|

