Allegories Gone Wild - The Mathematical Madman

These days, one doesn't need to go too far afield to find anyone more thoroughly whacked out than Young Earthers - the world abounds with baroque meritocracies beyond telling, from UFO wackjobs to Icke conspirators.

And I've found one that really skims the icing off the cake: one Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko - whom to all appearances seems to be a brilliant mathematician - his Wiki entry lists him as "a full member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the International Higher Education Academy of Sciences, as well as a doctor of physics and mathematics, a professor, and head of the Differential Geometry Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics in Moscow State University."

He's also apparently stark barking mad.

Fomenko is the foremost proponent of a theory called the New Chronology:

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 and 17th centuries;
3. That archaeological dating, dendrochronological dating, paleographical dating, carbon dating, and other methods of dating of ancient sources and artifacts known today are erroneous, non-exact or dependent on traditional chronology;
4. That there is not a single document that can 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 events that occurred in the Middle Ages.

Now, I dislike critiquing something I haven't read: on the other hand, I'm not wild about shelling out 35 dollaroes for something that sounds like lunacy. So I'll just pull an excerpt available on the web, and take a few swings at it, if that's all right with y'all.

(Do note the icon that states 'In Association with Amazon.com' - the book's being sold on Amazon, it's not a partnership.)

Summary:

History: Fiction or Science?

Has history been tampered with? Yes, it has! Did events and eras such as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Roman Empire , the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance, actually occur within a very different chronology from what we've been told? Yes, they certainly did! The history of humankind is both drastically shorter and dramatically different than generally presumed.

Yeah, let's just skip all the evolutionary data available in this day and age, shall we?

Why is it so? On one hand, it was usual custom to justify the claims to title and land by age and ancestry, and on the other the court historians knew only too well how to please their masters. The so called universal classic world history is a pack of intricate lies for all events prior to the 16th century. World history as we learn it today was entirely fabricated in the 16th-18th centuries. It's likely that nobody told you before, but there is not a single piece of firm written evidence or artefact that is reliably and independently dated prior to the 11th century.

Ummm...the Mesha stele? The Rosetta Stone? Cuneiform writing?  The Harappan steatite seals? The Palermo Stone? You'll see later, that this bozo has an explanation for all of this.

Naturally, after what you've learned in school and university, you will not easily believe that the classical history of ancient Rome, Greece, Asia, Egypt, China, Japan, India, etc., is manifestly false.

Still waiting.

You will point accusing finger to the gigantic pyramids in Egypt, to the Coliseum in Rome and Great Wall of China etc., and claim, aren't they really ancient, thousands of years ancient? Well, there is no valid scientific proof that they are older than 1000 years!

Yeah, they just seem pretty old, due to the wear and tear, don't they?

The oldest original written document that can be reliably unambiguously dated belongs to the 11th century! All dirty and worn out originals have somehow disappeared in the Dark Ages, as illiterate but clever monks kept only brand new copies.
New research asserts that Homo sapiens invented writing (including hieroglyphics) only 1000 years ago. Once invented, writing skills were immediately and irreversibly put to the use of ruling powers and science.

'Unambiguously dated?' Isn't all dating ambiguous to some degree? Note the distinctly Euro-centric slant of it all. New research? Whose?

Early in life, we learn about ancient history in school. Children love the magical lessons of history - they are like real-life fairy tales. Teachers recite breathtaking stories; very soon we learn by heart the names and deeds of brave warriors, wise philosophers, fabulous pharaohs, cunning high priests and greedy scribes.

Condescension'll get you everywhere. High-flown caricature of a contrary appeal to wonder.

We learn of gigantic pyramids and sinister castles, kings and queens, dukes and barons, powerful heroes and beautiful ladies, emaciated saints and low-life traitors. We are caught up in tales of cruel wars, merciless Roman legions, noble knights, crusades and contests. We are thrilled by perilous sea voyages and discoveries, passions and adventures. What an exciting journey it is!

I'm getting the distinct impression that he's read far too many Aesop's Fables and the Brothers Grimm.

As we grow up, our love of history grows stronger too. We watch megalomaniac breathtaking Hollywood productions, read historical fiction, buy glossy expensive books about mysteries, admire archaeological finds, go to museums, and travel to Egypt , Rome , Greece and China . Yes, now we understand it all so much better, the universal history of humanity, and the rise and fall of civilizations. The history of humanity began so very-very long ago. Per ternia ad astra!

Hmmm...sounds like a creationist. That last sentence translates: 'From the thickets to the stars'.

There is too much fantasy to be found in history. The ancient history of Antiquity and the Middle Ages is an enormous edifice of unspeakable perfection and beauty literally left hanging in the air. It simply has no proven and reliable scientific dated documentary foundation.

Perfection and beauty? Surely he's yanking our chains, is he not? A long history of genocide, oppression, and the baser instincts of mankind, more like. Borrowing Ellison's simile, it's more like individual roses at the top of myriad dung heaps.

The version of World history generally accepted today is based on presumptions. You might rightfully object that there are innumerable historical documents, manuscripts, ancient papyri, parchments, old and not so old books, buzzing with references to, from and about the past. There appears to be enough historical material to easily reconstruct completely the glorious past!

There's enough material, yes, but easily? Scholars are still hashing out the details. There's just so many contradictory accounts, that synchronization is a distant dream.

Yes, there are more than enough ‘documents’ to blind you forever; enough to lead you astray from the paths of sound reason and logic. Yes, there is enough material to generate a further dazzling Hollywood blockbusters, such as “Gladiator”, “Troy”, “Alexander” with the convincing acting of Russell Crow  or Brad Pitt; enough sizzling ideas for a further barnburners like “Da Vinci code”.

What a bunch of Hollyweird flicks has to do with actual historians is fuzzy at best: anyone with a lick of sense knows that artistic license is employed with any of the real facts.

Everyone wrongly presumes that the reconstruction of the past is simple. One takes an ancient chronicle, translates it into contemporary language, and that's it. History is reconstructed as new.

Everyone? Oh, I see: he's the prime source we should listen to, as all the scholars got it wrong and he's the final arbiter of truth and reason.

Ancient history is first of all, a written history based on the following sources: documents, manuscripts, printed books, paintings, monuments and artifacts. When a school textbook tells us that Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great in years X, Y, Z have each conquered half of the world, it means only that it is so said in some of the written sources. Seemingly simple questions do not always have clear, unambiguous answers. When were these sources written? Where and by whom were they found? For each of those two questions, the answers are very complex and require in-depth research to reflect the true answers and historical events.

He's actually talking about historiography here, and glosses over the concept of critical historiography by incorporating it into his writing. He also deliberately misses protohistory and prehistory. This is known as graphocentricity, e.g., a distinct bias in favor of written materials.

It is further presumed that there are numerous carefully preserved ancient and medieval chronicles available, written by Genghis Khan's or Alexander the Great contemporaries and eyewitnesses to their fantastic conquests, which are kept today in the National Library of Mongolia or Greece; in the Library of Congress or in the private collection of Microsoft.

Ummm...maybe the average layman thinks so, but probably not. More often, someone told them as much. And there's enough written by contemporaries, eyewitnesses, and later writers, that inductive logic (plus dating of said documents) verifies it. Microsoft has a private collection?

Only fairly recent sources of information are available, having been written hundreds or even thousands of years after the events. In most cases they have been written in the XVI-XVIII centuries, or even later. As a rule, these sources suffered considerable multiple manipulations, falsifications and distortions by editing. At the same time, innumerable originals of ancient documents under pretext of heresy were destroyed in Europe.

These are bold statements, especially from someone whose credentials are in unrelated fields.

Of course, some real events were the source of most written documents, even those that were later falsified and manipulated.

Do I catch a whiff of 'it's all a vast conspiracy' here, folks?

However, the same real event could have been described in chronicles by authors writing in different languages and having contradictory points of view. There are many cases where such are plainly unrecognizable as the same event.

'Could have been'? And if something is plainly unrecognizable as the same event, what would lead you to believe it was the same event? Any comparisons? Nope. Probably there's some in the book, but again, I'm not shelling out cash for a pipe dream as wild as this.

The names of persons and geographical sites often changed meaning and location during the course of the centuries. The exact same name could take on an entirely different meaning in different historical epochs. Geographical locations were clearly defined on maps, only with the advent of printing. This made possible the circulation of identical copies of the same map for purposes in the fields of the military, navigation, education and governance, etc. Before the invention of printed maps, each original map was a unique work of art, both non-exact and contradictory.

Still no citations. What a tease.

Historians from Oxford say: «... everybody knows that Julius Caesar lived in the first century B.C. Do you really doubt it?» Yes, we really do. For us, this statement is only a point of view that is dominant today. But it is only one of many possible points of view until the fact is proven.

In which case, I'll defer to a consensus of scholars in their given expertise. Who is this 'we' crap? Is he royalty, or did he acquire a tapeworm. Oh wait: we're confidants now.

In turn, we will also ask these historians some simple questions: where did you get your information? from a textbook? That’s not good enough. Who was the first to say that Julius Caesar lived in the first century B.C.? What book, document and/or manuscript can you quote as a primary source? Who is the author of this source? When was this primary source written down, if you please?

Gee, I don't know: maybe Caesar's own dated writings? Cicero's? Coins, temples, you know, all the evidence that points in that direction? This is the old poisoning the well, in order to slant the bias towards his work.

We do not accept «the textbook says so» type of answer as proof. As soon as you dig for proof slightly deeper than the school textbook, the adamant grounds for the totally and utterly dominant point of view suddenly evaporate. The whole world community of professional historians will not be able to come with up irrefutable documentary proof that Julius Caesar ever existed, be it on paper, papyri, parchment or stone. Same story for all great names of Antiquity. The proof is unavailable!

Irrefutably? Yeesh, talk about ipse dixit.

Cambridge historians say: “here is the ancient chronicle written in the twelfth century A.D., which clearly says, 'Julius Caesar lived in the first century B.C. '.”  But what proves that this chronicle was written in the twelfth century and not in the seventeenth century? Is your written source scientifically dated? The fact that bronze (or plastic panel made in the twenty-first century with the lettering: “Temple of Jupiter built in I century B.C. by the personal command of the Great Magnificent Caesar the Emperor of Rome” is hanging on the ancient looking edifice is not irrefutable proof of when, why, or what it was built for, even if the building is located in Rome, Italy.

That's a non sequitor.

Indeed, the dating of the chronicle from the twelfth century has to be proven. That is where the buck stops. The historians are unable to prove the date of the writing of their «old» written sources or produce independent datings of any ancient artifacts. For the last 300 years they have been successfully selling to the public ancient looking coins minted in recent day, with a tails inscription of “coined in 2000 B.C.” and heads inscribed with the portrait of Jesus Christ.

Hold the bus: What? First off, 2000 BCE was WAY before the alleged birth. Secondly these coins were minted in Constantine's time, and the dates actually agree with his estimations. More on this a little farther on.

Better than that - most of the rare sources that survived to our day and can be reliably dated back to the X-XIV centuries do not show the polished textbook picture of classical history. They show a picture utterly different. Therefore such witnesses and sources are not admissible to the orderly court of history! Learned historians say that such sources are primitive and full of errors, wrong names and locations, chronologically impossible situations, etc .. They claim these sources are unfortunate concoctions of half illiterate monks, hermits and travellers - therefore they cannot be accepted to the sacred temple of universal classical history.

'Orderly court of history'? Is this guy even living on the same planet I am?

[...]
in an Egyptian dig of a pharaoh burial site attributed to 16th 19th dynasty, (1500 years B C - this is allegedly known for a fact!) - an archaeologist finds a pot from Greece ; lets call it Article A , attributed to the Mycenae culture. It is inferred that they are from the same age: (1500 years B C ). In another dig in Greece, definitely attributed to the Mycenae culture, another archaeologist finds a "peculiar" button; lets call it: Article B, next to a similar pot; and it is inferred that they are from the same age (1500 B C ) as: (Age of Article A = age of Article B). OK. In further digs in Germany, archaeologists find other objects next to similar "peculiar" buttons, so it is also inferred that all these objects: Articles C, D,...N, found in the German dig have the same age: (1500 years B.C). Logical?  Seems so.

Seems rational? Now watch this:

But, one day the archaeologists in Sweden find additional "peculiar" buttons in a dig of the fairly recent dolmen burial of King Bjorn (born 953 A D), irrefutably dated by the 10th century A D .

Therefore, "peculiar" button “proves” that King Bjorn lived 2500 years ago and burial dolmen proves that he was buried 1500 years later? Not so logical anymore. Archaeologists call such a case a "mystery" – and .. sweep it under the carpet. Forget about logic!

This nimbulb is blathering about the King's Grave: an archeological gravesite (dated 1000 BCE) in Norway that was so thoroughly contaminated (and built on a Stone Age settlement) that nobody knows just exactly what it used to look like. King Bjorn has been dated to have existed in the first half of the 9th century (and ambiguously at that, so there goes the irrefutably claim), and besides which, what button is he talking about? If I'm buried with my favorite samurai sword, that dates back to the mid-sixteenth century, is some nutcase going to dig me up and spout a bunch of lunacy about how 'history lied'? Articles and artifacts can travel.

Button, button, who's got the button?

Archaeological dating therefore is by definition completely and inevitably subjective.

Which fallacy is that? Oh yeah...the unrepresentative example.

Radio-carbon method:
This much touted method produces reliable dating of objects of organic origin with exactitude of plus minus 1500 years, therefore it is too crude for dating of historical events in the 3000 years timeframe! Initial calibration of this method was made basis artefacts of ancient Egypt dated by historians.

Ummm...not so. Radio-carbon dating only works on organic materials. This might apply to something written on paper, but what about all those examples I provided earlier? Steles, stones, etc.? He obviously has a bug up his ass about C14 dating, but what is his position on Potassium-Argon dating? 

At present the c14 dating procedure runs as follows: archaeologist sends an artefact to a radiocarbon dating laboratory with his idea of the age of the object. Laboratory complies and makes required radio dating, confirming the date suggested by archaeologist. Everybody’s happy: lab makes money by making an expensive test, archaeologist by reaping the laurels for his earth shattering discovery. The in-built low precision of this method allows cooking scientifically looking results desired by the customer archaeologist. General public doesn’t realize that it was duped again. In general the archaeological artefacts are submitted to carbon 14 laboratories not to find the true age of the artefact, but to rubberstamp age suggested by the historians.

Aye caramba! It's the 'nasty ole scientists are in on it!' conspiracy theory again! The 'customer archeologist'? Where? At 'Artifacts R Us'? Does this retard even know what radio-carbon dating is? How it's measured? It's measured by an established formula, not by some guesswork.

Dendrochronological method:
This method is unusable for dating reliably events in Europe older than 800 years. Samples from North America are datable up to 5000 years, but are irrelevant for dating ancient of events in Europe, Africa or Asia.
All methods of dating used today are not independent from the classical Scaliger chronology.   Moreover all these "fine" methods were developed and calibrated on the basis of the classical chronology. Circulus vitiosus. Very Vicious circle!

[Note: I linked to Scaliger, as I'd never heard of this 15th century historian before]. Gee whiz, was Thucydides make believe too? Apparently so. He's obviously never heard of this:
"Over the past hundred years or so, tree ring sequences have been built all over the world, with the longest to date consisting of a 10,000 year sequence in central Europe completed on oak trees by the Hohenheim Laboratory."

The strange thing is that all proofs relative to all historically important names and events of ancient history have first appeared in sources such as, documents, books and manuscripts that can be reliably dated only as late as the XVI-XVIII centuries. These books and manuscripts are full of references to, from and about the older books, documents and manuscripts, which have all mysteriously disappeared! There is not a single reliably dated original ancient contemporary source. Sic! What a mystery/thriller, indeed. Even a flatfoot policeman, aspiring to become detective by correspondence, will smell something fishy here. Wouldn't you?

I do. It's your analysis. What about the Dead Sea Scrolls? All those Egyptian obelisks with writing on them? Schliemann at his Troy? Oh, sorry, I forgot: there's that big 'conspiracy' to create a false history. My bad.

Why is this so?
The «sources» are part of classical chronology. Most Greek, Roman, medieval chronicles, annals and memoirs were massively produced in XVI-XVIII centuries. In fact, for the last 300 years, the whole class of historians created, researched, perfected and polished a world of phantom universal history and classical civilization artfully constructed by their predecessors in the course of XVI-XVIII centuries at the command of powers of that time. They have literally polished the real world history into oblivion!   The ancient history you and I were taught in school is not truth in the final instance; it is nothing but the currently dominant and indoctrinated version of history.

A carefully cultivated and polished conspiracy over the ages. (rolls his eyes) Yeah, let's skip over Egypt, the Mayans, the Aztecs, and the Chinese. We wouldn't want actual facts to get in the way, would we?

This version is based on a «chronological hypothesis», formulated for first time by the chronologists and historians Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) and Dionysus Petavius (1583-1652). Their chronology is about as irrefutable as the quadrature of the circle of which Joseph Scaliger was an anecdotic, but ferocious protagonist.

Ummm...no, Scaliger was famous for "showing that ancient history is not confined to that of the Greeks and Romans, but also comprises that of the Persians, the Babylonians and the Egyptians, hitherto neglected, and that of the Jews, hitherto treated as a thing apart; and that the historical narratives and fragments of each of these, and their several systems of chronology, must be critically compared." Petavius was a theologian and philologist, but not an historian.

Genuflect and admire the Almagest, which lies as the foundation to the entire edifice of contemporary chronology! It is supposed to have been written in the II century AD by Ptolemy, the founding father of astronomy. This presumably antediluvian tractate catalogues 1028 observable stars with a precision of 10'-15' (arc minutes) of longitude. Now, the rotation of the Earth makes the night sky make a turn of 1 arc degree every four minutes. One arc degree consists of 60 arc minutes, which means that the sky rotation speed equals 15' (arc minutes) per one minute of time. Ptolemy's precise measurements were too precise to have been performed with the existing instruments of that time. either a sundial, a clepsydra, or an hourglass. Could he have used his Grandfather's Swiss chronometer that had a minute hand? This seems most improbable considering that minute hands are a novelty introduced to clocks as recently as 1550 AD.

We don't even use the Ptolemaic system: remember, it was geocentric? For that matter, the Mayans didn't have any of these instruments, and they did a bit of all right for themselves. So did the Chinese. Oh, wait, keep forgetting: that stuff was planted, wasn't it?

Another solid pillar of universal history is the Bronze Age, that has supposedly taken place 3-5 thousands of years ago. Now, to make bronze you need 90% copper and 10% tin. Simple. Yes, but the technology for tin extraction dates back as late as 14th century A.D. The Scaliger chronologists did not bother to consult a chemist. They have been driven by altogether different considerations, neither caring much for tin, nor indeed for science itself! As a result, 'ancient' Greek heroes (like Brad Pitt in «Troy») happily hack at each other with bronze swords that need tin for their manufacture, but which has not been discovered as yet!

If you actually take the time to go look up the Bronze Age, you'll find that it's anything but 'universal': there are widely divergent eras in different societies, not to mention that in sub-Saharan Africa, some of them actually skipped the Neolithic straight to the Iron Age. Besides which, anyone with half a brain doesn't cull their historical facts from films. When was the last time someone hollered out, "Hey, those are IRON AGE swords! I call anachronism!" in the movie theater?

Explore, and, step by step, you will find sufficient proof to reach the inevitable conclusion that the classical Scaliger-Petavius chronology is false and therefore, that the history of ancient and medieval world universally accepted today, is also false. After reading this book you will certainly have a fresh and very suspicious outlook on everything said or printed about "ancient" and "enigmatic" Roman, Greek and Egyptian, medieval as well as all other "lost and found" civilizations.

 And yes, this guy's a YOUNG Young Earther, all right. In the video provided, he claims that jay-sus was born in 1053 CE, and crucified in 1086. Note he doesn't provide his theory of how we all came to be. The floor is open to speculation.

Final analysis? In this case, too much math mulches the mind.

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." - Oscar Levant.