Anthony Grafton, “Dating History: The Renaissance & the Reformation of Chronology,” Daedalus, vol. 132, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 74–85 (original) (raw)
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One important category of information available to chronologists, particularly if used in association with archaeological evidence, is that found in the writings of authors from the classical period of Greece through to the first few centuries of the Roman Empire. This article will examine these ancient sources to test whether they present a picture of the past consistent with that revealed by archaeology, particularly inscriptions indicating sequences and timescales, and also to see the extent to which they support, or otherwise, the orthodox chronology and a number of representative alternative chronologies.
A. T. Fomenko Chronology 1 Introducing the problem. A criticism of the Scaligerian chronology. Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics. Eclipses and zodiacs., 2001
History: Fiction or Science? is the most explosive tractate on history ever written – however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by solid scientific data. Mainstream history ‘science’ says that after some 1000 years of sound sleep Europeans suddenly woke up as Christians to the hilt, armed themselves and started touring-crusading Middle East during 200 years to punish at last tormentors of Jesus, searching for the Saint Sepulchre, Saint Graal, Saint spears, nails and bits of Saint Cross and other relics and curiosities. The Christians finished their tour with a bang by sacking Constantinople allegedly in 1204 a.d. Local populations became muslims, crusaded back and built a Caliphate that span from Arabia to Morocco and North Africa and finally took Constantinople in 1453 a.d. Dr. Fomenko calls all this ‘science’ wrong. The Europeans did not hibernate for 1000 years before going after the wrongdoers. Dr. Fomenko’s New Chronology sees the history of the world religions as follows: the pre-Christian period (prior to XI c. and Jesus Christ), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII c., before and after Jesus Christ), Jesus Christ Christianity (XII-XIV c.) with its subsequent mutations in XV-XVII centuries into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. Religious wars were a way of life. Dr. Fomenko does clean forensic with Occam’s razor on the beautiful body of the world history. Its skeleton looks very much different from the mainstream history book. The author sees the world history very much compressed: all real events that took place over 1200 years ago as well as people who allegedly acted in them are simply unknown to us and will stay in prehistory forever. Ancient Egypt, Europe, Rome, China, India, etc. etc. ‘histories’ prior to 800 a.d. are figmental.