New chronology (Fomenko)
The new chronology is a pseudohistorical theory proposed by Anatoly Fomenko who argues that events of antiquity generally attributed to the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece and Egypt actually occurred during the Middle Ages, more than a thousand years later.
The theory further proposes that world history prior to AD 1600 has been widely falsified to suit the interests of a number of different conspirators including the Vatican, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian House of Romanov, all working to obscure the "true" history of the world centered around a global empire called the "Russian Horde".
The new chronology is universally rejected by the scientific and historiographical communities, being totally inconsistent with the accepted methodology used in the relevant fields, including absolute and relative dating techniques.
[3][4][5][6][7][8] Interest in the theory from historians and scientists has primarily stemmed from its popularity among laypeople: in addition to formulating refutations of its methods and conclusions,[9] academics have also tried to understand the social forces underlying its resonance: Halperin (2011) estimates that as many as 30% of Russians may have sympathy for the new chronology.
[9] The theory emerged alongside numerous other pseudohistorical and conspiracy-minded literature in a period of heightened nationalism and more lax restrictions on freedom of press following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Especially the history of their birth and of their early years is furnished with phantastic traits; the amazing similarity, nay literal identity, of those tales, even if they refer to different, completely independent peoples, sometimes geographically far removed from one another, is well known and has struck many an investigator.
[17] Central to Fomenko's new chronology is his claim of the existence of a vast Slav-Turk empire, called the "Russian Horde", which played a dominant role in Eurasian history before the 17th century.
The various peoples identified in ancient and medieval history, from the Scythians, Huns, Goths and Bulgars, through the Polans, Dulebes, Drevlians and Pechenegs, to in more recent times, the Cossacks, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, are nothing but elements of the single Russian Horde.
Fomenko claims that the most probable prototype of the historical Jesus was Andronikos I Komnenos (allegedly AD 1152 to 1185), the emperor of Byzantium, known for his failed reforms, his traits and deeds reflected in 'biographies' of many real and imaginary persons.
He claims that the historical Jesus was born in Cape Fiolent, Crimea, on December 25, 1152 A.D. and was crucified on March 20, 1185 A.D., on Joshua's Hill, overlooking the Bosphorus.
For example: Fomenko's historical ideas have been universally rejected by mainstream scientists, historians, and scholars, who brand them as pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology, and pseudoscience,[27] but were popularized by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
Kasparov also felt it illogical that the Romans and the Greeks living under the banner of Byzantium could fail to use the mounds of scientific knowledge left to them by Ancient Greece and Rome, especially when it was of urgent military use.
[36][37][38] One of the participants in that round table, the distinguished Russian archaeologist, Valentin Yanin, compared Fomenko's work to "the sleight of hand trickery of a David Copperfield".
[39] Linguist Andrey Zaliznyak argued that by using Fomenko's approaches one can "prove" any historical correspondence, for example, between Ancient Egyptian pharaohs and French kings.
van Bueren, professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Utrecht, concluded his scathing review of Fomenko's work on the application of mathematics and astronomy to historical data as follows: It is surprising, to say the least, that a well-known (Dutch) publisher could produce an expensive book of such doubtful intellectual value, of which the only good word that can be said is that it contains an enormous amount of factual historical material, untidily ordered, true; badly written, yes; mixed-up with conjectural nonsense, sure; but still, much useful stuff.
It fully fits both the scientific approach to the formation of a consolidating ideology, and the construction of the image of the future of Russia in the integral World Economic Order.While Fomenko rejects commonly accepted dating methods, most archaeologists, conservators, and other scientists make extensive use of such techniques, which are expected to have been rigorously examined and refined during decades of use.
Independent dendrochronological sequences beginning with living trees from various parts of North America[44][45] and Europe[46][47] extend back 12,400 years into the past.
For example, on the one hand Fomenko asserts that the vast majority of ancient sources are either irreparably distorted duplicate accounts of the same events or later forgeries.
In his identification of Jesus with Pope Gregory VII[51] he ignores the otherwise vast dissimilarities between their reported lives and focuses on the similarity of their appointment to religious office by baptism.
[52]) Critics allege that many of the supposed correlations of regnal durations are the product of the selective parsing and blending of the dates, events, and individuals mentioned in the original text.
[59] In addition, F. R. Stephenson has demonstrated through a systematic study of a large number of Babylonian, Ancient and Medieval European, and Chinese records of eclipse observations that they can be dated consistently with conventional chronology at least as far back as 600 BCE.
[61] His critics have suggested that Fomenko's version of history appealed to the Russian reading public by keeping alive an imperial consciousness to replace their disillusionment with the failures of Communism and post-Communist corporate oligarchies.
[62] Another off-shoot on online forums has been the Tartaria conspiracy theory, which draws inspiration from historic architectural photography of demolished buildings as evidence of a long-lost civilization.
