Crazy Russian Historian?

March 7, 2008 1:26 PM

Who is the supposed historian (may be an ex-physicist, think he's Russian) who had demonstrated that human written history is only half as old as we believe it to be? I think the core of his argument was that documents referring to events thousands of years ago, actually referred to events hundreds of years ago, that history was fore-shortened.

I think this was a Metafilter post, but I'm not sure.
He had actually mapped recent history into ancient history, I believe, to demonstrate they were referring to the same events!

Anybody?

posted by vacapinta to religion & philosophy (11 comments total)

Anatoly Fomenko.
posted by enn at 1:29 PM on March 7

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2913621058/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Anatoly Fomenko. Link is to book one of his seven-volume work.
posted by Ndwright at 1:35 PM on March 7

darn, I really should preview these things.
posted by Ndwright at 1:36 PM on March 7

Fomenko and his New Chronology. While there is some foreshortening, mainly he gets there by excising large periods of history, especially the Dark Ages. I wouldn't describe it as credible, but it's not as mad as many fringe theories.
posted by outlier at 1:36 PM on March 7

Wow, that wikipedia page is fascinating. This is timecube-level lunatic pseudoscience.


I wouldn't describe it as credible, but it's not as mad as many fringe theories.
posted by outlier

Eponysterical!
posted by dersins at 1:42 PM on March 7 [2 favorites]

So, how does he get around all the other means of dating materiels besides historical analysis? EG: The various isotope-decay based methods of dating (such as carbon dating) which cannot be subject to fore-shadowing.

Hell, the dates for the oldest history (very early mesopotamia / indus valley / egypt) are usually not based on written records because such records are either non-existant or too few exist to put together a chronology.
posted by Riemann at 2:32 PM on March 7

The carbon dating issue is discussed in the wiki article. I think he probably has some valid points there but I'm not an expert (carbon dating has a lot of built in assumptions about the past, carbon dating labs (apparently) won't do dating on objects unless you give them a target age range, carbon dating is not particularly accurate over time ranges as short as the ones under discussion)

There are a lot more convincing refutations to his arguments in the wiki article, further down, mostly that he did a lot of re-arranging to make things work, ignores things that don't match, his results aren't really repeatable, etc.

It's still a fascinating idea, though, in the sense that there is so much about the past that we have to take as face value from books, not knowing too much about the true accuracy of those materials.
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:58 PM on March 7

Thanks!

Yes, I'm not so sure about the claim, but I do have admiration for revisionist thinking on this scale.
posted by vacapinta at 3:44 PM on March 7

From the Wiki page: "Garry Kasparov is a supporter of Fomenko.[15] Kasparov met with Fomenko during the 1990s, and found that Fomenko's conclusions concerning certain subjects were the same as his own."

Wow. Just ... wow ...
posted by RavinDave at 3:47 PM on March 7

You may also wish to consider Immanuel Velikovsky, whose "Worlds in Collision" theory requires substantial re-ordering of historical events (along with Biblical miracles and flying planets).
posted by SPrintF at 5:37 PM on March 7

he's actually a well respected mathematician: topology and hamiltonian systems
posted by geos at 10:04 PM on March 7