PREFACE
1. THE UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED VERSION OF WORLD HISTORY WAS CREATED ONLY IN THE XVII CENTURY. IT WAS REFINED UP UNTIL THE XIX CENTURY. THIS VERSION IS INCORRECT.
The present book occupies a unique place among our publications on the New Chronology. It was written by popular demand of our readers. Many people tell us: "You criticized the currently accepted version of chronology and the version of the history based on it. You suggested your dating methods and pointed out many duplicates (repetitions), considerably 'shortening' the written history of mankind. Suppose you are right. But then an important question arises: What happened in reality? Could you write a 'concise guide' on your new chronology and the new version of history"?
We fragmentarily outlined our reconstruction several times. Now, when a vast amount of material has accumulated, there arrived a moment to put together the main findings and to reconstruct the actual past. In [1v] and [2v] we showed that the archaeological and physical methods of dating which exist today, including the famous radiocarbon method, are unfortunately poorly suited for the dating of artefacts 1-2 thousand years old. These methods produce errors comparable to the age of the samples.
We will rely on the new chronology which we established based on the mathematical, empirical and statistical results presented in the first three books of the 'Chronology' in seven volumes and also in [6v3], ch.2. The main chronological shifts – by approximately 333 years, 1050 years and 1800 years discovered by A.T.Fomenko in 'ancient' and mediaeval history are indicated in the Global Chronological Map (ГХК) created by A.T.Fomenko in 1975-1979. The main research on the New Chronology was carried out by A.T.Fomenko, G.V.Nosovskiy, V.V.Kalashnikov and T.N.Fomenko.
We do not substantiate our point of view in this book. This would in fact lead to an actual repetition of everything said before. That is why we are presenting just a summary of the reconstruction. To see the evidence please refer to our previous main books, of which there are 24. These are the books of the 'first wave', i.e. seven volume 'Chronology' followed by the 17 books of the 'second wave' which are sometimes called the 'Golden Series' (due to its golden cover), i.e. B-1,…, B-17, see the Bibliography. The important materials are also sited on our official website www.chonologia.org. Many things said in this book are still a hypothesis.
Here we usually leave out the references to the primary sources. You can find them in our previous books. We do not claim to be extremely precise in the suggested dating. A great deal of work will be required to refine the new chronology and some hypothesis. That is why we still reconstruct history just 'by the centuries', i.e. stating the century of a given event, but without specifying the date within the century.
We showed that at present there is no proof of the Scaligerian chronology which is widely accepted today. Such proof – as we state with full authority – was never there and is still absent. Therefore the history of antiquity should be re-written. We are compelled to take this difficult task upon ourselves.
The New Chronology started from the creation of the new mathematical, statistical and astronomical methods of dating the events described in the old sources. Based on these methods we reconstructed the correct chronology of antiquity. This is our main result. Here it would be appropriate to recall the name of one of the books by A.T.Fomenko – 'THE TRUTH CAN BE COMPUTED'.
Then, based on the new Chronology, we generally outlined the reconstruction of history up to the XVIII century inclusively. It was followed by the next stage. They started asking us: so what IN REALITY did the famous 'classical' authors – Herodotus, Thucydides, Titus Livius, Homer and the others tell us about? When answering the question we analysed practically all major 'classical' and mediaeval sources which form the foundation of the Scaligerian history of the antiquity, the building of which, as we found out, was rather late – in the XVII-XVIII cc.
In particular we thoroughly researched the following texts: the Bible (both the Old and the New Testaments), Talmud, Torah, the New and the Old Testaments 'Apocrypha', Koran, the Book of Mormon, Popol Vuh (the Sacred Book of the American K'iche Mayan people, Herodotus, Titus Livius, Claudius Ptolemy, Homer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Plutarch, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristophanes, Ovid, Polybius, Pausanias, Virgil, Seneca, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Josephus Flavius, The Aggadah (Aramaic tales), Appian of Alexandria, Apollodorus, Eutropius, Sextus Aurelius Victor, Aelius Spartianus, Iulius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius, Paulus Orosius, John Malalas, Marco Polo, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the Epic of 'ancient' India 'Mahabharata', the Epic of the 'ancient' Persia 'Shahnameh' (Ferdowsi), the 'ancient' Germanic heroic verse, the 'ancient' Old Norse Edda 'Elder Edda', Geoffrey of Monmouth, Nennius, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Raphael Holinshed, Saxo Grammaticus, The Legend of King Arthur, The Legends of Alexander the Great, The Legend of Troy, the old French Legends, some important Muslim sources, going further Niketas Choniates, Anna Komnene, Procopius of Caesarea (and some other Byzantine authors), Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Robert de Clari, 'The Primary Chronicle' (or 'Tale of Bygone Years') and the other major Russian chronicles (including the Siberian chronicles), the Russian epic multivolume 'The Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible'(Litsevoy Svod) (not long ago finally published by the Moscow publishing house Akteon), Mavro Orbini, Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana), Iamblichus Chalcidensis, Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry of Tyre, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the works by some of the Church Fathers, the old chronological works and tables (Joseph Juste Scaliger, Dionysius Petavius, Matthew Blastares and many other) … We shall stop this listing and refer our readers to our books.
We have studied thousands of images: icons, paintings, drawings, etchings, frescos, mosaics, stained-glass art-works, tapestries, goblins, sculptures, bas-reliefs, gems, Cameos, coins, the images on the ceramics, enamel work, etc. Among other things there were discovered several dozens of the old zodiacs with some transcriptions of dates. Some of them were earlier unknown. We already dated over 40 zodiacs using the astronomic method and the effective computer generated algorithm of data analysis which we developed. It turned out that all these 'ancient' zodiacal dates fall into the epoch of the XI-XIX cc. and not at all into the 'distant past'. We actively continue this important work which greatly contributes to the 'backbone' of the New Chronology.
Here is another benefit of the new reading of the old texts. For instance, an interesting question: what were the old traditions in Russia earlier before the XVII century? It is not so easy to find an answer. As we already understand, that the chronicles of the Russian history in existence today were tendentiously edited and are distorting the true picture before the XVII century. So where should we derive the required information from? Apparently we should turn to the 'ancient' sources: Titus Levy, Herodotus, Tacitus and the others. They tell us a lot about 'Ancient Rome', i.e., as we showed, about Russia-Horde of the XIII-XVII cc. So this is where we should extract the old testimonies about the Hordians, who in these sources are called the 'Ancient Romans' or the 'Ancient Scythians' or the 'Ancient Egyptians'. Roughly speaking, the 'ancient Roman' traditions are indeed the ancient Russian traditions of the epoch of the XIV-XVI cc. Incidentally the very notion of 'nations' and 'nationalities' developed later, not earlier than the XVI-XVII cc.
But let's get back to our list of the old authors. It turns out that practically all of these surviving texts and chronicles (many of them are linked to each other) in fact tell us about the events of the XI-XVII cc. It was cast back into the distant (sometimes enormously distant) phantom past by the incorrect Scaligerian chronology. Miscalculating it not just by the tens and hundreds, but even by thousands of years!
At the same time it turned out that there were not that many primary sources 'on antiquity'. They occupy just a few selves in the bookcase. And so we shouldn't think that in order to reconstruct the past a 'great deal' of sources are required. Apparently about seven - eight dozen is quite sufficient.
Besides the reputed chroniclers the accounts of the antiquity were given to us by the distinguished poets, dramatists and writers. For instance, Homer and Virgil, whose works proved to be extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the true history. Or the famous Shakespeare. The new chronology throws a bright and unexpected light on their writings. At last we can understand what in fact these great authors wrote about.
Before proceeding with the reconstruction which greatly differs from the version of Scaliger-Petavius familiar today [1v], [2v] we should give a summary of how the Scaligerian history came about. This was finally clarified only over the course of our research.
The historical primary sources accessible today which are published and available in the public archives are the comprising element of the Scaligerian version and were created along with it. Notably by way of distortion and purposeful editing of the truly old documents. The old texts themselves which gave the correct accounts of the history were mercilessly destroyed. All of this took place in the XVII-XVIII cc. over the course of the international European program of re-writing the ancient and mediaeval history. What and who was it necessary for, see [6v2], ch.1. The program had the state support both in Europe and in Romanov Russia. Then in the XVIII-XIX cc. The Scaligerian version was integrated in Asia and China. Based on it the Asian and the Chinese 'ancient' chronologies were constructed.
PRACTICALLY ALL THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THE OLD – EVEN EDITED – DOCUMENTS, TOOK PLACE. ANOTHER QUESTION IS – WHERE AND WHEN? This is where the chronological and geographical confusion occurred. Also the deliberate distortion led to the 'lengthening of the history'. There were of course some natural chronological mistakes. But the main role was paid by the tendentious editing.
In the epoch of the XVII-XVIII cc. to support the imbedded Scaligerian version nearly all the editions of the works by the 'classical' Greek and Roman authors, the Mediaeval chronicles and memoires published today, were consciously created.
The sources, which accidentally avoided censorship, were meticulously searched for over the two hundred years and either destroyed or eliminated from circulation. This also continued in the XIX century. The perfect example is the purposeful destruction of the Sulakedzev library [4v2], v.2:9. In the XIX century, all the more so today, such old surviving authentic texts were perceived as something ludicrous, not worthy of serious study. The historians immediately begin to argue about forgery or the ignorance of the chronicler.
It is important to understand that today when publishing the primary sources they undergo – whether consciously or subconsciously – a rigorous censorship of them corresponding to the Scaligerian version. Only the primary sources which fit the familiar picture are considered to be 'worthy of attention'. As a result only the texts which underwent the targeted editing of the XVII-XVIII cc. are introduced into circulation.
WE DISCOVERED THAT THERE IS A DISTINCTLY DEFINED BOUNDARY IN HISTORY – THE FIRST HALF OF THE XVII CENTURY. We know more or less what happened after this point, i.e. closer to our time. In any case, beginning with the end of the XVIII century. But we have a very poor knowledge of what took place prior to the middle of the XVII century. This border line appeared artificially. It is not a result of the natural forgetting the information. It separates the accurate chronology from the incorrect one.
Today it is accepted as an axiom that the Scaligerian version and the true history is the same thing. But it is not true. The historians who think that they study the 'ancient' and the mediaeval history in are fact analysing not the reality, but an artificial world, some fairy-tale phantom-mirage, created by the historians and editors of the XVII-XVIII cc. Today the historians use the distorted and edited texts from the XVII-XVIII mistakenly considering them as the 'authentic ancient primary sources'. The historians are immersed in a fantasy world, spending their entire professional life in it. They have no idea that this 'virtual reality' was concocted by their recent predecessors.
The made up world turned out to be complex, intricate and at first glance gives the impression of something very solid and consistent. But it is not so. Unbiased outside perspective, based on the objective methods of dating, rather quickly detects all the tell-tale signs of the sandcastle in the fairy tale construction. Further analysis results in this building collapsing.
So why today do the historians work in the end only with those texts and their derivatives which were edited in the XVII-XVIII cc.? This is the pressure from a certain school and long standing beliefs. At some point they were imbedded by force, and now they have grown into the 'accepted facts'.
Of course, it was not possible to destroy all the pre-Scaligerian documents. Some of them must exist even today. But imagine that the expert on the 'Scaligerian mirage' came across an authentic document describing for instance the epoch of the XV-XVI cc. The difference between the true history of that epoch and its Scaligerian depiction is so great, that it would be difficult even to cross-reference this document with the familiar picture. Or even to understand what it is about. Not to mention that it would most likely be written with 'obscure hieroglyphs'. As the 'ancient calligraphy' familiar to us today is in fact the handwriting of the falsifiers - editors of the XVII-XVIII cc. Taken that, as a rule this scholar would have never come across the real handwriting and scripts of the XV-XVI cc., not to mention the earlier epochs.
That is why a random old authentic text they might come across fortuitously would be most likely declared 'unreadable'. Which incidentally, then happens. If they succeed in reading it they declare it 'a strange fruit of the mediaeval ignorance'.
The books which are marked as published in the XV-XVI cc. often turn out to be the XVII-XVIII cc. forgeries with the year of publication being backdated. Allegedly 'earlier'. The mass publication of such books in the XVII-XVIII cc. comprises an important part of the 'substantiation' of the Scaligerian version. The authentic books of the XV-XVI cc. were condemned and destroyed.
Many genuine official documents of Western Europe of the XVI century issued by the Imperial Hordian chancery were written, as we understand it now, in Slavic. Many books published then in the Western Europe were also Slavonic [6v1], ch.2. Incidentally, the fact of the wide publication of the Slavonic books in the XVI century Europe is known to the experts. In that epoch Slavonic was the international language. Later 'ancient' Latin was created on its foundation [7v2].
The transition from the Slavonic language to Latin as the international language in Europe took place only after the collapse of the Great Empire at the end of the XVI-XVII cc. Most likely Latin in its developed 'ancient' state emerged only in the XVI-XVII cc. That is why all the 'ancient' Latin texts, in the best case scenario, are the translations into the Latin designated as the 'ancient' language, carried out in the epoch of the XVI-XVIII cc. The Scaligerian version was immediately introduced into such translations.
The same can be said about the 'ancient' Greek language. It was also created together with all the 'ancient' Greek literature in the epoch of the XVI-XVIII cc. The 'ancient Greek primary sources' were immediately written, translated and edited in this language. The genuine ancient language is probably the Middle Greek, the Byzantine Greek. It's not a coincidence that it differs from the Modern Greek language, unlike the 'Ancient' Greek which is close to the Modern Greek. All the 'classical Greek' literature is also heavily edited XVI-XVIII cc. translations of the old texts into the recently invented 'classical' language.
The invention of the Scaligerian version of history was a consequence of the major political reconstruction of the world in the late XVI-early XVII cc. Following the collapse of the 'Mongol' Empire the new autonomous small states emerged from its fragments. The former imperial governors became the independent sovereigns. At first they feared the return of the old 'Mongol' order. That is why they strived to create the 'long standing ancient roots' of their authority in the historical past. The main purpose of the new historical version by Scaliger and Petavius was to distort the history of the XIV-XVI cc.in the required direction. It was falsified intentionally.
Only now we begin to understand the scale of the Global program of the XVII century of creating the fictitious history of the past. We should not be surprised at the coordination of action on falsifying history between different countries. Until the end of the XVI century nearly all the European and Asian countries were a part of the one united Empire. That is why all the governors were from one circle of imperial officials. At first, after the collapse of the Empire the ties between its former provinces were still strong.
Just the beginning of the 'historical reform' falls at the end of the XVI century. The main falsification, including the creation of the 'ancient sources' was carried out in the XVII-XVIII cc, when the Empire had already collapsed. I.e. after the Time of Troubles in Russia and the Romanovs' victory over Stepan Razin. There was also a lot done in this direction in the end of the XVIII century, particularly after the Romanovs' victory over Yemelyan 'Pugachev' in the war of the 1773-1775. ONLY BEGINNING WITH THE XIX CENTURY THE SCALIGERIAN VERSION OF HISTORY ACQUIRED ITS PRESENT DAY FORM.
To clarify, today we use an established 'new era' chronology. However, we should treat it only as a purely notional timeline. One of many possible. As it becomes clear, in the 'beginning of the new era', i.e. circa 2010 years ago, no significant event, the accounts of which survived, ever took place. Moreover, no data whatsoever survives from that distant epoch. More specifically it is incorrect to call this era as the Christian era, as we do today. As according to our results the Nativity of Christ took place nearly a thousand years later. Namely in the XII century according to the conditional 'new era'.
Usually, when formulating our hypothesis, we always use the words 'possibly', 'likely', etc. But as this book is entirely dedicated to our reconstruction we will not all the time repeat these words while constantly implying them. We do not insist on some of our observations. We would like you to remember this. As our reconstruction is unfamiliar to many readers, we sometimes repeat some of our conclusions for the better absorption.
IN VARIOUS ANCIENT TEXTS THE WORDS WERE WRITTEN DOWN USING ONLY CONSONANTS, WITHOUT VOWELS. Please see the details in the book by A.T.Fomenko [1v], ch.1:8. The vowels appeared later and pinpointed only one of many possible variants of the reading of the words. First of all it concerns the proper nouns and led to the significant ambiguity in the reading of the old names, geographical names etc. In the old text there was also no breakdown into separate words. Besides there could be confusion between the sounds L and R, F and T, B and V, etc. The Old Slavonic had multiple omissions of vowels and besides, it didn't have the separation into words. The 'Ancient' Egyptian texts were also written with the consonants only. 'The names of the (Egyptian – Author) kings… are given (in the modern literature – Author) in their conditional, ENTIRELY FREEFORM, so called CLASSROOM … delivery customarily accepted in the textbooks … These forms often significantly differ from each other and it is not possible to regulate them in any way, as they are all the result of the ARBITRARY READING (! – Author), which became traditional' [72], p.176. Also 'the Hebrew written language originally had neither vowels, nor any other symbols replacing them… The Books of the Old Testament were written using only consonants' [765], p.155.
We were able to discover the 'parallels' between the events within the different periods of the 'ancient' history only thanks to the new chronology. Without it, it would have been impossible to understand who should be compared to whom and what should be compared to what? The bulk of the material is so vast, that it is practically impossible to fumble for the right parallels in it at random. But now, when we have reconstructed the chronological 'framework of history', a wonderful opportunity opens up to enrich this formal result with the 'content of the events'. This is the exact way to treat the 'biographical' matches which we present. They are not the strict proof on their own per se. But they logically arise from the new chronology established via the mathematical methods. First we calculate the dates and only then, based on them, read the old documents anew and begin to see the true essence. The fact is that the dates of the events strongly define the interpretation of history and allow us now to choose the correct interpretation of the sources from many possible ones.
2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NOTES.
Today the word 'antiquity' is usually associated with the events earlier than the V century A.D., for instance. 'Deep antiquity' is earlier than, let's say, the X century B.C. 'Deepest antiquity' is as far back as the II millennium B.C. The custom, widely accepted today, for this particular time scale is one of the serious psychological obstructions in the way of the perception of the new short chronology. But this psychological interpretation of the word 'antiquity', which became familiar today, didn't appear all on its own. And not so long ago. It is a result of the artificial imbedding of the extremely prolonged chronology over the last 300 years. The very idea of the 'extremely long written history' lay on the fertile ground of the natural human respect towards the clan's remembrance of their own genealogical tree. You can understand the feelings of the people striving to glance into the distant past of their ancestors. The further they can see the higher is their personal self-esteem.
The new chronology dictates a different psychological picture of the perception of the past. Now the word 'antiquity' should be corresponding with the XV-XVII cc, i.e. with the events distant from us by 300-400 years. The expression 'high antiquity' means the XI-XII cc. EARLIER THE X-XI CC. COMES THE EPOCH OF THE SILENCE OF THE WRITTEN DOCUMENTS. No written evidence from those times whether on paper, parchment, papyrus or the stones – has survived. Thus the words 'antiquity', 'high antiquity' and 'extreme antiquity' stay in our lexicon. However they are imbued with a different meaning. These epochs are becoming significantly closer to us and the time scale greatly decreased. We should accept that based on the written sources we are able to peer into the past not as far as we thought we could yesterday. But everything we saw yesterday is visible today. Only closer.
To conclude: based on the mathematical and astronomical methods we have put forward, it is shown that the Scaligerian chronology and history are fundamentally wrong. History up until the beginning of the XVII century was falsified in the epoch of the XVII-XVIII cc. The falsification was accompanied with the search and annihilation of the documents which provided the true accounts of the past. Primarily it concerned the XV-XVI cc., the memory of which was destroyed with particular thoroughness. These activities relentlessly continued for nearly two hundred years. This is a sufficient amount of time to destroy all the major texts which could have told the truth. Therefore we cannot expect that some detailed factual chronicle written by an eyewitness of the events of the XVI century would fall into our hands.
Therefore the 'small details', the scraps of truth that were not cleared out and accidentally survived acquire a special importance. And taken together they allow us to restore the truth. The study of the Scaligerian history can be compared to the work of a detective exposing a criminal who had invented a plausible legend and took care of his alibi. That is why it is necessary to at first search for the true picture in the little things, which escaped the attention of the criminal, who was covering up his tracks. As it is difficult to take into account all the details when inventing a false version. And the experienced detective 'digs them up'. Getting hold of pieces of evidence gradually 'unfolds' all the circumstances of the crime.
We express our gratitude to T.N.Fomenko – the co-author of much our research on the chronology. We co-wrote a number of books with T.N.Fomenko.
A.T.Fomenko, G.V.Nosovsky
Moscow, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
