Ceramics Books and Magazines

43 reviews
Sales Rank: 119695

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7 x 1.6

ISBN: 2913621058
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9782913621053

Publication Date: March 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

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Interesting theories that deserve to be explored March 5, 2005
48 out of 54 found this review helpful

I do not agree with everything written in this book. For example, I do not agree with the idea that ankhs are supposed to be Christian crosses. I also disagree with the observations that different objects look like crescents and symbolize Islam. But there are a great number of valid observations contained in the book. Radiocarbon dating is not the science most of us think it is, as put forth in the book. I also have to agree with the author's idea that many pieces of evidence taken from old books and used to date people or events were either false and inserted by later editors, or otherwise erroneous. Let's face facts: the majority of ancient history is conjecture, or "educated guessing". It's about time an author came along and, in the author's own words, "called a spade a spade". Is this book 100% correct? Who knows? Do many of the theses contained within deserve further study? Yes, if history is to be a record of events and not propaganda or fuel for dogma. The more accurate we can make our history books, the better off other sciences will be, especially the humanities and any sciences concerned with gauging human progress in different areas throughout the ages. I give the book three stars mainly because I find some of the ideas put forth to be less than credible (the author shoud enlist other researchers with expertise in those areas besides math and physics), the translation to be not quite perfectly clear in some areas, and I dislike the organization of the book. The three stars are for the rest of the ideas and theories in the book that do make sense and deserve further exploration, or a reasoned rebuttal, especially the mathematical analysis of ancient texts. To the academics who summarily dismiss the book as rubbish...please point us to reasoned explanations. Us grown-ups who can read big words and read a book longer than a paperback novel deserve that much. Also, as an adult in this day and age, I will never just "take someone's word for it". How's that song go.."won't get fooled again!" I am especially waiting for someone to convince me that radiocarbon dating is worth using on objects less than many thousands of years old. I doubt it's going to happen!

5 out of 5 stars

A Pretty Wild Theory February 22, 2005
109 out of 129 found this review helpful

This book presents a wildly radical restructuring of the timeline of world history. It is written by an outsider to the world of historical scholarship: Fomenko is a non-historian (a renowned mathematician) and an non-Westerner (from Russia.)

Fomenko's theory says, basically, that everything we are told about history pre-1600 is BS. Ancient history is, according to Fomenko, based on evidence quote-unquote "discovered" since the 15th century and arranged into a spurious standard timeline in the 18th century. (In some cases, the evidence was discovered much more recently: some Eastern religious texts were only uncovered in the 20th century.) Fomenko collates this evidence to argue that all those ancient chronicles are different versions of events which really happened roughly between 1000 AD and 1400 AD. The key event in Fomenko's timeline is the life of Christ (who was born in 1053 AD rather than 6BC, Fomenko believes.) After a relatively short-lived Eurasian empire disintegrated, each nation made up their own version of the empire's history, and generally each new version of the story was set farther back into the past than the previous one. (The newest version is the Hindu Krishna myth which is set about 10,000 years before the present day.)

This is an appealing theory, since it eliminates the various "dark ages" which blemish the conventional chronology. On the other hand, this is an appalling theory, since it creates one big dark age extending from the beginning of time till 900 AD or so.

The book is translated from the Russian. There is no index, and the bibliography is rather annoyingly arranged in the original Russian alphabetical order (so for example, B's and V's are mixed together.) But the translation is extremely readable, more readable than most historical works originally written in English.

This is the first book in a projected 7-volume set.

The online bookstore entries for this volume rather amusingly show easily history gets mixed up. The translator is someone named Michael Jagger who is almost certainly not the singer Mick Jagger (whose full name is Michael Phillip Jagger.) However, some online bookstores do list Mick Jagger as a coauthor. Amazon.com says the translator is someone named Mike Jagupov. This is hard enough to keep straight while the singer is still alive, and a few decades from now, I am sure that many sources will say that the legendary Rolling Stones frontman translated this book into English.

(I have no idea if Mick Jagger speaks Russian or not. Although he is an educated man--- an alumnus of the University of London--- one would assume that he doesn't. Certainly, in all the millions of words which have been written about him, no one has commented on his knowledge of the Russian language. And, if he actually was the person who translated this controversial text into English, the book's publishers would presumably be aggressively advertising that fact.)

5 out of 5 stars

Don't review if you haven't read February 4, 2005
111 out of 132 found this review helpful

You learned history when you were a young lad from someone who learned it from someone who..... but who started it all?
What's wrong with asking this question? Some people would burn Mr. Fomenko at the stake for saying the Earth isn't flat.

I bought this book as a novelty but I ended up being quite impressed with it. I wouldn't say I'm totally sold on all the crazy ideas Mr. fomenko puts out but they certainly are more plausable than you might think. He does a thorough job of showing how early "historians" were really working for the pope. Most were monks with limited resources, personal and religious agendas, and a willingness to fudge it whenever they didn't know (or like) the truth. You'll be amazed at how meticulously he presents his evidence that the dark ages were so dark because they never happened. Your head will probably start to ache when you get to the section where he analyzes historical timelines statistically (at least mine did). However, the parallels truly are startling.

The first four chapters alone are worth the price of the book. Even if you don't believe any of it I'm sure you will at least question why we take the foundations of historical knowledge so seriously without solid justification. There's more to this book than you could know without actually reading it!

5 out of 5 stars

The dam is falling apart January 15, 2005
38 out of 62 found this review helpful

History should be a Science. Eventually, it will be! Orvell has said: Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past. We, the people, must control our future.

In my younger years, my biologists co-workers, derived mostly from The Moscow State U, were complaining: "How dare you describe living systems with math?" I know they were naive.

A large group of physicists had run Cold Fusion into underground. Fifteen years later, CF is a well proven phenomena (DOE is anoncing some funding, but it actually will be another Manhatten Project, very soon). That was protecting the "hot fusion" turf = funding. I do not believe the "protectors" were naive!

Starting from Scaliger and Petavius, historyans have produced the "story line" paid for by the power (Roman Pope, Kings, "Elected" potentates (including Stalin, Hitler, and Idi Amin). The the European inquisition (expanded with the great help of Poland into Russia) helped a lot by destroying the physical artifacts, including the great library of the Ivan the Terrible (wrong translation of Groznyi), and disagreable people. Russians cannot claim the invention of Gulag. Gulag was also the means of writing the right history. Most historyans of that time have satisfied the need of the payees by burning books and people - that, I think, was a crime. Those who did not servant got burned (or gulaged).

Modern hystorians have learned the "story line" and they cannot switch to other jobs, they collectively stack in consentual and incestual relationships. This, I think, is prostitution.

The future historians will learn math (as biologists already did) and transform their story line into the science.

Fomenko is (1) destroying the "story line", and (2) creating a large set of hypothesis. Some hypothesis are better developed, others will be either rejected by facts, or modified, or proven as is. The X-ray image of the whole skeleton of his work is more or less accurate. It will take several hundreds (thousands?) of Ph.D. dissertations to create the "whole picture" and to establish the new body of academicians capable of writing and dissimenating the scientific history.

I have read several Fomenko's books in Russian. I highly recommend his WORK and his books.

To the "modern" historyans, brothers of Scaliger: "It had been worse on the pile of burning Dark-Age-woods".

4 out of 5 stars

A better written explanation December 29, 2004
48 out of 55 found this review helpful

About 10 years ago, I ploughed through Fomenko's two-volume Kluver set of independent papers that, taken together, form the outline of the current volume. It was tough going (non-idiomatic translations, lots of repetition, often written like a mathematical proof). I became instantly disoriented, thought about it long and hard for years, reviewed the volumes on Amazon, and spent bunches of hours in a local university library following odd leads and trying to see if there was any possibility that any of Fomenko's theorizing could be grounded in reality.
I read Robert Newton's condemnation of Ptolemy; Anthony Grafton's dissertation on Scaliger (and other writings about Medieval forgeries); F.F. Arbuthnott's peculiar disquisition (ca. 1900) on English history and the probability that the further back from Henry VIII you go the less you know (and why the Irish monks who "saved civilization" may have had other agendas); about Isaac Newton's chronological explorations; about the inconsistencies in radio-carbon dating; about an odd series of parallel "dark ages" in circum-Mediterranean cultures ca. 1200-to-800 BCE that can best be explained by positing that the period in question didn't exist; and a volume about the relatively late evolution of the concept of "absolute time." Taken together with the astronomical and mathematical data presented by Fomenko that, to this educated non-scientist, seems eminently plausible, I have pretty much concluded that there is a lot of room for irregularity in the received chronology of history.
This first (of seven!) volumes of Fomenko's work explains in far better English and more detail what his earlier papers explicated. It should be approached critically, will be derided and dismissed everywhere (and is not aided by Fomenko citing Velikovsky as one of the early "fellow travellers" along this path), but lays out a fascinating possibility that will take more than one reading and a lot of deep thought to assimilate and form any judgment about.
But it gives new lives to the common aphorism "History is written by the winners," Henry Ford's offhand dictum "History is more or less bunk," and Napoleon's prescient (?) "History is fable of fiction agreed upon."
I suddenly don't look at anything that happened before the Renaissance with anything like the certitude I once did.

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