Ceramics Books and Magazines

The critic in me would keep arguing with the authors every now and then - yet they never fail to emphasize the hypothetical nature of their reconstructions. Some of the hypotheses make perfect sense, others do not - which pleases me greatly, since I am most wary of books that make me agree with everything instantly; their integrity is nearly always heavily compromised in some way, yet never too obviously (the best crackpot conspiracy theorists are the ones you can't help agreeing with, and once you agree with enough, you find yourself ready to agree with the bloke who says reptiles rule the world). Here, you may be offered several contradictory renditions of the same historical event. Once again, I wouldn't have it any other way - anyone who is gullible enough to believe simple and unequivocal explanations offered by the official historical sources is usually unaware that those, in turn, contain numerous gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

I always knew that history, especially ancient history, has been a collection of fairy tales all along; still it took me some time to accommodate the thought that, for want of a better metaphor, even the fairy tales it consists of were culled from a wide variety of books, shuffled together like a very dodgy deck of cards, then put into a random sequence, given a new index and proclaimed the only authorised collection of fairy tales in the world (and children who ask silly questions about why certain things make no sense or whether there are any other, more interesting tales available elsewhere need spanking, of course - a time-honoured tradition, isn't it then?). Well, the Russian mathematicians do ask questions. Lots of questions. Questions which there was a very long tradition of not asking; ones that concern the very foundations of modern chronology (although "modern" might be a misleading term here, since said chronology is a child of the Middle Ages). And the historians who demand a spanking shaking fists and frothing at the mouth make me want to put every book on history that I own on the crackpot shelf - certainly not Fomenko and team. Indeed, I haven't put them on any shelf yet, since I'm reading the book for the third time over, and eagerly anticipating the second volume.


Sky&Telescope Magazine confirms results   April 28, 2004
 44 out of 51 found this review helpful

Sky&Telescope Magazine confirms results, but does not buy Fomenko's theory
Fomenko uses astronomy data to support his argument that history is too long and that many historical events happened more recently than we thought. The temple walls and sarcophagi of some Egyptian ruins are decorated with depictions of the sun, moon, and planets as observed in the different zodiacal constellations. If a given depiction is accurate - that the celestial bodies were observed and placed correctly in the constellations - a horoscope can be used for dating. Fomenko has deciphered over a dozen Egyptian horoscopes. He claims, that the latter show dates that are 2-3 thousand of years later than conventionally thought. Most well-documented ancient eclipses actually took place in the Middle Ages.

Roger Sinnott, studied astronomy at Harvard and is an editor at the respected Sky & Telescope Magazine checked Fomenko's calculations for the famous trio of eclipses from Thucydides's account of the Pelopponesian War. The three eclipses are conventionally dated to 431, 424, and 413 BC. Fomenko finds these dates as non adequate to narrative of Thucydides's and finds exact solutions as late as in 1133, 1140, and 1151 AD.

The second example is the eclipse of 190 BC described in Livy's history
of Rome. Fomenko redates this event to 967 AD.

Fomenko`s dates accommodate details from ancient descriptions that the conventional dates do not. For example, Thucydides wrote that the first of his three eclipses was solar and that the stars were visible, that means that the eclipse was total. The accepted solution of August 3, 431 BC involves an eclipse that was only partial in Greece. Similarly, the Livy eclipse is supposed to have happened five days before the ides of July, which by our conventional reckoning would date it July 10. Fomenko's 967 AD solution nails that date, while the conventional 190 BC eclipse actually occurred on March 14.

Sinnott confirms that eclipses did take place on the dates Fomenko has chosen and concludes, "Even though Fomenko has found valid eclipse dates that seem to fit the descriptions, I think it is far-fetched in the extreme to conclude that the chronology of the ancient world is 'off' by more than one thousand years." Free country, isn't it?
Check Fomenko's calculations with ANY sky mapping software, professional or amateur, you'll get his results confirmed.


I really don't know whether I must laugh or cry.   April 28, 2004
 27 out of 43 found this review helpful

According to this chronology (which we can name "Ultra High Revised Chronology"), Jesus died in 1086 AD. More or less, in this time, the Cid was fighting against the Moors in medieval Spain.
Taking this theory to extreme, then Jesus/Joshua would be Rodrigo Diaz alias "the Cid, the Champion Knight" (el Cid Campeador in Spanish), who took Valencia (i.e. Jericho), because he was exiled from the kingdom of Castilla (i. e. Egypt) by King Alphonse VI (i.e. the Pharaoh of Exodus)!!!. We don't have to forget that, according with Spanish medieval legends, the Cid rode after his own death and won a battle (resurrection???).
Ergo Jesus/Joshua was the Cid.
On chronology, I am arranged to think anything.


Vicious Circle   April 28, 2004
 14 out of 34 found this review helpful

The author is gone realy too far, but made, a few quite valid points. For example, the carbon-dating process is calibrated nowadays basis "known dates," i.e., it can be no more accurate than the chronology that it is based on. Boom! Another hit: Bronze Age is a total hoax, because to make bronze you need metallic tin. It is knwon for a fact that tin was discovered as late as 14 th century!


Fomenko is highly entertaining, if not on target   April 28, 2004
 28 out of 33 found this review helpful

Fomenko is highly entertaining, if not on target
It should also be possible, as Fomenko states, to study regnal year lengths on a statistical basis. Historically, a long reign is generally followed by a succession battle and a number of shorter reigns. In the Old Testament period, kings were consciously reviving the memory of earlier kings, even to the point of trying to match their reign lengths. This was not always possible, but it probably did serve to reinforce natural and recognizable patterns (with statistical significance). He compares Germanic kings with the Biblical kings of Judah. Upon closer examination, the correlation is strained, but it is not surprising that the general pattern is quite similar. The dynamics of kinship did not really change that much over the centuries. I wish I had the time to better evaluate the Fomenko theories. They are highly entertaining, if not on target.