. (7) Nevertheless, despite lacking facts and evidence, Fomenko's world-view argues that history is a massive fraud: "Roughly speaking, ancient English chronicles are in fact Byzantine chronicles which were taken from Byzantine to England and then modified in a such way that they seem to speak about events in England." (8) Yet to make his case Fomenko has to massacre history and ignore the archaeological evidence from the island and from Constantinople. He has to willfully manipulate the historical record in the very way he accuses the medieval English of doing. And to what end? Well, that answer is quite simple. Fomenko is Russian, so it is not surprising that Fomenko "discovered" that Russia was the source of universal empire and that its culture gave rise to England. That explains his Byzantine chauvinism, for the Russian czars (= Caesars) saw themselves as the legitimate successors to the Byzantine emperors through the miracle of shared faith in the (then united) Orthodox Church. If England could be shown to "really" be Byzantium, then all the advances of England, and America, are "really" Byzantine and hence Russian. In other words, this elaborate theory is nothing more than an attempt to bolster the battered and broken shell of the formerly great Russian state, and to claim for Mother Russia a small piece of the reflected glory of a world that passed it by. Following the publication of Fomenko's book in English his publisher, Delamere Resources Ltd, announced that it had received "innumerable venomous complaints with unprintable undertones." To respond to the critics, Delamere issued a press release in January 2004, challenging scientists to disprove Fomenko's assertions. They offered a $10,000 "cash reward" to anyone who could prove that any human artifacts existed prior to the eleventh century CE. There was one catch, however: the "proof" could not use "archaeological, dendrochronological, paleographical and carbon methods." (9) Thus having safely excluded all scientific methods of dating and most historical methods, they confidently demanded that all proof be of the same "academic level as the heretic Fomenko." (10) Though Fomenko's theories hold no water and are easily disproved, it has not stopped the public from buying his books or indulging in speculation. Russian chess master Gary Kasparov became a willing convert, opining that Fomenko's theories were a revelation because there "were too many discrepancies and contradictions that could not be explained within the framework of traditional chronology." (11) While it is exhilarating to think that accepted knowledge could be wrong, and that humanity is on the verge of a major revision of its history, in fact the entire enterprise is constructed on a foundation of flaws, inconsistencies, and errors. References (1.) Boese, Alan. n.d. "Jean Hardouin."The Museum of Hoaxes. (2.) Fomenko, A.T. and G.V. Nosovskij. n.d. "New Chronology and New Concept of the English History: British Empire as a Direct Successor of Byzantine-Roman Empire." (3.) Ibid. (4.) Ibid. (5.) Ibid. (6.) Ibid. (7.) Crane, Gregory (ed.). n.d. Project Perseus Latin Dictionary. Tufts University. (8.) Fomenko and Nosovskij, op. cit. (9.) Delamere Resources. "Publisher Announces 10,000 USD Cash Reward."PR Web, (10.) Ibid. (11.) Kasparov, Gary. n.d. "Mathematics of the Past."New Tradition. |
