Thread: Morozov's theory

Hello.
This is an article I translated on my own to spread it.

Among other things, there's a certain good thing about it: it can heal you from believing into atlantis, aliens building pyramids, end of the world, ancient giants, and many other kinds of mysterious stuff as it did for me. Initially I was hoping to post it in atheist and humanist forums, but apparently they don't even want me to try.
And since this is a science forum, I also hope that such amount of text (about 10 pages) won't stop people from reading it.

Okay, I wasn't going to do that, but I feel like I have to provide some kind of overview.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov (Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Моро́зов; July 7, 1854, Borok – July 30, 1946) was a Russian revolutionary who spent about 25 years in prison before turning his attention to various fields of science.

Nikolai Morozov (1854-1946), honorary academician, famous scientist, revolutionary, member of the Executive Committee of the People's Will, has published a multi-volume study of "The Christ" in the 1924-1932 biennium. In this study traditional notions of the ancient history of mankind subjected to a radical revision. Morozov's provisions were completely rejected by academic historians, without any analysis in essence, and it is clear why.

Postnikov met with Morozov's research around 1965, but Postnikov's attempts to discuss Morozov's considerations with professional historians have not led to anything. All ended up with more or less vulgar insults and statements such as "it cannot be, because it can never be!". Gumilev reacted in the most polite way, saying: "We historians do not climb into the math and ask you, mathematicians, not to climb into history!" He's right in principle - only professionals and specialists should develop science. But at the same time experts should also answer the questions of puzzled rookies clearly and convincingly, explaining their mistakes to them. That's what Postnikov just could not get from the experts and historians.

Postnikov himself had to sort out what was going on, and he gradually came to the conclusion that Morozov is right in many respects, and this is not Morozov who's wrong, but the science of history, which turned the wrong way somewhere in the XVI century, as a result of Scaliger and Petavius work.

Article:

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Greatest falsification ever?
(source)

«Техника и наука», 1982, № 7


The article was reprinted with accompanying commentary (rus) with different title — «О достоверности древней истории» in № 2 of 1997 г. in «Математическое образование» magazine.


More than half a century ago N. Morozov, a honored academician, famous revolutioneer and "Peoples' will" party member have written an amazing book titled "History of mankind in the light of natural science" initially. In this book he has expounded his vast theory that was entirely revising traditional representation of The Ancient History of The Mankind. Morozov's basic thesis was that all our information about The Ancient World is unreliable and appears to be a fictional representation of some events of The Middle Ages. In order to support his theory, Morozov has brought up an entire series of striking parallelisms connecting Antique and The Middle Ages history, but he also didn't except a possibility of coincidences, that professional historians insisted. To figure out was Morozov correct or not, one had to find a system in these parallelisms and prove its statistical significance. Following my initiative, A. Fomenko and A. Mischenko, Doctors of Physics and Mathematics, have begun working on it a few years ago. The results they have got not just confirmed Morozov's hypothesis completely, but also allowed to concretize it significantly. In this article I'll try not just to expound newly found mathematically-statistical methods, but rather to tell about Morozov's basic conclusions supported by new methods.


-M. POSTNIKOV, Dr. of Phys. - Math. sciences, professor, Lenin prize laureate
__________________________________________________ _________________________________


Unlike verities of mathematics, physics or geography that in principle anybody can check, statements of history doesn't allow direct experimental research. We cannot travel into the past and make sure that the information we've been told is valid. All the historical information is unavoidably secondary and mainly based on written witnesses, whose reliability has to be measured.


Historical document possesses any value only if it's authentical of course, in other words it doesn't appear to be a falsification produced by frivolous or unscrupulous descendants.


Fortunately, authenticity of the document bulk is self-evident in the majority of historical studies. This authenticity is based on continuity and mass character. For example, we're quite sure that Catherine II was Russian emperroress in the second half of XVIII century, that she's being followed by Pavel, that peasant uprising led by Yemelian Pugachev have happened during the Catherine's reign, etc., etc. That times' colossal number of documents whose authenticity is based by a continuous chain of documents referring to each other, that chain extending to our times makes these statements just as reliable as say a statement about the round shape of the Earth. However it's unclear who was Pavel's father already and the fact that he was Catherine's son is doubtful as well. There was a dispute about did Alexander I die in 1825 (so called "old man Kuzmich problem").


It is clear that the further we are going into the past, the sharper authenticity question gets. Things about antique documents are especially bad, because we haven't got a chain of sequential copies from The Antiquity till the printing machine stamping moment for even a single one of them. Furthermore, we've got the very last copies only (dated as old as IX-X centuries in the best case), whose prehistory is absolutely unknown.


For example, manuscript of Tacitus was delivered to its discoverer Poggio about 1425 by some unknown monk from some North German monastery: Poggio didn't tell anyone about the monk's name and monastery location. Cicero's rhetorical compositions were only known in excerpts until 1420 when Barcicca, a Milanese Cicero specialist has found its complete text in the town of Lodi. Lodi manuscript has vanished after copying (!).


Classical Greek writers are the same thing. Plato was actually unknown for humanists until 1482, when a Latin translation of his dialogues was published by Ficino. However, despite numerous demands coming from his friends and publishers Ficino hasn't shown Greek originals to anyone and after his death they disappeared without a trace.


Antique texts discovery circumstances are unknown even these days. For example, details of Aristotle's "Athenian polity" discovery in 1891 were hidden at the time, and still remain a mystery.

to be continued in the next post

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Could an antique book be passed to us?


It's well-known to all the museum and library employees that books and manuscripts decay quickly without a special precaution until rendered unusable. One must keep it in certain temperature, keep it away from dust, preserve from dampness and direct sun rays, mold, insects, rodents, and take tens of other precautions. And book lifetime is just a few centuries in spite of this. Therefore it has to be rewritten periodically to be preserved through the ages. No historian doubts in the existence of "continuous handwritten tradition, in the end going back to one of its antique publications" (this word exactly - translator) for every antique composition. This is the simplest syllogism possible in action:
1) Antique book have reached these days
2) This is impossible without rewriting
3) Therefore books were rewritten


But who this rewriting was exercised by? Usual answer says that this was done in monasteries by pious monks working "for the salvation of a soul" unselfishly. And actually this is the only answer possible because only permanent and mighty organization could take on this labor in the course of centuries.


But a few doubts appear immediately from here on.
Firstly, in early middle ages (VI-IX centuries) illiteracy reign among monasticism was almost absolute and literate people were not respected at all: they've been looked at with fear, they were considered sorcerers familiar with magic and devilry while official church authorities just tolerated literacy like unavoidable and necessary evil. Even if single enthusiasts undertook a non-church book rewriting in these conditions they could only be tolerated then and of course not encouraged in any way. And remember, book rewriting needed significant financial costs as well in that time because of parchment costliness. Where were conjectural enthusiasts finding required resources (and not once nor twice but during many centuries)?


History knows one such enthusiast actually - famous Cassiodorus who lived in VI century allegedly. However, factual information about Cassiodorus is rather scarce and there's a great possibility of him being just a fictional person.


However, even if we will agree with Cassiodorus legend, it's going to be still unclear who used to fund book rewriting during 400 years after his death till IX-X centuries when attitude to literacy have changed and book rewriting in monasteries has become possible ideologically and economically.


Secondly, being not only under a pressure of official authorities but also following their own inner beliefs rewriter monks should have focused their attention on a books with a divine content. Monks are very, very bad candidates for the title of pagan and freethinking text collectioners. But quaere, who were rewriting (and not once, and not twice) "About a nature of things", an atheistic poem by Lucretius Carus then? Historians claim that a Cicero's note (?) from March 15, 44BC, possibly related to Caesar's murder, was preserved: "I congratulate you, I rejoice for you... I want to know what are you doing, and what's going on." Isn't this strange that pious monks used to rewrite this note conscientiously during centuries as well?


Thirdly, to rewrite scientific compositions, mathematical compositions for example one have to at least understand a value and keep in mind at least one possible reader. And who in VIII-X centuries could understand and appreciate Euclid, Archimedes and Apollonius? Arabs? Who used to rewrite Euclid before Arabs then? By the way it's usually considered that the most ancient Euclid's "Beginnings" manuscript we know was made in 888 in Byzantium for bishop Caesarean. (? - translator) Does it mean that IX century Byzantium had first-class rank mathematicians (even that bishop Caesarean) who understood Euclid and considered him interesting?


Fourthly, classical Latin was unknown for The Middle Ages monks. Can you imagine a monk who doesn't know this language to be rewriting Cicero scrupulously like a machine?


All these considerations are forcing us to reject a syllogism specified above and formulate a new one:
1) Ancient book couldn’t be passed to us without rewriting
2) There was nobody to exercise rewriting so there was no rewriting
3) Therefore antique book couldn't be passed to us.




One can't make it without paper


But could antique book exist at all? To prepare one sheet of parchment, young calf skin (expensive thing on its own) had to be exposed to a long, complex and expensive processing. This was putting parchment to a level of precious things and such situation remained right until the rag paper invention at the eve of The Renaissance (not a coincidence at all). How graceful literature could develop in circumstances of such an expensive and rare writing material?


Rather high literature culture is necessary for a person to write a branching literathure composition with complex structure. Such culture is educated on a base of examples and person's own attempts that in any case requires enough amount of accessible writing material. Furthermore, being literate is certainly necessary for that which means knowing and being able to follow widely accepted orthographic and grammatical rules. However, to become literate one needs constant and long-term exercises (samples in words, dictations etc.) impossible on parchment (and may we add, on papyrus that was just a bit cheaper).


To reach high enough level of literacy and ability to express his thoughts in writing form easily one not only need to write countless number of dictations but also to read a colossal number of books written according to standard orthography. If a person isn't reading many books he'll remain semi-literate no matter how conscientiously he studies and of course he'll never be a litterateur possessing his language confidently.


Semi-literate author writing every letter painfully slow, guessing about almost every word about how to write it could only compose very short text in one sitting. Constrained by a lack of writing material he couldn't conform these texts with each other somehow satisfying, rewriting them several times. After collecting (or composing on his own) he was able to rewrite them one by one almost without changes only, connecting them with a simplest "transfer bridges" like "suddenly", "then" etc. And truly ancient compositions (Bible, Indian epos, The Middle Ages romance) have exactly that kind of structure actually. Litterateurs has learned to connect separate episodes of their novels more artfully as recent as XIX century substantially, [a thing] somehow developed literature is impossible [without]. This is why for example literary compositions that we call "antique" today and that are characterized with rather correct orthography, complex syntax and elegant style were most likely written in an age when paper was widespread already, in other words in an age when they were "discovered".

to be continued in the next post

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Was there Herodotus?


It is known that anonymity was a characteristic feature of The Middle Ages literature; its authors didn't think fit to put their name on it. But when early humanists headed by Petrarch "went hiking for parchments gnawed by rats" them, not being satisfied with the anonymity of manuscripts they're finding have begun assigning it to famous ancient names (that, we have to notice by the way, were associated with absolutely different professions at that time: for example, Virgil was considered to be a mage, Plato-a doctor, Archimedes to be astrologist, and Cicero-a troubadour!) on their own initiative then. The Middle Ages tradition of attributing own compositions to famous ancient names have also contributed that; multitude of The Middle Ages theological compositions were ascribed to John Chrysostom by its authors for example and Petrarch himself liked writing letters, biographies etc. "on behalf of the ancients". These compositions were turning out to be "ancient" automatically, getting into the hands of collectioners a hundred years later.


Along with a development of humanistic movement and increase in demand of ancient manuscripts its rude falsification appeared as well. Scientists of XV-XVI centuries mention shameless falsifiers in their letters constantly and how they are trying to "foist their miserable crafts". However humanists themselves were piddling with falsification as well. German humanist Prolucius has wrote the seventh book of Ovid's "Calendar mythology" to win in the scientific dispute and Spanish monk Higera has composed Dexter, Roman historian and wrote a vast composition on his behalf to fill an unfortunate gap in the history of Christianity spread in Spain. Sigonius, a famous humanist, has composed and published a number of Cicero's excerpts and Annius de Vitterbe have published a compilation of fake compositions from a whole number of Roman authors which were composed by himself. These are established facts.


In a case when falsifier doesn't confess on his own exposing a skillfully made fake appears to be a very diffucult task and usually it happens absolutely randomly. Science world was sure about authenticity of Sigunius' fake for example until a letter was found in that Sigonius himself were confessing in an act of falsification. That's why there's no doubt that a number of rude falsifications haven't been exposed yet. As long ago as in previous century for example Frenchman Goshar and Englishman Ross have proven very detailed and argumented that the compositions of Tacitus appear to be skillful falsification made by Poggio who needed money desperately right in the moment of "discovering" Tacitus. In particular, Goshar and Ross have uncovered a big number of fragments in the Tacitus text in which author shows his unfamiliarity with Rome geography, with Roman temper (or law - translator), warfare etc. - and also fragments that expose him as a person with XV century ideology and traditions. In case of less authoritative author this would be enough to prove a falsification already but Tacitus is forgiven in everything.


In analogy, Herodotus' text is teeming with mistakes literally many of which expose it's The Middle Ages origin. But historians blanch Herodotus over instead of accepting its falsity: his mistakes (achieving one and a half thousand (!) years in account of the Egypt history for example) are written off as his non-critical treat of his own informers (there were Egyptian priests among them by the way and they were obliged to know a history of their own country) and The Middle Ages nature of the compositions is explained with an argument that The Middle Ages scientists have borrowed it from Herodotus. Respect to authority defeats common sense here obviously.


Poggio-Tacitus example makes us think that we are dealing with rude falsification every time when the circumstances of a manuscript's "find" are foggy and unverifiable on purpose. This is why Plato's dialogues are falsified almost for sure (specialists haven't developed unified opinion about their authenticity yet by the way) and Cicero's rhetorical compositions too.


"About architecture" composition Vitruvius yells loudly about its faking because the heliocentric (!) planet circulation periods are specified with minute accuracy unknown even to Copernicus. Looks like we're dealing not with rude but with compelling falsification here when a young scientist (Alberti?) was forced (either by its own initiative or under publisher's constraint) to release this book signed with an ancient pseudonym to provide a better demand for it after losing hope to publish it signed by his own name.


One of important falsification reasons was also desire of free thinking or anti-church compositions' author (Lucretius Carus) to cover himself with an ancient name like with a shield. Depriving himself with a dangerous fame, the author was providing a wide spread for his views at least.


Hoaxes of another kind happen as well. Celsus, an extremely anti-Christian II century writer is known for example. His compositions haven't passed to us and his views are only known according to a composition of Origen who was disproving him. What draws one's attention is that Origen, when citing Celsus in detail and expounding his views accurately doesn't actually disprove them in any way, limiting himself with gross abuses and statements like "this is impossible because it contradicts with Holy Scripture". What if "Origen" appears to be just a mask for anticlerical author here who decided to expound his views in that form? (Origen's citing of Celsus is so detailed that modern researchers were able to "recreate" almost entire composition of Celsus based on these quotes) What if Tertullian's famous dictum "I believe it because it's absurd" also appears to be a subtle mockery of anticlerical author-apocryphist?


"About system of the world" composition by Aristarchus of Samos appears to be the one of the recent documentally established camouflage falsifications. (I split this sentence - trans.) It was released in 1644 and belongs to feather of famous Roberval who used the ancient pseudonym (maybe he came up with it on his own) to propagate the ideas of Copernicus and avoid inquisitorial persecutions that Galileo just undergone because of the same thing. Roberval wasn't very diligent about hiding his authorship while being in France though and that's why we know the truth now. But what could happen if Roberval kept his incognito more thoroughly? Wouldn't we have one more antique composition that "came down to us miraculously", and available in a form of print with hopelessly forfeited origin only?




...Euclid and Ptolemy


In case of scientific (mathematical in particular) antique compositions statement about them being falsified during The Middle Ages stumbles upon a question of their true author. While in case of compositions of humanistic nature we can either point assumed author directly or at least outline a circle of people quite able to be him according to their education, culture and litherature gift, one asks who could write Euclid's "Beginnings" then? Because mathematician of that scope couldn't pass through the ages without a trace certainly and we can't point anybody in The Middle ages at least a little bit useful for the role of the author of "Beginnings".


To explain this we should take into account that before typography invention every scientist used to copy books of his predecessors for his own use exclusively and this is why he used to edit unclear parts and contributed necessary additions in his opinion. This is why the book text was modified constantly with every new rewrite, replenishing with new material and growing in amount. A process of an unconscious collective creation was happening during that composition kept a name of the initial author of course. "Euclid's Geometry" - a scientist was labeling his exemplar passing over in silence about the fact that he has added two or three theorems from himself keeping a textbook's former name. Something similar happens to textbooks even now: they keep the initial author's name as a rule being replenished with new material constantly.


And so assembly of a decade of the simplest theorems used to turn into a book, big and well developed in its details over the centuries.
And science historians have overlooked this century long improvement process, have attributed this book with a single ancient giant of geometrical science, overestimating the cognition level in ancient times with that.


This attributes not just to Euclid of course (whose name, to say by the way allows meaningful translation: "Well Interwoven") but to Aristotle as well (whose name is translated even more wonderful: "The Best Conclusion") and to Ptolemy (whose name means "One Fighting with God"). Publications of all these authors are preceded with so called "bad translations" representing their initial, still imperfect variants obviously.


Furthermore one can point more than a decade of astronomical evidences against Ptolemy' book that confirm its affiliation with XVI century (when it was first published). Since longitudes of different stars increase by 50.2 seconds per year as a result of precession for example then taking difference of modern longitudes with longitudes given by Ptolemy in his "Star Catalogue" and dividing it by 50.2 we'll get a time of this catalogue's observation. The corresponding calculation gives us XVI century precisely! Moreover, in II century when this astronomer lived allegedly, the star nearest to a pole was not the current one Pole star (Ursa Minor Alpha) but a brighter star of the same constellation - Beta, while Achernar star was not available for observations at all. Ptolemy begins his catalogue with Pole star and ends it with Achernar nonetheless!

to be continued in the next post

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"Exclusiveness" of antique society


The Middle Ages origin of "antique" compositions will also be extradited by the unlikeliness and fantasticality of information they contain about political, social and economic structure of antique society. This fantasticality is widely known substantially but it's treated as exclusiveness traditionally.


What exclusive is science and culture flowering of The Ancient Greece that's not justified with the development of productive forces and industrial relations in any way and what's really strange already, it haven't affected neither equipment or socially-political structures. One can't operate here without the notorious "Spirit of Hellenism"!


This exclusiveness-fantasticality spreads not only to global structures but permeates every element of antique society traditional representation.


The messages of “The Classics” about military affairs are especially fantastical that's not strange though considering the armchair nature of their true authors' scholarship. Regardless strategy's elementary requirements they choose so uncomfortable points for a victory and such conditions in which one can perish only.


They lead armies by countries in which they all would die from hunger in a week and they force kings and generals to ride horse pairs in carrioles with a single drawbar on a battlefield, while those carrioles are turning turtle on a first sharp turn all the more so in a field littered with corpses. They force Roman soldiers to build a fortified camp in the every evening after an exhausting march exercising earthwork on a scale available for excavators only etc., etc.


Thus all these considerations lead to the same conclusion that all of so called "antique" literature is written in The Middle Ages and that the ancient history of Greece and Rome until IV century A.D. at least - is a greatest mystification of The Middle Ages litterateurs and historians. Can this idea be proven with the ways of mathematics or natural science?




Morozov's ideas


Even back in XVI century an idea was expressed: if a document describes some kind of astronomical phenomenon whose date allows calculations, Sun and Moon eclipse for example, then it gives us an opportunity to determine historical document authenticity. However chronologists used this method sidedly. Having no doubt in one or another document's authenticity they used to combine astronomical calculation with an entire complex of historical information. Morozov has proposed a method of unprejudiced astronomical dating. It consists of the following: eclipse characteristics are extracted from the text and dates of all the eclipses with these characteristics are written out of astronomical tables. Let's pick sun eclipse described by Thucydides in "History of the Peloponnesian War" occurred in the beginning of the war for example. It appears that in a last three thousand years in Mediterranean region there was only one eclipse satisfying description of Thucydides and this - is an eclipse of August 2nd, 1133 A.D. Thus the book of Thucydides turns out to be The Middle Ages composition written no earlier than XII century in full compliance with what was told. As long as Herodotus mentions Thucydides this proves "History" by Herodotus The Middle Ages origin then as well. One can dispute a dating of the composition of Thucydides taken separately referring to its single nature of course. One should study all the eclipses mentioned in antique documents to get more valuable results. These documents contained description of 89 eclipses but in 10 cases they are absolutely unsatisfactory (it's not even clear often if it talks about eclipse and not, say, some meteorological phenomenon) and because of that 79 eclipses were researched. The results are the following: not a single eclipse is confirmed by astronomy until the middle of IV century and 75% are rejected at all. On the opposite, only two eclipses (8%) are rejected by astronomy after the middle of IV century. This not only confirms the general thesis about The Middle Ages origin of "antique" literature, but also allows us to clarify it. It appears that all the products traditionally attributed to a time before the middle of IV century A.D. are written considerably later. And we have to consider all the information about events occurred in the Mediterranean before IV century A.D. to be mythical because of that.


It is noticed that use of own names flows and changes over time. As a matter of principle this allows to determine simultaneity of two texts: if use of names is equal in them, then they are simultaneous, and vice versa. The appropriate statistically based method is needed here of course. Such method was offered by Fomenko and Mischenko. The results turned out to be very interesting. A copy of Athen Archons (496-293 B.D.) uses the same names as compositions of John Cantacuzene (1320-1356) for example.
Names in "Greek history" by Xenophon (411-362 B.D.) are the same ones as in texts of Nikita Choniates (1186-1206).
Names in "Agizel" by Plutarch (401-361 B.D.) and Homer's "Iliad" are the same with compositions of Evmaty Makremvolit, XII century Byzantium poet etc., etc.


One of the most surprising and at the same time the most fundamental Morozov's observations consists in the discovery of parallel pairs among ancient dynasties. Let's review The Roman Empire from this viewpoint. As it is known it was created by Sulla and Pompeius and have disintegrated practically in III century A.D. after Caracalla (so called III century crisis). We'll be calling this period Roman Empire II (preserving Roman Empire I name for a legendary period of seven Roman kings from Romulus to Tarquin). The empire was restored at the end of the III century by Aurelian and Diocletian and existed till the end of V century. We'll be calling this period Roman Empire III. And this way if we'll compose a serial list of Empire II and Empire III emperors and compare it duration of their reign will match in all 27 positions. Except number parallelism Morozov has also pointed to a certain parallelism of events. As both lists begin with close political figures having similar honorary titles and end with outstanding emperors as well who are known by identical action of granting Roman citizenship right to all the free population of the empire. A. Fomenko has tracked this event parallelism more consequently (and based on some semi-formal algorithm). It turned out to be spreading very deep going down to complete identity of biographies sometimes (that were formalized the appropriate way).


The only rational explanation of these coincidences appears to be that the Empire II history is written off from Empire III history so Empire III had independent existence only and Empire II appears to be just her phantomical shadow that appeared as a result of honest mistakes and malicious falsifications of later time. And no need to think that we can trust an information about Empire III though. On opposite, careful analysis of this information (unfortunately this article sizes doesn't allow to do that) shows that almost all of it is presumably just as false as Empire II information. The only thing that can be claimed with some confidence is a fact of its existence. At the same time its state forms, social relations and religious life - all appears to be fantasies of considerably later time. This empire should be imagined by pattern of The Ancient Russian State as a conglomerate of seaside states-towns independent in fact, accepted authority of the Emperor formally and paying him an annual tribute.


Chroniclers were composing a sets of current events in different parts of this motley empire. Their records that they kept in local languages reflected local events primarily and they were calling their emperors by their local names-nicknames. After a several centuries when a necessity to back up Pope Rome pretensions of world domination in religious and secular domain with references to past power have appeared due to its growing influence, attempts to create its history have begun on this basis. Chronicles describing the same time but created in different places and in different languages were taken for descriptions of different rules and were arranged sequentially in time during that.

conclusion in the next post

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How could this happen?


Morozov explains this mechanism with an example of the XIX century Austrian Empire. This empire consisted of two parts: German Austria with a capital of Vienna, Magyar Hungary with a capital of Budapest and Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina have joined this pair too. Franz Joseph used to reign in it since 1848 and used to live in his Vienna palace almost all the time visiting his Budapest one at times only. Austrian Germans considered him to be their own king, Hungarian Magyars-their own, and in the end affiliated Herzegovians - their own konung.


His troops consisted of German and of Magyar and of Slavic regiments. Every of three parts lived its own inner life, had its own economic and civil evolution. Outer trade and other economic relations were going separately for every part depending on geographical position and only representation for a foreign power and wars were general.


Let's imagine how some Hungarian chronicler wrote a Hungary history on the Magyar language in which he used to call Franz Joseph just Joseph and some German chronicler in Tirol wrote Austria (in other words Tirol with Vienna) history in German in which he used to call Franz Joseph just Franz denoting the time like the first one with reign years only.


Let's imagine then that some Bosnian monk did the same in Slavic language calling him Francis in his manner.


Let's imagine then that all of our modern literature about XIX century events have died in some kind of public or elemental revolution and these three manuscripts only were saved by some miracle. Then a culture has begun anew from baby age and some "historian" has found these documents after about three hundred years. With a passionate wish to learn as much as possible about perished culture's history he would be succumbed unwittingly to the desire to take Franz, Francis and Joseph for three princes one of whose used to reign over Tirol, other-over Hungary and the third-over Bosnia-Herzegovina. And he would note that every of them related to the two other countries as well. Big differences in a culture of every described country would easily give him an idea that he's dealing with three periods of culture of the very same Danube Empire that used to be called Austria as a whole and he would write a scientific treatise called "Three periods of Austria culture: First-Austria under Slavic dominion of Francis I, second-Austria under Magyar dominion of Joseph I, third-Austria under German dominion of Franz I".


He would be confused easily by city names mentioned by three chroniclers too. The Hungarian capital of Budapest consists of Pest on the right Danube coast and Buda on opposite of it that's called Ofen in German for example. If Budapest would be called burg-Ofen by German chronicler, just Buda by Hungarian one and Pest city by Slavic one then after restoring one of them it its real place historian would begin to look for other ones in other places and out of a same one Budapest capture after the Hungarian uprising he would make three: Pest-city capture of Francis I (even before he had become a Bosnian potentate), Buda capture by Joseph I during the Hungarian dynasty and finally an Ofen capture by Franz I during the German dynasty. After attributing Buda to Hungary etymologically and geographically he would begin to look for Ofen and with a strong desire he would find it somewhere in German countries taking it for Hof in Bavaria for example.


And exactly the same would turn out with other geographical names and with Vienne itself that's called Veden in Slavic and Vin in German.


As a result of that connection of three histories of different language and different color with each other a reign of the very same Franz Joseph would end up being a history of three different kings in three different countries and their reigns would end up having nothing in common except a consonance of some names like Francis, Vin and Vienna.


An idea of Roman Empire II that actually never exists had it created the same way exactly.


And if an Empire II appears to be a myth then one have to deny "antique Ancient Greece" real existence inevitably too and also reject an idea of a V century horrifying disaster when a barbarian invasion have destroyed antique civilization allegedly and humanity was forced to start its cultural development anew.


Humanity's cultural development never experienced global disasters actually whose idea should be considered the same XVIII century metaphysics' rudiment with Georges Cuvier's paleontological "catastrophe theory". Moreover The Middle Ages weren't "dark period" at all; it wasn't gloomy centuries of obscurantism's material and spiritual domination, monk fanaticism, centuries of peoples' darkness and theologically-scholastic wisdom. On opposite this was the time of intensive scientific development, living idea and dynamic activities occurred in permanent and embittered fight with Church ideology obscurantism just like in New Time. Only weak echoes of this titanic activity made it to us, almost all of it turned out being cast off to "The Antiquity".

This is NOT history, it's - at best - a fringe theory.
At worst it's more nutcases "validating" the original nutcase's (Morozov's) work.
(And the basic claim dates back at least to Hardouin).

In short, it's unscientific crap.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

This is NOT history, it's - at best - a fringe theory.
At worst it's more nutcases "validating" the original nutcase's (Fomenko) work.
(And the basic claim dates back at least to Hardouin).

In short, it's unscientific crap.

I'd like to stay as far as possible from Fomenko. He's just farming money from his books. Morozov is hard to reproach with that kind of approach because in 1920 he couldn't become wealthy selling his books, because of communism etc. Morozov wasn't doing stupid things like looking for samurais in city of Samara and he was not trying to fit world history into russian territory. Not to mention that he worked about 50 years earlier.
I will check about Hardouin.
But I have to say that you are basically doing the same thing with all these academian historians-it doesn't look like you are trying to read and understand an article, and then debate about its ideas-it looks more like you're just not agreeing with results of his research. It's okay to be a somehow inertive in your mind, we all are people after all. But a crutical analysis is never a bad thing, even if you're exposing some old verities with it.

Originally Posted by crystallize

I'd like to stay as far as possible from Fomenko.

Er what? Fomenko was directly mentioned in YOUR post - "Following my initiative, A. Fomenko and A. Mischenko..." - and all he's doing is promoting, and building on, Morozov's "work".

Morozov is hard to reproach with that kind of approach because in 1920 he couldn't become wealthy selling his books

Regardless of whether he made money out of it, he wasn't doing science.

But I have to say that you are basically doing the same thing with all these academian historians-it doesn't look like you are trying to read and understand an article, and then debate about its ideas

Again, what?
When someone comes up with bullshit what "ideas" require debating?
They first have to show that those ideas have some validity.
So far that's not forthcoming.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by crystallize

I'd like to stay as far as possible from Fomenko.

Er what? Fomenko was directly mentioned in YOUR post - "Following my initiative, A. Fomenko and A. Mischenko..." - and all he's doing is promoting, and building on, Morozov's "work".

You see, things are a bit more complicated here.
During late 60s and early 70s Postnikov, Fomenko and Mischenko worked together to promote Morozov's ideas. But at some point in early 70s Postnikov and Fomenko have quarreled. From this moment Fomenko has begun to reinterpretate all the coincidences, inconsistencies etc. found by Morozov, but getting different results and developing different ideas. (as Postnikov used to say much later, "this is just another proof of how amorphical our knowledge of the past is") He has begun to build his own theory on top of Morozov's.
But this is not the worst.
Fomenko has developed a complex mathematical method to find doppelgangers in history (Postnikov developed its math). When Postnikov was reading this method's detailed description, he saw that Fomenko just tweaks variables at its discretion. Fomenko responded that he does that to achieve good looking results. Postnikov warned him that indignant historians will find a good mathematician who will expose Fomenko sooner or later. Postnikov also added that mathematical methods aren't even necessary here because duplicates found by Morozov are obvious without any kind of math, according to common sense only.
(...)

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Regardless of whether he made money out of it, he wasn't doing science.

He has begun questioning the theory when he faced the facts that it couldn't explain. This is a scientifical approach.
At the same time, when mainstream historians face the facts that are going against widely accepted theory - like a position of the planets described by ancient astronomer and pointing to an unacceptable millenium - then they are trying to distort the facts so it can fit their theory: "may be ancient astronomer has got confused about the names and colours of the planets". As an article says, documents they rely on couldn't even be traced back to an original manuscripts, not to mention to original author. This kind of approach have made Postnikov to call history a "pseudo-science" on pair with ufology.

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Again, what?
When someone comes up with bullshit what "ideas" require debating?
They first have to show that those ideas have some validity.
So far that's not forthcoming.[]

If you see a bullshit idea, then pick one and do disprove it, it shouldn't be difficult in such case.
Also, if you want to know is there any validity in the idea, you should check it out anyway.

It looks like most of his arguments are calls to skepticism - which is the heart of science.

Of course, after tearing the accepted history apart, he does make the mistake of trying to propose an alternative history of his own. He should acknowledge that his own proposed alternative is every bit as much a guesswork as the accepted history he started out disapproving of.

It is true that accepted history has needed some serious revisions in the last century. For example: the discovery of Hattusa in Turkey, and a whole empire that had never been mentioned in any of the parchment histories.

Hattusa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Which fortunately turned out to have a library full of clay tablets, which in turn contained recoverable text that had survived since the fall of the city. It forced a revision of of some events in Ramesses II's reign.


So, if we take Morozov's advice on "be very skeptical of parchments", and then ignore his alternative proposals for history (or treat them as pure speculation - which they pretty much are), then I'd say his book makes for a good read.

Originally Posted by kojax

It looks like most of his arguments are calls to skepticism - which is the heart of science.

Of course, after tearing the accepted history apart, he does make the mistake of trying to propose an alternative history of his own. He should acknowledge that his own proposed alternative is every bit as much a guesswork as the accepted history he started out disapproving of.

It is true that accepted history has needed some serious revisions in the last century. For example: the discovery of Hattusa in Turkey, and a whole empire that had never been mentioned in any of the parchment histories.

Hattusa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Which fortunately turned out to have a library full of clay tablets, which in turn contained recoverable text that had survived since the fall of the city. It forced a revision of of some events in Ramesses II's reign.


So, if we take Morozov's advice on "be very skeptical of parchments", and then ignore his alternative proposals for history (or treat them as pure speculation - which they pretty much are), then I'd say his book makes for a good read.

Morozov was writing for people who most likely just learnt how to read and wouldn't return a several pages back to look up in a table or a citing again. So he had to repeat citations, tables, etc. many times. Postnikov has rewrote his study, getting rid of repeating parts, which allowed him to shorten it more than twice, and that's what I was reading actually.
And as far as I remember, he repeats like a chant in the end of every chapter: "This is just a roadmap for future research. Detailed development of this concept is up to future scientists".

Morozov's study wasn't about The Ancient Greece and Rome only(as I'm afraid people can think). He also did a research on religious books, The Middle Ages history, and even Asia. So when it says "history of Mankind" it really means it.

So far I only cared to make a TTS version out of the very same article, for lazy people.
Greatest falsification ever? - YouTube

Hello there. Glad the forum got fixed.

I wasn't sitting on my hands since the last time. For example, I translated a few early paragraphs from Postnikov's book:
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/33019...-Ancient-World

and here they are narrated by a good speech generator:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...DsuGyT10Ug4Ont

I also made a Morozov subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/anticatastrophic/

To be frank, I wasn't very successful with all this stuff. Perhaps I should learn After Effects and move to cool videos with animated infographics and upbeat music

Do I understand this guy's theory correctly: I think he's saying that many historical records about older times were really written later than claimed? Either that, or details missing in a deteriorated original may be filled in by later writers.

I don't doubt that at all. "History is told by the victors".


I have often suspected that the entire Old Testament of the Bible prior to 600 BC was written in 600 BC from legends that were being passed around. (And because Darius needed a justification for creating a buffer state between his own empire and Egypt, and figured an oppressed ethnic group living as second class citizens in his empire would jump at the chance to claim a nation of their own, if a historical legend could be concocted to justify it.)


Nothing about Morozov's claims would surprise me. History, throughout history, has often been twisted for political purposes. (To the point where Medieval Christians could honestly believe the world hadn't existed longer than 6,000 years.)

But I am interested in which works he believes to be partially or fully mixed with fabrication, and why.

Originally Posted by The Raven

Do I understand this guy's theory correctly: I think he's saying that many historical records about older times were really written later than claimed? Either that, or details missing in a deteriorated original may be filled in by later writers.

Last year in the online archive of The Russian Academy of Sciences I found some short conclusion for "the Christ". It begins as follows:

The present study conclude the series of my works on establishing the chronology of the Biblical books according to the astronomical indications contained in them. The content remains the same, but there is a chronological shift of all the events of the "sacred history of the New Testament", on average, 320 years forward to the Middle Ages, compared to the previous conceptions, and in relation to the "sacred history of the Old Testament" a greater shift, on average 1320 years forward. As a result, same events appear to have taken place almost simultaneously, during II to VII centuries A.D., and neither goes beyond the era's boundary. I am aware of the fact that such my conclusions will be hostile to theologians and historians, completely ignorant not only of ancient but also of new astronomy, but nevertheless the astronomical instructions are clear and resolute and give no other solutions except mine