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| Ishmael wrote: | | EndlesslyRocking wrote: | | Either that or the development of written language occurred much later than we assume so that there weren't really any earlier documents. |
Bingo. We have a winner. |
But you believe that the alphabeticals generally came before the vernaculars?
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A little word about Fomenko.
The man is part of a school of "pseudo-historians" whose principle interest is peddling a political message to the Russian people. He is the best known and the most commercially successful but there are others.
They are engaged in inventing new creation myths for the Russian people who have seen their days of glory collapse and vanish and who are now grasping for a new national identity. The confrontation over Georgia now and Chechenya earlier is all related to the same thing that Fomenko is promoting. The need to demonstrate that Holy Russia is the Great Mother Figure that will care for all her children.
All his "methodology", his re-dating and rewriting of history has been created to serve his political agenda. Do not be mislead, comrades, look at his motives!!
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Some kind of loyalism taints the view of almost every revisionist historian, and almost every orthodox historian as well. That doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| berniegreen wrote: | | A little word about Fomenko. The man is part of a school of "pseudo-historians" whose principle interest is peddling a political message to the Russian people. He is the best known and the most commercially successful but there are others. |
We are sorely fortunate to have the benefit of your wisdom Bernie. How we might otherwise be led astray.
| All his "methodology", his re-dating and rewriting of history has been created to serve his political agenda. Do not be mislead, comrades, look at his motives!! |
Look at his motives? You might do better to look at his books (though, frankly, I doubt that you would do any better). Ironically, it is positively Marxist to make of motives reason to ignore arguments.
For the record, being the only one of the two of us who has read anything the man has written, it is my judgement that his nationalist sympathies likely colour his interpretations but that the essential thesis remains unsullied. Russia plays a rather incidental role even in his revised history.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Bernie, you constantly misunderstand the wellsprings of the human intellect. If it wasn't for the very worst instincts nothing would ever get done. Look at yourself! Such a noble creature! Such a lack of original insight!
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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But Fomenko states that the Bronze age could not have happened before the 12th century because the capabilities of extracting tin were not present........ how can he make this assumption?? Why could tin not have been used in bronze making before his stated last millenium??
This was the first part of Fomenko's argument that I researched and I found people alleging that it was quite simple to extract and utilise tin, thus creating bronze..........
I don't know if this is simple or complex, but if it is simple and feasible then why does he state that it was NOT possible??
_________________
Question everything!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Pulp History wrote: | | I don't know if this is simple or complex, but if it is simple and feasible then why does he state that it was NOT possible?? |
I've never been a blacksmith so I simply ignored this argument. It would be interesting to discover if there's merit to Fomenko's point but it is a minor detail in a case better-established by other evidence -- evidence that I am in a position to judge.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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An excellent point. Few historians are blacksmiths. Few historians share any skills with the people they purport to be characterising. Except of course the chroniclers. There, alas, they share all too many characteristics.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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And this is where knowledge has to move from being personally discovered to being 'accepted' from an 'expert' ..... if I don't know the process of tin extraction and usage in bronze manufacture, then I have to accept the 'knowledge' of either an orthodox reconstruction archaeologist who makes metal items on his weekends for fun, or Ishamel's knowledge that this point is irrelevant......... I just chose one of Fomenko's arguments at random and discovered that there are 'experts' alleging that it is a simple and repeatable process.
The truth is out there!
_________________
Question everything!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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It is a rare fool who will publish a foolish argument so easily deconstructed by any old fool. I am therefore suspicious of those who allege Fomenko to be such a rare fool.
My position is favoured by the laws of probability -- the Applied Epistemologist's primary measuring rod.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| As I say above this cannot occur in an active and lived in site, so explaining why, when sites are excavated, they are such shallow affairs. All this really can tell us is the depth of soil ABOVE the dig can give a clue as to the length of time a site has been disused. Or am I missing something too?? |
Yes, a clue, at best.
At the risk of repeating myself:
The Long Man of Wilmington was dated to the 16th century, but the investigation (on telly) was a complete sham. A section though the soil, all the way down to the chalk bedrock, showed a layer of small chalk chips that they reckoned probably dated from the original cutting of the figure. But they only looked at the foot of the hill, immediately below the figure, so there is no telling how widespread these chippings are. And what if they're just from one-of-who-knows-how-many recarvings of the figure?
The carbon dating results don't help: the soil around the chips came out at about 500 years old, but this was from about half way down, between the surface and the bedrock. Is there only a thousand year's worth of soil there? Or is it 50 years per inch at the top and 5000 years per inch at the bottom (about 18 inches below)?
An awful lot is left to be desired in the specific case of the Long Man and in the general case of soil dynamics.
Definitely repeating myself:
Carbon dating works on the assumption that living organisms process ambient carbon through their systems until the moment they die, whereafter the only mechanism that changes the ratio of C14 to C12 is radioactive decay.
That's all very well when you can clearly distinguish the dead organism from the surrounding material, but not otherwise. Hence, as we have mentioned before, bog bodies permeated by peaty water need extra consideration. I don't think we have mentioned before that, prima facie, soil can not be carbon dated either.
The result, shown on telly, that the Wilmington Long Man was probably carved about 500 years ago sticks in my craw; and now for a new reason: the soil is alive.
It was assumed that a carbon date for the soil around a layer of chalk chips would represent the time the chips fell to the ground, but
a) even if beetles and worms were picked out, the soil is laced with living funguses, bacteria and whathaveyou; and
b) soil is not inert and stratified: grass doesn't die and form a mat for the next layer of growth; objects can be pushed up or pulled down by the action of worms and roots and weather and pedestrians...
So who knows how to look up what is known about the life and circulation of the soil, including how far and how fast objects can be transported around in it? For all we know, the chips at Wilmington have been migrating up from the bedrock for a thousand years... or down from the surface for a decade... or percolated down from the hilltop under the surface...
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Few historians are blacksmiths. Few historians share any skills with the people they purport to be characterising. Except of course the chroniclers. There, alas, they share all too many characteristics. |
Chroniclers were mostly (always?) churchmen, they'd take the side of a) the church and b) the ruling elite, wouldn't they? Which "characteristics" are you thinking of?
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I was reading some Fomenko and this part made me laugh out loud:
| The ancient Plato is supposed to have been the founding father of Platonism. His teaching allegedly falls into oblivion for centuries to come, and is revived by the famous Neoplatonist Plotin, allegedly in 205-270 A.D. The similarity of his name to that of his teacher is purely accidental, of course. Then Neoplatonism perishes as well, in order to be revived again in the XV century A.D. by another famous Platonist - Gemisto Pleton, whose name is also identical to that of his teacher as a result of sheer coincidence. |
If this is what orthodoxy believes, it is quite funny.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Rocky wrote: | | If this is what orthodoxy believes, it is quite funny. |
It is the tip of the proverbial iceburg! Keep reading. If you can.
(I had to take breaks to absorb the psychic shock!).
Here is Pleton's bio at Wiki. Note the similarities between his bio and that of Plato.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemistus_Pletho
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Plato's teacher was Socrates. Not that much is known about Socrates.
Plotin's teacher was Saccas. Not that much is known about Saccas.
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