Originally posted by
bsbray
I find a lot of this stuff interesting Aianawa but I get the feeling that a lot of these themes (invented Dark Ages, related cultures, more technology in the past, etc.) is better explained by Fomenko's work with the New Chronology than what this guy is saying. There are a few reasons I say this, which I will explain below.
The first reason is, what he is claiming would require a gargantuan amount of research that is hard to fathom, in order to make so many claims about such a wide range of history as hard and fast as he does. This guy looks like he's in his 30's-40's. By comparison, Fomenko has been researching his New Chronology for about as long as this guy has been alive (since the 1970's), with a team of colleagues at Moscow State University and help from elsewhere, and though they reach similar conclusions about a few things, they are much more cautious about saying "this is definitely what happened." Being very honest and transparent about the nature of the evidence, what we do know and don't know, is very important for academic integrity.
The second reason is, I can't find any clear methodology by which he has reached the conclusions that he has. His favorite source seems to be Wikipedia, but he doesn't cite independent sources for most of specific facts that he claims. He just links to Wikipedia articles for various words and names in his articles. This is not only bad research practice but it means anyone trying to actually verify his conclusions would have to do his research all over again just because he was too lazy to list his sources as he found them. Again, to compare with Fomenko, the bibliography for his History: Science or Fiction? series contains references to about 1,500 books, articles, papers, etc., and he tells you on exactly what page to find the information he is citing. That way you don't have to try to redo his research from scratch to see that he really did find all of this information from credible sources. This is what all good researchers are trained to do. Without that I basically have to take the guy on his word and I'm not prepared to do that.
The third reason is that Fomenko and his colleagues not only cite their sources but lay out a very compelling argument in detail, step by step, in their books. It's clear what can be safely concluded and what is still speculative, because there is transparency and honesty with what evidence is available and how it is interpreted. Fomenko and his colleagues also use an unusual methodology that they go over in detail, statistical analysis of primary source texts, that in itself is also very compelling. This is where they compare the lengths of reigns of rulers from various periods as well as the relative amount of literary material dedicated to specific periods and events, and find that certain periods are "mirror images" or duplications of other periods of history. The duplications are most likely based on fairly recent events, for example from around the 1300's to 1500's, and then erroneously dated (with changes of names and places -- easily accomplished by borrowing versions from other languages and cultures) to much earlier periods. This is a better documented and more satisfactory explanation as far as I'm concerned, and explains many of the same things. Researching what was actually covered up by all of this would probably explain just about everything else, given that there is enough surviving evidence.