History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

The Book of the City of Ladies (Penguin Classics)

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A different point of view
Pizan (a woman ahead of her time)
A Fortress from Frustration
"Une généalogie au féminin"
Witty and revealing look at a period primary source

The Book of the City of Ladies (Penguin Classics)
Christine de Pizan
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140446893

Book Description

A new translation of one of medieval Europe's most remarkable feminist texts.

In The Book of the City of Ladies France's first professional woman of letters confronted head-on the misogyny of fourteenth-century Europe. Here, with the help of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, Christine de Pizan constructs an allegorical city in which to defend womankind, using examples of female virtue and achievement both from the past and her own day as the stones with which to build the city's walls and towers.

This key text in the history of feminism not only provides powerful positive images of women--ranging from warriors, inventors, and scholars to prophetesses, artists, and saints--but also offers fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture, which viewed female nature as wholly given up to vice. This Penguin Classics edition also includes a superb Introduction that sets the work within its historical and intellectual context, annotations, a Glossary, and a Bibliography.
The Book of the City of Ladies is the sequel to The Treasure of the City of Ladies: Or, The Book of Three Virtues
Translated with an Introduction by Rosalind Brown-Grant

Customer Reviews:

A different point of view.......2006-04-14

This book is, in many ways, very close to other written in the Middle Ages: a list of good or bad women or men from the past, joined together around an idea: loyal wifes, or martyrs, or good rulers,... this is something very common that can be read, for instance, in Triomphi by Francesco Petrarca. But the original thing is that it was written by a woman and from a feminine point of view, trying to show that women are not those monsters some male writters showed -not all of them-. Some things she says are so actual and refreshing!! For instance, she rejects that stupid idea some men had that women like being raped and when they say no, they don't mean it,... isn't it something that still can be heard today?
The stories are not original, some of them can be read in Petrarca, or Chaucer or Boccaccio, with no great differences. For instance the story of Griselda can be found in Boccaccio's Decameron, Petrarca translated into Latin, and appears as one of the Canterbury Tales and in Christine's City of Dames.
The bottom line in this book is, for me, that if men were perfect, women would be perfect as well, but meanwhile, we are just human beings with our defects and virtues, and we should try to behave correctly.
Apart from that, I appreciate a book that shows what the Middle Ages were, now that everybody has got a very Romantic idea of it, full of mysteries and terrible secrets kept by the templarians or the cathars, about graals and esoteric forces,... Christine, as Boccaccio and Chaucer, or the poet Villon show the real Middle Ages: Christine is studying and suddenly, her mother calls her to supper, people goes on pilgrimages but they drink a lot of ale on their way and get drunken so they fight among them, and they do think, not about secret esoteric mysteries but about real things: should or should not women receive an education, how can we live a good life, how women and husbands must talk and treat to each other, ...

Pizan (a woman ahead of her time).......2005-10-30

In this book, Pizan is acting as a voice for women. She was a widow with several kids who made a living by writing-an uncommon occurance for women in Medieval Europe. One could consider her a feminist of her day. However, unlike contemporary feminism, she never stated that the woman was equal to the man. She was only trying to say that women are not as bad as the man says they are. Still, this ideology was a kind of vignette into more Rennaisance ways of thinking.

A Fortress from Frustration.......2004-07-02

THE BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES by Christine de Pizan is an allegory written in the early 1400s as an effort to defend womankind from spurious attacks by the male gender. The BOOK itself serves as the city, the protection and community of good women who show that the defamatory collective statements about women (they are greedy, they are inconstant, they are not chaste, etc.) are not true.

De Pizan was born in 1365 in Venice. When she was a small child, the French King Charles V gave her father a position at his court (he served as astrologer). The family's close ties to the court afforded Christine a good education, which was unusual at the time (and opposed by her mother). Though the family's fortunes faded, Christine made a happy marriage and had three children. When her husband died in 1389, de Pizan turned to writing to make her living. She became a highly respected voice on the status of women.

The book is structured around three ladies of heaven coming to visit Christine and charging her with building the City of Ladies. Christine has just been reading a book by Mathéolus, who is deeply critical of womankind, and Christine is upset and discouraged. The women are Reason, Rectitude and Justice. While they help her build and populate the city, Christine asks them to defend womenkind against various charges she hears brought against women, and they do so, each getting her own book of the work. The responses are examples of women in history, some biblical, some historical, some mythological (but these are explained by the Christian Christine as being real women whose fame was so renowned that their societies thought they were goddesses and began to worship them). Interestingly, she retells some women's histories differently: Medea is a woman who deeply loved her husband, the same with Socrates' wife.

The book has an extensive index, which is helpful, because one learns so much about so many different women. Nearly ever vignette could be turned into a novel, a la THE RED TENT. The section by Justice at the end is the most monotonous, as it is basically a Lives of the Saints about the virgin martyrs, and their stories are nearly all the same: Some man wants Virgin Martyr X. She doens't want him. He tricks and entreats her. She says no. He has her tortured (usually her breasts are pulled off). She withstands torture due to God's help (she sings out of a pot of boiling water into which she is placed head first; 12 men tire of beating her, but still she is unhurt). God calls her home and she dies happily.

I think the first two sections (which are longer than the last) are very interesting historically and I was happy to read particularly of Lavinia and Margaret (my mother's names) and Anastasia (like my name). The Women of Heaven make the point often that men's behavior in the world puts them in no position to criticize women. The book would make a nice kind of "devotional" or meditative reading source, a woman for each day, or something like that, if you didn't want to read it all at once.

The sad thing is that women, as a whole, still endure these ridiculous criticisms. If you tire, like Christine, of hearing these baseless charges, you may want to retire to the BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES.

"Une généalogie au féminin".......2002-05-20

LA CITE DES DAMES was one of the first medieval books I have read (but I am by no means an expert in the area... yet!), and I recommend it to not only those interested in this period, but also for those interested in what we would call "women's studies," historiography, or similar endeavors.

It is filled with many interesting stories from ancient times to Christine's own time, which also makes the book a pretty entertaining (and sometimes even humorous) account of the historic figures it discusses. Christine herself was an amazing person, so if you buy it, be sure not to skip the introduction - especially if you are unfamiliar with medieval writings: Some of the ideas presented (and how they are presented) are much different than how we would think in modern times, so it is important to familiarize yourself with things like massive over-proving (which may end up being tedious to the unsuspecting reader), Christine's view on marriage, and literary conventions that would perhaps seem very silly to us now, but worked well 600 years ago. Basically, when reading this book, if you keep in mind the context in which it was written, you should be able to appreciate it and like it just as I have.

(by the way -- the book I read was not the Penguin edition, but rather the 1998 English translation by Earl Richards, ISBN 0892552301, so unless you're planning on extensive criticism, you should be okay with this version).

Witty and revealing look at a period primary source.......2001-07-15

Christine falls asleep while contemplating why women in her society get such a bad rap, and has a long dream about exemplary women and their characteristics.

Did you ever wonder why we just accept that women in the Middle Ages were considered demons in disguise? Christine tells us all about what she thinks of that concept and of those who insist on spreading such maliciousness, all in an engaging story full of examples of brave, courageous, intelligent, pious, beautiful, generous women. The book was written to dispel some of the nastier slanders then current about women, but it's still good reading today.

I confess that during the part about martyrs I wandered off a bit (it is some gruesome stuff in places), but as a period source, it's definitely one every history maven ought to have. Christine is intelligent, observant, and witty; her writing fairly sparkles with indignation over the treatment of women and her sardonic amusement at those men spreading those lies. While hyper-Catholic and in places highly allegorical (and in many places its version of "history" is highly questionable, of course), it is an essential look at a time period where women didn't often make their views known in written form.

Customer Reviews:

well...........2002-05-16

i read this book at a point when i wanted to graduate with honors at my university and had to read like 20 or so "great" books. i had never heard of this book, but it was on the list, so i picked it up and began reading it. i was honestly surprised by the beginning of the book, which started well. but then, honestly, i began to snicker a bit as i kept reading it. a valiant and honorable effort by Ms. depizan to bring women's rights to the discussion in a time when women were treated quite inhumane.

Great book and great fun.......2001-02-14

This is the third time I write a review for this book. The previous reviews never made it. Here I go again:

From an age when women were expected to play a silent and obedient supporting role, Christine de Pizan demonstrates that intelligence and grace are very useful allies. One of the first women that we know of to write professionally in order to make a living, Christine's life was a mixture of privilege and loss. Her "Book of the City of Ladies" is definitely our net gain, though, since we can appreciate the beauty of well-applied talent. The author set out to write a history of women from the female perspective, giving us a different view of many famous (plenty of them mythical) women who have served as scapegoats for damaging stereotypes that perpetuated misogyny in traditional history, literature, and philosophy. Thus, Pizan deals with Queen Dido in a manner different to that adopted by Virgil, and Lavinia --who does not say a word in "The Aeneid"-- rules as a queen according to this "Book of the City of Ladies." Medea receives some help from Pizan's editing (there is no mention of the princess of Colchis killing her children to punish Jason), Circe gets in just 14 lines far better press than with Homer, and even female characters from Boccaccio's "Decameron," like Ghismonda and Lisabetta, are described from subtly better angles, particularly Lisabetta, who proves to be an intelligent woman who uses deduction to find out what had happened to her lover, and doesn't need a ghost to tell her, as in the "Decameron."

Pizan's book is a pleasure to read. I recommend a certain background in some of the works she based her own text ("Odyssey" by Homer, "Aeneid" by Virgil, "Metamorphoses" by Ovid, some of the classical Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the "Decameron" by Boccaccio, etc.), in order to better understand the author's point in writing such a book. I was fortunate anough to have gone through a Fall 2000 quarter when I had to read these works, plus others. For the more casual, although discriminating reader, Christine de Pizan should be a new, welcome light over known subjects. It is interesting to note that her book had not been translated into English since 1521, a neglect of 461 years until this 1982 version by Earl Jeffrey Richards. This neglect speaks eloquently about the attitudes sorrounding a woman's attempt at writing her version of history. Read Christine. She will not disappoint you.

Will women be admitted to a city of ladies?.......2000-06-15

Christine de Pizan's book is very interesting from historic and literary perspectives. This defense of virtuous women, who are drawn primarily from Chrisitian and Classical mythology, is an important work from the first European woman to support herself by writing. Although her ideas may seem conservative and outdated, and may disappoint modern feminists, but they are interesting and intelligent

If you are a student of women's history - you MUST read this.......1998-02-06

When Christine de Pizan wrote The Book of The City of Ladies, her intention was to defend women from attacks brought on by a popular novel called The Romance of the Rose. In TBOTCOL she defends a woman's right to education, soverienty, and justice. She brings up points such as why women are not responsible for rape, why women are equals in intellect to men, and why women are also warriors. To illustrate her point she uses for examples great women of Christian and Classical History and her own conversations with Reason, Justice, and Rectitude. Mind you, this was written some 90 years before Columbus landed in the Americas, but her message still rings true today. The translation is wonderful and accessible.

La senora de la caja de carton: The Lady in the Box, Spanish Edition

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La senora de la caja de carton: The Lady in the Box, Spanish Edition
Ann McGovern
Manufacturer: Turtle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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It is wintertime in the city and freezing cold, but not everyone is inside and warm. Ben and his sister Lizzie know that there is a lady who lives outside in a box over a warm air vent. The children worry about the kind-looking lady, and begin sneaking food and clothes out of their apartment for her. Gently told and powerfully illustrated in rich hues, The Lady in the Box deals candidly with the issue of homelessness.

The American Lady and the Lady of London Paper Dolls

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The American Lady and the Lady of London Paper Dolls
Museum of the City of New York
Manufacturer: Dover Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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THE BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES

Manufacturer: Persea
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H1WF6Y

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The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan
Manufacturer: Persea, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VZB2E2

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The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine De Pizan; Translator Earl Jeffrey Richards; Foreword Marina
Manufacturer: PERSEA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLFP1Y

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Book of the City of Ladies
Christine De Pizan
Manufacturer: QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOKCLUB
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UDZJHG

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The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan
Manufacturer: Persea Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000BRQU7Y

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