Mia Mulder & Fomenko’s New Chronology

We all have things that we find endlessly fascinating, and for me, one of those things is Fomenko’s New Chronology. This is what brought me to the channel of the Swedish YouTuber historian Mia Mulder.^[1] She posted a video about Fomenko’s New Chronology earlier this month (in June 2022) and I have some comments about it.^[2]

To begin, the title of her video is false. Fomenko’s New Chronology does not say that history isn’t real. This aside, her video is a little bit over an hour long, and the first 40ish minutes of it is a preamble that doesn’t mention Fomenko’s New Chronology at all. Skipping past that intro, let’s hear her opening:

@38:52 – “New Chronology is a conspiracy theory proposed by a man called Anatoly Fomenko. New Chronology is a conspiracy theory that states that all of human history is more recent than we might think.”

It’s true that the conspiracy theory is mainly associated with Anatoly Fomenko, hence the Fomenko in Fomenko’s New Chronology, but it does not state that all of human history is more recent than we might think (human history being everything that’s ever happened to humanity). Fomenko argues that “we know more or less what happened” after 1650,^[3] and this date serves as a loose cut-off point for revision. This is less severe than the Last-Thursdayistic picture Mia painted.

@39:07 – “The ancient dates and events of the ancient world going back as far as 3, 4 thousand years ago actually took place in the middle ages…”

Wait, wait, wait. Where is this coming from? What source is Mia pulling this info out of? As of right now, it’s:

“Source(s): Dude trust me”

I think what’s going on here is that Mia is parroting the information from the Wikipedia page for Fomenko’s New Chronology. She uses similar wording and follows a similar structure. “Proposed by [a man called] Anatoly Fomenko”, “Actually occurred [i.e., took place] in the middle ages”.^[4]

In the quest to become properly-informed on a topic, it’s important to pay attention to where your information originated. From what I’ve seen, it is not common practice for YouTubers to share their sources. If you’re lucky, they’ll drop a collection of links they used for their content so you can try to sort out where a piece of info maybe came from. This lack of citation isn’t problematic for those who just wish to be entertained, but it is a problem for those who want to fact check, or for those who want more context about how the sources were used.

Mia says a bibliography is on the way but it has yet to appear, so for now it’s just “Source(s): Dude trust me”.

As for the last clip from her, and despite what Wikipedia would have you believe, Fomenko’s New Chronology does not argue that events from the ancient world took place in just the middle ages. It is more nuanced than that. As mentioned before, Fomenko’s cut off point is around the mid-17th century, which is well into the early-modern period, and well-after the end of the middle ages. To give some examples, he places the Ancient Rome described by Josephus in 17th century Moscow,^[5] and dates many allegedly ancient horoscopes to the early modern period.^[6]

Let’s continue.

@39:16 – “…it’s just that historians have seen events around their current times and said that they happened thousands of thousands of years ago.”

Kind of but not really. Fomenko argues that the distorters made three main shifts in the history of human civilization, namely 330 years, 1050 years, and 1800 years.^[7] However, those are just the main shifts. He also argues for smaller distortions, like 100-150 years, as seen in Chapter 5 of his newest book which redates the sources we have for Joan of Arc.^[8]

@39:25 – “In fact, the events of the Old Testament happened just a thousand years ago.”

Maybe my math is a bit off, but I don’t think the 14-1500’s were a thousand years ago. Among other things, Fomenko argues that Noah’s flood is based on the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the late 1400’s,^[9] and that the Biblical Esther was Elena of Moldavia of the early 1500’s.^[10] Both being about 500 years ago, not a thousand.

The next 40 seconds or so of her video is just a rapid-fire list of claims allegedly made by Fomenko. Some of them I know where they are mentioned in his works, but I’m curious about the ones pertaining to writing in Europe, farming in India, and the Mongols being all Russians.

leave out – @39:31 – “This theory has some claims that I’ll get to. But the main overarching theory is that actually all the world’s great empires and events was actually done by the Russian. Or actually an empire called the Russo-Turko-Horde. This sequence of events completely erases the idea that Russian history is in large part due to the Mongol invasions. In actuality, claims Fomenko, they were all Russians. But not only were the Mongolians Russians, the Russians gave the Europeans the skill of writing. It gave the Indians the technology of farming.”

leave out – @40:11 – “Fomenko claims the Roman empire also didn’t exist but was in fact this Russian horde; that the city of Rome was founded just 600 years ago; and that the Roman empire in the 4th century is actually the same as the kingdom of Israel in the year 1000 BCE. He also claims that the Roman empire of the 3rd century is the same as the Holy Roman Empire of the year 1000. He claims that Old England is actually the Byzantine empire, but the first Roman Empire was based somewhere in Egypt. That this Russian horde essentially dominated all of Eurasia. That Islam and Orthodoxy used to be the same religion. That Plato and Platius are the same person. Essentially all great human civilization comes from the Russians.

Skipping past the buckshot, we arrive at Mia’s favorite claim from Fomenko.

@41:03 – “My favorite claim is that Christopher Columbus was actually a Cossack. He bases this idea of this picture of Columbus from 1493 which depicts him wearing a Cossack outfit. Case closed.”

This image is included in the conclusion of Fomenko’s “History: Fiction or Science?” Volume 6, Book 2, Chapter 6, part 12.8. It is much more complex than “look at this one picture, case closed”. Also, nowhere in this section does Fomenko say that Columbus was a Cossack.^[11]

@41:17 – “He also claims that the Russian horde settled the Aztec and Incan civilizations because this one map has a flag with the double-headed eagle on it, and uh, uhhhhh,… evidence.”

This map is found in the same book and chapter, but in part 14.^[11] Again, it is much more complex than just “I found this one map therefore Russian-Horde”.

leave out of video – @41:32 – “Fomenko has also argued that Jesus Christ is actually a Byzantine emperor by the name of Andrionocus Comnenus in the year 1150. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that Jesus is older than that.”

She continues on to mention that Fomenko argues that the story of Jesus Christ from the New Testament is based on the story of the 12th century Byzantine Emperor Andronicus Comnenus. She says,

@41:54 – “This Jesus thing is actually a big element of Fomenko’s work too. For example, he claims that the Latin letter for i which is the first letter in the name of the spelling of Jesus could have been used as an abbreviated version of the full name of Jesus.”

Yes, I wonder where Fomenko could have gotten that idea.

cue music and INRI montage. song: Orff – Carmina Burana: O Fortuna
or
Verdi – Messa da Requim Dies irae

@42:07 – “Which means that the year 1300 might actually have meant i300. That is, 300 years since Jesus written in the Greek way.”

This part comes “History: Fiction or Science?” Vol. 1, Chapter 6, part 13.2.^[13] In this part, Fomenko argues that conflicting calendar styles eventually lead to the creation of a thousand years of history that never happened. The “i300” thing is one of many examples he gives to back this hypothesis.

But enough of that, we have to return to Wikipedia, er, I mean, Mia.

@42:18 – “Using this, as well as similar hints that people can’t read, Fomenko argues that Jesus was born on Crimea in 1152 AD and was crucified in 1185 AD on a hill in modern-day Istanbul. And not only was Jesus and this emperor the same guy, Jesus is also Old Testament prophet Elijah, Pope Gregory VII, Saint Basil of Caesarea, and even Emperor Li Jingzong of the Chinese Empire.”

Fomenko does argue this, but his argument goes far beyond that. Here’s a list of over 100 people who he says are either entirely or partially based on the original Christ figure.^[14]

@42:47 – “He also argues that the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is actually the Temple of Solomon, and that the King Solomon himself is actually Emperor Suleiman the Great. Suleiman, Solomon, it all makes sense.”

Fomenko does argue this about King Solomon (How It Was In Reality, Chapter 6.13). Over the next 10 minutes or so, Mia discusses some of Fomenko’s conspiratorial claims, the predecessors of Fomenko’s New Chronology, and some of the methods created and employed by Fomenko.

At one point in there she says there are 6 main volumes but in reality there are 7. You can find them all for free on the homepage of their website.

Leave out of video

leave out of video – @43:03 – “More specifically he argues that most of human history was actually doctored in the 17th century by historians who dedicatedly want to undermine Russian’s role in the world history. Partly due to malice and partly by accident. Some of these people, allegedly, were backtracking certain historical dates. They saw an event in history and gave them new dates, new events, new names, and so essentially creating a phantom history. The same event multiplied backwards in time.”

@43:38 – She goes over the history of FNC.

@46:31 – “He uses math to prove his theory. There are a lot of volumes that he discusses here. There are six volumes in total. Only some of which have been translated into English, so I’ve only been able to read some of them. And he is using a lot of complicated mathematical equations that I don’t fully understand. I will grant you this.”

“But he argues essentially that eclipses can be traced historically. Earth, the sun, and moon aren’t affected by what humans write down. They will move no matter what and we can actually calculate when they would have happened in the past because they move in a pretty ordered state. Essentially some people in history claims to see eclipses that Fomenko says are mathematically impossible.”

“This is Fomenko’s prime argument for the age of the modern world and he cites it frequently in his volumes.”

@47:29 – She explains using eclipses to date events and how that ties in with FNC.

@49:44 – “Fomenko then uses Newton’s algorithm but not conventionally understood dates for when those eclipses occurred. Instead using the ones by Morozov.” Is this true? Source plz

@50:08 – She talks about the textual analyses.

@53:25 – “But the thing is, this conspiracy theory isn’t like many conspiracy theories in the west. Where a lot of conspiracy theories in the West talk about, you know, if the earth is flat or vaccines give you autism, a lot of those movements are headed by disgraced academics who everyone agrees is disgraced, or by people who are not academics at all.

Include in video

She continues on with a comparison between Western conspiracy theories and Fomenko’s New Chronology. Saying that while the Western ones are typically lead by disgraced academics and quacks, Fomenko’s New Chronology is different because…

@53:52 – “…a lot of people are academics when it comes to New Chronology.”

Show volume 1 pp.xxvi-xxviii – list of contributors and helpers

@53:57 – “Both historians, mathematicians, even people that you normally might not consider to be very quackjobby. For example, Gary Kasparov. That’s right. The chess man himself. Pretty reasonable guy. Enemy of the Russian state as of like two weeks ago as I made this video. He believes in this theory.”

This is false. Kasparov does not believe in Fomenko’s New Chronology and from what I can tell never has. I have an article that lists Kasparov’s statements on New Chronology, and he’s always been critical of Fomenko’s reconstruction, the shortened timeline part, but more open to the idea that history could be wildly different from what’s commonly believed.^[15] The next part of her video is a friend of hers reading some quotes from the article I just cited.

@55:53 – She accuses Kasparov of being disingenuous with his skepticism (says he’s JAQing off).

@56:24 – “Which goes to show that it’s not just people on the fringe. A lot of people, even important people within the Russian spheres are supporters of this theory.”

Which important people are supporters of this? I want a couple names.

@56:24 – “In fact, a survey has shown that up to 30% of Russians have some form of sympathy for New Chronology.”

What survey is that exactly? Mia showed a screenshot of Halperin’s publication from 2011, which is not the survey she’s citing. I’ve gone over this in more depth already,^[16] but simply put, Halperin is citing Tsadikov’s publication from 2001, which is also not the survey, but a reprint of a supposed newspaper from 1999. The entire thing, to me at least, reads as satire, or some type of humorous writing. It claims that the Fomenko from Fomenko’s New Chronology never existed, and that the New Chronology is a hoax made by twin brothers. It also has tales about Russian UFO’s and Fomenko’s anti-Semitic self-circumcision. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Halperin decided to not make any mention of these stories and chose only to make use of the 30% thing. He didn’t even report on it very well, changing multiple elements of the original quote. Here’s the quote in English:

“Meanwhile, analytical agencies gave alarming signals. At least 30% of capable Russians believed in the “New Chronology” irrevocably.”^{[16, 3:17]}

Halperin’s version:

“One commentator … estimated that 30 percent of Russians are sympathetic to the New Chronology.”

Halperin’s version changes analytical agencies into a single commentator, at least 30% of capable Russians into an estimated 30% of just Russians in general, and irrevocably believe into just sympathetic.

Mia version’s further distorts this, but the changes don’t make sense when given only Halperin and Tsadikov’s publications. There’s another source lurking nearby, just out of sight. If I had to take a guess, I’d bet she was parroting Tristan Alphey’s publication from last September,^[17] which I responded to already earlier this year.^[18]

Alphey’s version:

“Halperin notes a survey suggesting up to 30% of the Russian population might be sympathetic to the ‘New Chronology.'”

Even with Halperin’s quote on the screen, Mia still went with Alphey’s version for her script.

Overall, as it stands right now, the 30% statistic is dubious at best, and intentionally fabricated at worst.

@57:16 – And that’s pretty much the end of her presentation on this topic.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mia’s coverage of the New Chronology is mainly a dolled-up version of the New Chronology Wikipedia article. In my experience, this is a pretty standard move for content creators who want to cover New Chronology but don’t know much about it.

I did enjoy watching Mia’s presentation and I encourage her to be thorough with her citations in future videos. It saves a ton of time for anyone curious about where the info is coming from and adds value and integrity to any educational project.

To anyone watching this, if you choose to go over to her channel and comment on her New Chronology video, please do be kind. We all make small mistakes and I don’t think it’s appropriate to bully or harass people over that. I’ve said my piece here mainly to try and slow the spread of the false info, which by looking at her video creeping up to 50k views, is spreading quickly. Also I’ve done this to encourage critical thinking and thorough reporting.

There is one last bit from her video that I wanted to share here:

@59:18 – “While Kasparov is obviously completely wrong in believing that there’s something to Fomenko’s writing he is right that it is important to be skeptical and that lies about history are common today and probably have been common throughout history as well.”

Kasparov is not completely wrong in believing that there’s something to Fomenko’s writings. From my examination so far, the majority of what Fomenko has published is true, even if he gets some core things very wrong.^[19] She is right that skepticism is important, and while she has a hunch that lies about history have been common since time immemorial, she doesn’t seem to me to be too familiar with the academic literature on the topic. If you’re curious about what that literature says, check out this other video of mine.

“A Brief History of Medieval Forgery (but also some modern forgery too)”, 14 Mar. 2022. https://youtu.be/JdeHJTqHgFA.

References:

[1] – YouTube, “Mia Mulder”. https://www.youtube.com/c/MiaMulder/about. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[2] – Mia Mulder. “The Russian Conspiracy Theory That History Isn’t Real | Mia Mulder” (YouTube, 3 Jun. 2022). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eICFmaXyPBY. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[3] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “How It Was In Reality. Preface”. https://chronologia.org/en/how_it_was/preface.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[4] – Wikipedia. “New chronology (Fomenko)”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko). Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[5] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “How It Was In Reality. Chapter 6.40”. https://chronologia.org/en/how_it_was/06_35.html#the640. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[6] – Sorensen, Stephen. “New Chronology Zodiac List” (18 Jan. 2019). https://ctruth.today/2019/01/18/new-chronology-zodiac-list/. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[7] – “FRAGMENTS OF THE GLOBAL CHRONOLOGICAL MAP OF A.T.FOMENKO” http://chronologia.org/en/gcm/index.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[8] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “Mirages of Europe”. https://chronologia.org/kak_mirages/index.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[9] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “How It Was In Reality. Chapter 5.18”. https://chronologia.org/en/how_it_was/05_15.html#the18. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[10] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “How It Was In Reality. Chapter 6.4”. https://chronologia.org/en/how_it_was/06_01.html#the604. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[11] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “Development of America by Russia-Horde”. https://chronologia.org/seven6_2/index.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[12] – The New York Public Library Digital Collections. “Discovery of San Domingo (Insula Hyspana) by Christopher Columbus”. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-1f62-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[13] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “History: Fiction or Science?, Volume 1”. https://chronologia.org/en/seven/chronology1.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[14] – Fomenko, Anatoly. “How It Was In Reality. Chapter 2.18”. https://chronologia.org/en/how_it_was/02_18.html. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[15] – Sorensen, Stephen. “Gary Kasparov and Fomenko’s New Chronology” (11 Oct. 2021). https://ctruth.today/2021/10/11/garry-kasparov-and-fomenkos-new-chronology/. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[16] – Ctruth. “Part 1 – 30% Of Russians Believe In Fomenko’s New Chronology According to Tsadikov (1999)” (10 Jan. 2022). https://youtu.be/nXRNY_vmaG8. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[17] – Alphey, Tristan (An Oxford Historian). “The ‘New Chronology’ – the world’s craziest conspiracy theory” (21 Sept. 2021). https://www.anoxfordhistorian.com/post/the-new-chronology-the-world-s-craziest-conspiracy-theory. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[18] – Ctruth. “Tristan Alphey, AnOxfordHistorian, & Fomenko’s New Chronology” (11 Jan. 2022). https://youtu.be/phU_ir5yANY. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.

[19] – Sorensen, Stephen. “Examining Fomenko’s New Chronology” (1 Oct. 2020). https://ctruth.today/2020/10/01/examining-fomenkos-new-chronology/. Accessed 6 Jun. 2022.