Mathematical Methods in the Study of Historical Chronology

S ome ancient and medieval historical dates we learn in school may stick in our minds: 1193 BC (the fall of Troy), 753 BC (the founding of Rome), AD 1 (the birth of Jesus), or AD 1066 (the battle of Hastings), to mention just a few. Most of us take these dates for granted, but are they correct? Anatoli Fomenko, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences, finds them fictitious and promotes an alternative chronology that often differs from tradition by more than a millennium [1]. The concerns about the correctness of ancient and medieval dates are not new. Isaac Newton also opposed them. In his last book, which he finished preparing for publication just before his death, he argued that ancient Greek history should be about 300 years shorter than claimed [9]. Since the global chronology is based on the Greek chronology, the foundation of its edifice appears to be shaky. It is thus natural to ask how historical events were dated, why they are controversial, and if mathematics might play any role in raising or solving these problems. To lay the background towards throwing some light on these questions, let us first make an incursion into the origins of history’s timetables. The material that follows is based on [1], the second edition of a book originally published by Knopf Canada.