I understand that certain topics can be a "hot-button" and we, of all people know the harsh realities of historical fact, but we need to keep in mind the spirit of this thread, and that's history through the eyes of people who have no real grasp of history.
That being said, there is a Russian mathematician by the name of Anatoly Fomenko who claims that the Roman Empire never existed. In his writings, he claims that such works by Homer, Pliny, Cicero and such were the fabrications of Benedictine Monks in the middle ages and goes on to say that western civilization actually dates to A.D. 800.
Here are some of his claims:
- Archaeological dating, dendrochronological dating, paleographical dating, numismatic dating, carbon dating, and other methods of dating of ancient sources and artifacts known today are erroneous, non-exact or dependent on traditional chronology.
- No single document in existence can be reliably dated earlier than the 11th century. Most "ancient" artifacts may find other than consensual explanation.
- Histories of Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were crafted during the Renaissance by humanists and clergy - mostly on the basis of documents of their own making.
- The Old Testament represents a rendition of events of the 14th to 16th centuries AD in Europe and Byzantium, containing "prophecies" about "future" events related in the New Testament, a rendition of events of AD 1152 to 1185.
- The history of religions runs as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the 11th century and the birth of Jesus), Bacchic Christianity (11th and 12th centuries, before and after the life of Jesus), Christianity (12th to 16th centuries) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam.
- The Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy, traditionally dated to around AD 150 and considered the cornerstone of classical astronomy, was compiled in 16th and 17th centuries from astronomical data of the 9th to 16th centuries.
- All major inventions like powder and guns, paper and print occurred in Europe in the period between the 10th and the 16th centuries.
- Ancient Roman and Greek statues, showing perfect command of the human anatomy, are fakes crafted in the Renaissance, when artists attained such command for the first time.
- There was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by over two centuries of yoke and slavery, because the so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Turkic spoken as freely as Russian. So, Russia and Turkey once formed parts of the same empire. This ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities and the hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). The Mongol "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions of the empire that attempted tax evasion. Tamerlane was probably a Russian warlord.
- Official Russian history is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scholars brought to Russia to legitimize the usurping Romanov dynasty (1613–1917).
There have been other "scholars" that dwell on the fringe of mainstream thinking that have tried to push similar theories in the past, but this Fomenko guy has published writings titled "New Chronology" where he goes on to "explain" all of this in great detail and seems to be gathering quite a following.
And kids, THIS is a perfect example of why you NEVER sniff model glue...