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In 2007, Vyacheslav Alekseevich Lopatin wrote The Scaliger Matrix [Russian]. (Full Russian title: Вячеслав Алексеевич Лопатин: Матрица Скалигера. Вся мировая история насквозь фальшивая! [On the book cover: "Scaliger's Matrix. All of world history is completely false!" on the title page subtitled as: (Как сочинялась история) (How history was made up)], OLMA Media Group: Moscow, 2007.)

He argues that history was re-written around the the early 19th century, and the dates for even before around the 17th Century are incorrect. He provides an alternative history, perhaps in the tradition of Fomenko's new chronology.

The author uses numerology to show that the dates of similar events in different times are linked.

For example:

Alexei Mikhailovich - Ivan the Terrible (page 60)

Year 1 Event 1 Year 2 Event 2 Difference in years
1629 Birth of Alexei 1530 Ivan's birth 99
1634 The death of the famous boyar and governor Mikhail Shein 1544 The death of the boyar and roundabout Yuri Shein 90
1646 The wedding of Alexei to the kingdom 1547 Ivan's wedding to the kingdom 99
1648 Convocation of the Zemsky Sobor 1549 Convocation of the first Zemsky Sobor 99
1649 Publication of the Code - a new set of laws 1550 Publication of "Sudebnik" 99
1651 Death of son Dmitry 1553 Death of son Dmitry 99
1654 The capture of Polotsk by Russian troops 1563 The capture of Polotsk by Russian troops 90
1654 Establishment of the Order of Secret Affairs 1565 Oprichnina institution 90
1654 The birth of Alexei's son Alexei 1554 The birth of Ivan's son Ivan 99
1656 The beginning of the war in Livonia with Sweden 1557 Beginning of the Livonian War 99
1658 Break with favorite Patriarch Nikon 1559 Break with favorite priest Sylvester 99
1670 Death of Tsarevich Alexei 1581 Death of Tsarevich Ivan 90
1671 The new marriage of Tsar Alexei 1572 The new marriage of Tsar Ivan 99
1671 The capture of Astrakhan by the tsarist troops 1554 The capture of Astrakhan by the tsarist troops 117
1671 Suppression of the Cossack rebellion by Stepan Razin 1572 Defeat of the Devlet Giray horde on the banks of Lopasna and Rozhai 99

Philip IV - Philip I (page 110)

Year 1 Event 1 Year 2 Event 2 Difference in years
1268 Birth of Philip 1052 Birth of Philip 216
1285 Philip becomes king of France 1060 Philip becomes king of France 225
1303 The pope excommunicates Philip from the church 1096 The pope excommunicates Philip from the church 207
1304 The French army invades Flanders 1071 The French army invades Flanders 234
1305 The beginning of the reign in Flanders of Robert III 1071 The beginning of the reign in Flanders of Robert I 234
1314 Philip's death 1108 Philip's death 207

The gap between similar events always has a numerological indicator of 9 (99,9+9=18 and 1+8=9 , 117, 1+1+7=9)

The author presents numerous other examples between numerous other monarchs.

The author denies archaeology as a complete fabrication, as well as radiocarbon dating and other scientific dating methods.

Are these claims true and what are the odds of getting these numerology results, given that the premise is false?

BAngOs
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    Hi, welcome to the community. The way to proceed here would be, you choose specific examples and ask about them one at a time. For example, here is a detailed question and answer to radiocarbon dating https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42406/are-results-of-carbon-dating-cross-referenced-by-other-methods . Linking to website makes a detailed response difficult because each argument needs to analyzed separately. – OrigamiEye Jun 05 '22 at 13:06
  • I can recall reading that the terminology used for assigning dates changed roughly 1000 years ago. – Daniel R Hicks Jun 05 '22 at 13:22
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    "Are these claims true" - can you be more specific? My priors would be: "The numerology calculations are completely true" because it is easy to find such values though cherry-picking and "The claim that the historical dates are systemically incorrect is total nonsense", but an answerer should not have to check every numerology calculation to answer the question. – Oddthinking Jun 06 '22 at 00:54
  • "what are the odds of this happening ?" This isn't a clear question either. I think you are asking "What are the odds of getting these numerology results, given that the premise is false?" but that excludes the premise being true. – Oddthinking Jun 06 '22 at 00:56
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    @RebeccaJ.Stones: I have to put my hand up, and admit that was my word choice, not the OPs. I agree, "systematically" sounds better to my ear, and I have changed it. – Oddthinking Jun 06 '22 at 01:14
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    Where do the pictures/tables come from? Please properly reference your sources. Searching this with Latin script mainly reveals SEO-farming sites to me. For both reasons, I think it might be helpful to include the Cyrillic orignal (to avoid transcription errors) & a more authoritative link to where the book is published (or is it: 'at that website? Amazon eg seems to put the father's name 'Alexeyevich(?)' to the expected middle osition: "V. A. Lopatin: 'Matritsa Skaligera', 2007 978-5373003063". – LangLаngС Jun 06 '22 at 01:34
  • Publisher says~: 'Author … does not aim to present yet another coherent theory to appease the agitated minds of seekers of historical truth. Doesn't give a single answer to questions about the past &-> does not form new stereotypes. Already plenty of fad theories are created within "alternative history", often even serving many good purposes — satisfying patriotic thirst, raising national self-esteem, providing rich food for greedy imagination, decorating everyday life — rarely do they bring the reader closer to the truth. Author asks traditional history questions to which he has no answers." – LangLаngС Jun 06 '22 at 01:52
  • The first table seems an English version of the table in the book on pp101–102 and the second seems to correspond to p191. Cf eg https://www.google.com/books/edition/Матрица_Скалигера/CY_8VxABlBkC?hl=en&gbpv=1 – LangLаngС Jun 06 '22 at 02:17
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    I note that the [Wikipedia page on Fomenko's work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko)) mentions a "Joseph Justus Scaliger" as blamed for much of the "manufactured chronology". So the title of this book would seem to be a direct reference to the same conspiracy theory. – IMSoP Jun 06 '22 at 15:34
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    I'm not sure how someone can simultaneously argue that dates before the 17th century are incorrect and *also* that those dates match up in significant ways to dates after that time. Maybe it's worth separating this into two questions: one about the numerological parallels and one about the fabrication of dates? – Bobson Jun 07 '22 at 06:59
  • "The gap between similar events always has a numerological indicator of 9 (99,**9+9=9**, 117, 1+1+7=9)" – If the author's whole argument really rests on the fact that 9+9 = 9, they will be very disappointed to find out that 9+9 is actually 18. – Jörg W Mittag Jun 07 '22 at 08:29
  • @Jörg W Mittag he adds up 9 and 9 and gets 18 and 1+8 is 9. I forgot to add that, sorry. – BAngOs Jun 07 '22 at 10:50
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    @Bobson: I *don't* understand the whole claim, but I *suspect* the argument is "Here are two people whose details match numerologically, so they were in fact the same person, and the years in between didn't exist." – Oddthinking Jun 07 '22 at 12:13
  • @Bobson See the linked Wikipedia article. The conspiracy theory this appears to be based on is that real events in history were "duplicated" in chronologies, so that what mainstream historians claim were separate people were actually the same person "copied and pasted" into a different part of the timeline. The numerology is presumably "evidence" that this was deliberate, because the gaps are "meaningful". – IMSoP Jun 07 '22 at 14:21

1 Answers1

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This is a sketch of an answer looking only at the Philips, and mostly relies upon facts and dates from Wikipedia, though I did check some details against C.M. Yonge's "History of France"

Are these claims true

The bald historical facts appear to be correct (e.g. there was both a Philip I and a Philip IV of France) although some of the dates are different, e.g. for Philip I:

  • WP gives coronation as 1059, sole titular ruler from 1060 after his father's death but with his mother as regent, and full kingship only in 1066 when he turned 14. That gives three dates to pick from: the Lopatin book uses 1060.
  • WP gives Philip I's excommunication as 1095 not 1096 with the notes "several times the ban was lifted as Philip promised to part with Bertrade, but he always returned to her",
  • the table shows the difference of 1071 and 1304 as 234, but also 1071 and 1305 as 234. One could conjecture that the author was rounding the days or months to get this result but since the event "invading Flanders" is imprecisely described (first scout crosses border? main army? formal declaration of war? battle joined?)

and what are the odds of this happening ?

The numerology used gives better than a one-in-nine chance of "significance". Add a variation of +/- one year to the end points and the odds would improve to better than five-in-nine. The choice of events measured is also a factor: for the Philips only six events are presented including birth and death, chosen somehow from their rich lives (Philip I had six children by a wife and mistress, Philip IV seven by his wife, both were involved in multiple military campaigns including crusades and papal spats). One might conjecture that none of this appears because Lopatin couldn't get an interesting numerological result.

Tom Goodfellow
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    I've been thinking about how this question could be answered, but my answers are entirely hand-wavey rather than references. I think the fact that one-in-nine numbers (ignoring zero) meet the criteria is a key concept here, and *should be referenced*. I think the birthday paradox is another key concept that you don't mention. (i.e. Just between the 50 kings of France, you should expect there to be 15 pairs (50*(50-1)/2/(9*9)) with both birth and death dates meeting the criteria - from there you can cherry pick more facts. But I can't make that an answer. :-( – Oddthinking Jun 07 '22 at 12:11
  • @Oddthinking You encourage theoretical inferences with that (cargo-cult referencing?). Imo: The key is 1st improve the Q, as neither 'the theory' of it, nor its key concepts, nor even what exactly these tables should mean are made clear in the Q. I started to read that book at various pages, find tables & messed up narrative, no thread, no stringency, as mirrored in Q: that lacks a meaningful quote (or expl of the tables), not matching the wide Q-title. If you know what the 'French table' means, (what should follow from the numbers; what's "linked", how?) you should edit the Q accordingly. – LangLаngС Jun 08 '22 at 13:45
  • @LangLаngС: *shrug* Cargo cult referencing? Theoretical inferences? I do not understand your complaint. I encourage you to avoid cryptic abbreviations and flowery analogies in your communications with me. The OP claims that the original claimant uses the numerological technique of adding digits of a large number together to get a smaller one, repeatedly, and them declares these original numbers to be special because they reach a value of 9. This answer claims that is true of 1 in 9 large numbers. There are simple mathematical proofs of this, and such a proof should be cited. – Oddthinking Jun 08 '22 at 14:16
  • @Oddthinking And _what_ is special about this numerology/numbers? What follows from them for 'the timeline', why does that lead anyone to conclude 'all history (or chronology) is false? Just doing math & stats on these tables lets them hang in the air? The claim in Qtitle seems utterly unconnected to the tables in Qbody. Thus, there is no claim in Q, and this A cannot answer any such a Q. So, why 'reference' any birthday paradox', when we have no claim but just a mess; & why ref any basic math to tackle a non-claim? That's theory competition, where your rules demand 'evidence'. – LangLаngС Jun 08 '22 at 14:27
  • @LangLangC: I have already commented on the question, pointing out there are two separate claims. in the question. I can't say if the original claimant linked them, because I haven't any inclination to read any more of the book. This answer only addresses one, but it still needs references. – Oddthinking Jun 08 '22 at 15:05