How was the year of Qin Shi Huang's Ascension To The Throne Converted To The Western Julian Calendar?

 

To see how Fomenko’s critique applies to a practical example, we can look at the coronation of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China. 

In standard history textbooks, he formally ascended the throne as the King of the state of Qin in 246 BC (and later unified China as Emperor in 221 BC).

To convert that traditional Chinese record into our modern Julian or Gregorian timeline, standard chronologists use a precise mathematical method—and it is the potential fragility of this exact method that Fomenko exposes in his writings.

1. How the Conversion is Done Traditionally

Ancient Chinese historians did not record dates using a linear, forward-counting calendar (like "the year 246 before Christ"). Instead, they used a combination of two cyclical systems:

• The Imperial Era Names (Nian Hao): Years were counted relative to the ruler's reign. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) by Sima Qian simply records that Qin Shi Huang took the throne in the "1st Year of King Zheng of Qin".

• The Sexagenary Cycle (Ganzhi): A continuous 60-year cyclical loop based on matching 10 "Heavenly Stems" with 12 "Earthly Branches". Every single year, month, and day had a specific 60-year cyclical name.

To lock "1st Year of King Zheng" into 246 BC on the Julian calendar, modern historians work backward using astronomical anchors recorded in the texts. 

For example, Chinese court astronomers meticulously logged solar eclipses, planetary alignments, and comets, noting exactly which day of the 60-year cycle they occurred.

By running modern retrocalculations (astronomical software that calculates where the planets and moon were thousands of years ago), scientists look for a physical match to those unique cosmic events. 

Once they find a perfect astronomical match for a recorded eclipse, they hook that specific Chinese 60-year cycle to a definitive Julian year, and the rest of the dynasties are mapped out linearly from there.

2. How Fomenko Critique the Conversion of Chinese Chronology

In his books, Fomenko extends his critique of Scaliger to ancient Chinese history, raising questions about the security of these dates:

• The "Late Editing" Problem: Fomenko points out that the Shiji (the foundational text detailing Qin Shi Huang's reign) did not survive in an unbroken chain from 246 BC. 

• The oldest surviving physical copies we have are actually highly edited manuscripts from the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties (centuries or millennia later). 

• Fomenko argues that Renaissance-era European Jesuit missionaries (like Matteo Ricci), who traveled to China in the 16th and 17th centuries, actively participated in organizing and editing Chinese chronological records to ensure China’s ancient imperial timelines wouldn't contradict the biblical timeline established by Scaliger.

• Astronomical Mismatches: Just like his work with the NASA parameters, Fomenko claims that if you take the raw, original descriptions of eclipses and star maps from the oldest available Chinese texts and strip away later "corrections," they frequently do not align with 200–300 BC.

• He argues that many of these recorded "ancient" eclipses actually map perfectly to celestial events that happened much later, in the Middle Ages (around 1000–1400 AD).

• The Tyrant Parallel: Fomenko notes with suspicion the sheer narrative convenience of Qin Shi Huang's biography: he is famously known for the "Burning of the Books and Burying of Scholars" in 213 BC. 

• Fomenko views this as a convenient textual device. If a later historian wanted to invent an ancient timeline and couldn't provide continuous physical records to back it up, inventing a story about an ancient tyrant who "burned all the evidence" provides the perfect excuse for why no documents survived.

Summary

When a textbook tells you Qin Shi Huang took the throne in 246 BC, it is because modern astronomers matched a cyclical Chinese record to a retrocalculated Julian year. 

Fomenko's stance is that this entire layout is an artificial mirror of European medieval history, neatly mapped backward using malleable astronomical descriptions.

Again, do note that the conflicting views are not settled.

(Based on my chat with Gemini).

Joseph Scaliger's Calculation of the Anno Mundi

 

Joseph Justus Scaliger finalized and published his calculation of Anno Mundi (the Year of the World/Date of Creation) in 1583, presenting it in his foundational book Opus de emendatione tempore (Study on the Improvement of Time).

Scaliger calculated that the Creation of the World occurred in 3949 BC.

How He Arrived at 1583 as the Breakthrough Year

Scaliger did not just add up biblical lifespans in a vacuum. He wanted to create a master mathematical timeline that could accurately pin down any calendar era (whether Hebrew, Roman, Egyptian, or Persian).

To do this, in 1583 he synthesized three independent time cycles:

1. The Solar Cycle (28 years): The time it takes for dates to fall on the exact same days of the week.
2. The Lunar Metonic Cycle (19 years): The time it takes for moon phases to realign with the calendar year.
3. The Roman Indiction Cycle (15 years): A medieval tax cycle used in ancient Roman imperial decrees.

By multiplying these three cycles together (28 × 19 × 15), Scaliger created an overarching 7,980-year loop known as the Julian Period. He mathematically worked backward to find the last time all three of these independent cycles started at exactly "Day 1". That master starting point was January 1, 4713 BC.

Once he had this absolute astronomical ruler anchored at 4713 BC, he mapped the biblical genealogies onto it and concluded that Creation (Year 1 Anno Mundi) occurred 764 years into his Julian Period, giving him the precise historical date of 3949 BC.

Connection to Fomenko’s Dissatisfaction With Scaliger

This is exactly the type of historical calculation Fomenko dissects in Volume 1 of History: Fiction or Science?. 

Fomenko's core argument relies heavily on the fact that Scaliger's entire global system - which we still essentially use today - hinges on a very specific mathematical framework invented during that single year of 1583 by a single Renaissance scholar who was attempting to mathematically reconcile highly conflicting ancient scripts.

Nothing has been settled at this time. Perhaps one day in the future?

(Based on my chat with Gemini).

Anatoly Fomenko - The New Chronology Part 1

 

I want to introduce another interesting person, a Russian called Anatoly Fomenko. With his group of mathematicians, they considered revisions to the dating of historical events. Hence New Chronology.

There are two major ways Anatoly Fomenko’s New Chronology theory is structured in print: a foundational 7-volume set and a much larger set.

The Seven-Volume Set (The "First Canon")

Often referred to by Fomenko and his team as the "First Canon", this 7-volume epic titled History: Fiction or Science? functions as the official, unified textbook of the New Chronology. 

It serves as a comprehensive synthesis of all the mathematical, astronomical, and statistical research compiled by Fomenko and his collaborator Gleb Nosovsky up until 2002.

The expanded set will be discussed at a later stage. Suffice to say, it's expanded in scope to cover findings up to the present.

The Views of The Scientific Communities To Fomenko's New Chronology.

As shown in this entry in Wikipedia:

(Note: While Fomenko utilizes his background as a prominent Moscow State University mathematician to write these books, mainstream historians, archaeologists, and astronomers worldwide universally reject the New Chronology as a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory.) 

The Collision of Two Different Methodologies

From a pure standpoint of intellectual history, the breakdown in the "spirit of inquiry" around Fomenko happens because two entirely different academic worlds are talking past each other:

Fomenko approaches history as a hard scientist and topologist. His core premise in Volume 1 is that history should be treated as a data problem governed by strict mathematical, astronomical, and statistical laws. In his view, if the math doesn't check out, the narrative text must be wrong.

Mainstream historians, however, view history through a hermeneutic and forensic framework. They evaluate thousands of overlapping lines of physical evidence—not just written text, but numismatics (coins), linguistics, stratigraphy (archaeological layers), and dendrochronology (tree-ring dating). 

How It Began For Anatoly Fomenko

Fomenko's journey began when he stumbled into this field - and why his group behaves the way it does.

A story of a NASA scientist reveals the core mechanism behind the New Chronology.

The NASA Scientist & The Lunar Parameter (\(D^{\prime \prime }\)) Anomalies

The starting point began with the scientist Robert Russell Newton, a highly respected physicist, astronomer, and supervisor at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (which did extensive work for NASA). 

In the 1970s, R.R. Newton mapped out the \(D^{\prime \prime }\) parameter—a variable that measures the acceleration of the Earth-Moon system over time.

• The Anomaly: When Newton plugged the dates of ancient solar and lunar eclipses (from traditional Scaligerian timelines) into his equations, the data went haywire. It showed a massive, sudden, and geometrically violent "leap" in the Moon's acceleration between 700 AD and 1300 AD.
• The "Low Gravity" Solution: Because traditional dates are considered unshakeable dogma in history, R.R. Newton concluded that the anomaly had to be physical. He postulated that mysterious, "non-gravitational forces" (or mysterious fluctuations in the Earth-Moon system) must have temporarily occurred during the Middle Ages.
• Fomenko's Reaction: As a topologist and mathematician, Fomenko looked at this and essentially said: R. R. Newton's math is flawless, which means the variables (the dates) themselves maybe wrong. Fomenko applied the revised timeline ideas of Russian scientist Nikolai Morozov, shifted the ancient eclipses forward into the late Middle Ages, and found that the \(D^{\prime \prime }\) parameter flattened out into a perfectly smooth, mathematically beautiful line.

To a mathematician, a solution that smoothly solves a broken curve feels like a profound discovery. This is precisely what convinced Fomenko that the traditional timeline was built on a foundational error.

Another Anomaly - Anno Mundi (The Date Of Creation)

Another anomaly to whet your appetite in this Introductory Post (more anomalies in history will be covered in future posts) is Anno Mundi (The Date of Creation). 

Fomenko cited this anomaly as an uncertainty affecting the dating of Anno Mundi. Some examples of the many dates calculated include:

• 5508 BC – The Byzantine Era (Constantinopolitan Calendar): This is the date historically used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and medieval Russia. Fomenko notes that this baseline heavily shaped Russian administrative and religious texts until Peter the Great shifted Russia to the Julian AD system in 1700.
• 5500 BC – Julius Africanus: An early 3rd-century Christian traveler and historian who calculated this round number.
• 5493 BC – The Alexandrian Era (Annianus of Alexandria): This date was favored by many early Egyptian and North African Christian scholars.
• 5199 BC – Eusebius of Caesarea: The early Church historian whose chronological tables formed the bedrock of later Western European histories.

•  4004 BC – Archbishop James Ussher: The famous Anglo-Irish prelate who calculated Creation down to the specific night of October 22/23, 4004 BC. This became the standard timeline printed in the margins of many King James Bibles.

• 3952 BC – Venerable Bede: The famous 8th-century English monk and historian who adjusted the dates based on the Hebrew text rather than the Greek Septuagint.
• 3949 BC – Joseph Scaliger: The very architect of standard history whom Fomenko is critiquing calculated this as the true structural anchor for his global timeline.

• 3761 BC – The Hebrew Calendar (Anno Mundi): The standard rabbinic date calculated in the Seder Olam Rabbah, which remains the anchor for the modern Jewish calendar system.
• 3268 BC – John Clement (and various Roman Catholic scholars): Some later Western European calculations pushed the date forward to the 33rd century BC.
• 3000 BC – Philoxenus of Mabug (and various Syriac traditions): This rounded estimate represents the lowest end of the standard biblical spectrum mentioned in these collections.

The Date of Creation was taken as 3949 BCE by Joseph Scaliger in 1583 CE. How he arrived at 3949 BCE as Anno Mundi is an a wonderful story. I will cover it in another post.

Do realize that that is officially Year 1. Events in all other countries in the world history (whether you agree or not) is converted to a year in that Julian Calendar.

(With assistance from DeepSeek).

Tsai Chih-Chung

 

In my previous post, Zhuangzi's Teachings- Part 1, I used the illustrations (comic panels) from his book Zhuangzi Speaks. A bilingual (Chinese - English) version of Zhuangzi.

Tsai Chih-chung is indeed a real interesting character.

His Early Life

Born in 1948 in Changhua, Taiwan, Tsai was baptized Catholic and grew up hearing Bible stories. He decided at age four that he would draw for a living and set his sights on becoming a cartoonist by nine . 

At 15, while still in junior high, he left school and moved alone to Taipei to become a professional comic artist . The story about convincing a publisher while underage fits this period: he was a teenager when he entered the industry professionally.

Business Success and Animation

Tsai founded Far East Cartoon in 1977 and later Dragon Cartoon in 1981. His animated film Older Master Q (七彩卡通老夫子) won the Golden Horse Award for Best Animated Feature in 1981 and set a box-office record in Taiwan . 

By 1985, he owned three properties and calculated he could live on instant noodles until age 80 if he never gambled or took risks. He decided he needed to do something more meaningful .

Self-Education Across Disciplines

This is where Tsai becomes genuinely unusual. He was almost entirely self-taught. He claimed he learned calculus in three days, Japanese in three months, and could tell you the day of the week you were born within seconds . 

At 50, he shut himself away for ten years to study theoretical physics and mathematics, producing Oriental Universe and other books. He filled his home with physics texts and wrote 14 million words of notes, even taping unsolved equations to his bathtub . He reportedly claimed he could prove Einstein's theory of relativity wrong .

Wealth and Renunciation

Tsai was indeed wealthy. Over time he donated his vast collection—including thousands of gilded bronze Buddha statues valued in the hundreds of millions of yuan—to Shaolin Temple. 

In November 2020, at age 72, he was ordained as a sramanera (novice monk) under Abbot Shi Yongxin, receiving the Dharma name Shi Yanyi (释延一) . The ordination was specifically a sramanera ordination because Shaolin tradition does not grant full bhiksu ordination to those over 70 .

The Bilingual Classics Translator

The American professor who translated his Chinese classics series is Brian Bruya, who holds a PhD in comparative philosophy from the University of Hawaii. 

His English translations gave Tsai's Zhuangzi Speaks, Laozi Speaks, and others a wide English-reading audience, with the Analects English edition alone selling millions of copies across dozens of countries .

What makes Tsai striking is not that he rejected school—it is that he built an entire intellectual life outside of it, on his own terms, and sustained that curiosity for seventy years.