Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating

Today the methods of applied statistics have penetrated very different fields of knowledge, including the investigation oftexts ofvarious origins. These "texts" may be considered as signal sequences of different kinds, long genetic codes, graphic representations (which may be coded and represented by a "text"), as well as actual narrative texts (for example, historical chronicles, originals, documents, etc. ). One ofthe most important problems arising here is to recognize dependent text, i. e. , texts which have a measure of "resemblance", arising from some kind of "common origin". For instance, in pattern-recognition problems, it is essential to identify from a large set of "patterns" a pattern that is "closest" to a given one; in studying long signal sequences, it is important to recognize "homogeneous subsequences" and the places of their junction. This includes, in particular, the well-known change-point prob lern, which is given considerable attention in mathematical statistics and the theory of stochastic processes. As applied to the study of narrative texts, the problern of recognizing depen­ dent and independent texts ( e . g. , chronicles) Ieads to the problern offinding texts having a common source, i. e. , the sameoriginal (such texts are naturally called dependent), or, on the contrary, having different sources (such texts are natu­ rally called independent). Clearly, such problems are exceedingly complicated, and therefore the appearance of new empirico-statistical recognition methods which, along with the classical approaches, may prove useful in concrete studies (e. g. , source determination) is welcome.

Table of Contents - Volume I Foreword. Preface. 1. Problems of Ancient and Medieval Chronology. 2. New Statistical Methods for Dating. 3. New Experimental and Statistical Methods for Dating Events of Ancient History, and their Applications to the Global Chronology of Ancient and Medieval History. Index. Table of Contents - Volume II Introduction. 1. Methods for the Statistical Analysis of Narrative Texts. 2. Enquête-Codes of Chronological Duplicates and Biographical Parallels. Three Chronological Shifts: The Byzantine-Roman 333-year Shift; the Roman 1, 053-year Shift and the Greco-Biblical 1, 800-year Shift. Appendix 1. Volume Graphs for the `Biographies' of the Holy Roman Emperors of the 10-13th cc A. D. Additional Chronological and Statistical Data of Ancient History. Appendix 2. When was Ptolemy's Star Catalogue really Compiled? Various Configurations of the Stars and the Astronomical Dating of the Almagest Star Catalogue. Appendix 3. Dating of the Almagest Based on the Occultation of the Stars by Planets and Lunar Eclipses. Appendix 4. The Dating of the First Oecumenical Council of Nicaea and the Beginning of the Christian Era. Appendix 5. The Well-Known Babylonian Captivity and the Well-Known Avignon Exile of Papacy. Bibliography. Subject Index. Index of Names.