The work of a prominent historian, advisor to the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician of the RAO SO. Schmidt contains information about the emergence, development, dissemination and criticism of the so-called “new chronology” of the history of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages by Academician A.T. Fomenko and his associates. The historiography of recent decades is characterized in detail. An attempt has been made to determine the interest and even trust in such scientific falsification. All this is considered in the context of the study of modern social historical consciousness and trends in the development of scientific studies. Particular attention is paid to observations about the system of historical education in secondary school and to identifying ways of forming concepts about the past, methods of knowing it among the general public that meet the modern level. For scientists, teachers of higher and secondary schools, everyone interested in the past and its study.