Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Indian culture more than 11,000 years old – say Indian scientists.



From
The India we have never known
August 01, 2011   11:21:59 PM

Recently-developed software have proved the dates of important events as mentioned in our ancient scriptures to be true. Researches have also brushed aside the prevalent Aryan invasion theory. Rahul Devrani reports

Perhaps it’s time our history books got a revision. Indian scientists have now gathered enough evidence to brush aside the “Indo-Aryan invasion” ideology, claiming that we have been “brainwashed for more than 150 years” by the Western theories on our civilisation. Fact is there was no Aryan invasion or migration, it is only a misnomer.

Research carried out by the Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas (I-SERVE) has elaborately shown results, with ocular proof, and revealed interesting facts. Several sites excavated in the past 30 years have yielded evidence of an established culture dating much before than we believed, to almost 8,000 years ago. Historians and scientists from numerous fields like astronomy, archaeology and anthropology gathered for a seminar here over the weekend to confirm our rich past.

There have already been findings of terracotta excavations of Shivlinga at Kalibangan dated 2600 BC indicating that people did pray in the same manner as us thousands of years ago. Besides, terracotta figures with the namaste gesture and using vermillion too have been excavated dating back to 2600 BC. Copper rings and beads that point towards an emergence of metal technology and grains of domesticated rice have also been found dating back to the 7th millennium BC.

Kulbhushan Mishra, research associate, Indian Archeological Society, says that there is enough evidence indicating an indigenous origin of Indian civilisation that has made the foreign theories take a back seat. “With advancement in technology, the perception of Indian archeology has changed significantly. We have an incredibly large volume of new data to prove our indigenous origins. We have found items like an agricultural plough, cart and combs that are thousands of years old. The material testimonies of various excavations have shown gradual cultural developments from the 7th-6th millennium BC in the entire region of Indus-Saraswati-Ganga system for a period of almost 8,000 years.”

Similarly, astronomical research has held the earlier propositions by many scientists that various events mentioned in our ancient scriptures actually did take place and are flawlessly true. “Several software have been developed recently that can provide us the sky view at a point of time in past or future. For example, Planetarium Gold is one such software. When we set dates of various events as mentioned in scriptures, we got exactly the same view of planets/stars as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata,” explains Pushkar Bhatnagar, an astronomy researcher.

Making use of the technological advancements by others in the past, scientists have come up with results that prove various events mentioned in the vast storehouse of ancient Sanskrit literature in India to be consistent.

Since time immemorial, we’ve all been celebrating Diwali and Janmashtami among other festivals that find their origins in the ancient scriptures. It is indeed a matter of pride to know how reliable our scriptures are. However, these researches also go on to show the brilliance of the writers like Valmiki who wrote thousands of years ago, yet mentioned the sky view, which tallied with planetary positions of the same time period.

Besides, research on sea level fluctuations has also revealed that many ancient towns are lying submerged under the sea.

Another interesting fact that not many people are aware of is that the Indians are part of the same gene pool as of the earliest of anatomically modern humans who expanded out of Africa. “There is a lot of sharing and continuity between the people of India. And this goes back to the ancient times. Africa is the place of transformation. The ancient homosapeans were replaced by modern humans roughly 1,80,000 YBP. Large amount of empirical data from India generated through DNA sampling has shown that India too was part of this expansion,” says professor VR Rao, one of the senior researchers engaged with I-SERVE.

This also means that the highly misunderstood Jarawas, indigenous adivasis of Andaman, which means “hostile people”, are in fact the direct descendents of human expansion and we share this ancient substratum.

Data collected through the study of jaws of human remains in the Holocene period shows that the genetic profile of all the Indians does not match the Europeans. “Language is transient so we cannot categorise it in the genetic profile of those people. But what studies have shown till now is that Indians have received limited gene flow from external regions. The only change one can see is in terms of hierarchy. This can be attributed to the arrival of Central Asian pastoralists. But they have got nothing to do with the Indian genetics,” adds Rao.

Besides, there has also been evidence that developments in language and eating cooked food started in India more than 11,000 years ago.

“Not only are the various events consistent and fall in a sequence but various ecological references and varieties of cultivated plants, trees and herbs mentioned in Vedas and epics have existed in India for more than 10, 000 years,” says Saroj Bala, Director, I-SERVE Delhi Chapter, adding, “These results support that we have one of the oldest cultural heritage.”

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