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Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India
- kumarvvr 9y agoThe fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the court of Bukka of the great Vijayanagar Empire of Karnataka in South India (in early 14th century), says: tatha ca smaryate yojananam. sahasre dve dve sate dve ca yojane ekena nimishardhena kramaman. This means “It is remembered here that Sun (light) traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimisha.” Note: Nimisharda = half of a nimisha In the vedas Yojana is a unit of distance and Nimisha is a unit of time. Unit of Vedic Time: Nimisha The Moksha Dharma Parva of Shanti Parva in Mahabharata describes Nimisha as follows: 15 Nimisha = 1 Kastha 30 Kashta = 1 Kala 30.3 Kala = 1 Muhurta 30 Muhurtas = 1 Diva-Ratri (Day-Night) We know Day-Night is 24 hours So we get 24 hours = 30 x 30.3 x 30 x 15 nimisha in other words 409050 nimisha We know 1 hour = 60 x 60 = 3600 seconds So 24 hours = 24 x 3600 seconds = 409,050 nimisha 409,050 nimisha = 86,400 seconds 1 nimisha = 0.2112 seconds (This is a recursive decimal. The wink of an eye is equal to 0.2112 seconds.) 1/2 nimisha = 0.1056 seconds Unit of Vedic Distance: Yojana Yojana is defined in Chapter 6 of Book 1 of the ancient vedic text “Vishnu Purana” as follows: 10 ParamAnus = 1 Parasúkshma 10 Parasúkshmas = 1 Trasarenu 10 Trasarenus = 1 Mahírajas (particle of dust) 10 Mahírajas= 1 Bálágra (hair’s point) 10 Bálágra = 1 Likhsha 10 Likhsha= 1 Yuka 10 Yukas = 1 Yavodara (heart of barley) 10 Yavodaras = 1 Yava (barley grain of middle size) 10 Yava = 1 Angula (1.89 cm or approx 3/4 inch) 6 fingers = 1 Pada (the breadth of it) 2 Padas = 1 Vitasti (span) 2 Vitasti = 1 Hasta (cubit) 4 Hastas = a Dhanu, a Danda, or pauruSa (a man’s height), or 2 Nárikás = 6 feet 2,000 Dhanus = 1 Gavyuti (distance to which a cow’s call or lowing can be heard) = 12,000 feet 4 Gavyutis = 1 Yojana = 9.09 miles Calculation of the Speed of Light from the Rig Veda: So now we can calculate what is the value of the speed of light in modern units based on the value given as 2202 yojanas in 1/2 nimisha = 2,202 x 9.09 miles per 0.1056 seconds = 20,016.18 miles per 0.1056 seconds = 189,547 miles per second As per the Rig Veda the speed of light is 189,547 miles per second. As per modern science the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second! from.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%B8mer%27s_determination_of_the_speed_of_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%B8mer%27s_determinat...
- xen2xen1 9y agoAs anyone who's watched Ancient Aliens knows! Slight /s. Only slight.
- shortoncash 9y agoI'm not saying people need to take Ancient Aliens at face value, but the show is great when it comes to forcing you to think about how the ancient world really might have been. I often think the narrative we get in public school history is really just the compromised, politically acceptable version of history. Shows like Ancient Aliens at least get us to ask some questions.
- vikascoder 9y agoExactly like how Homeopathy forces us to talk about real medicine? Or UFOs forces us to talk about Rocket design? Take Ancient Aliens at face value? There are other avenues to get your thinking fix from: real books and real research. That's hard to do for an average couch potato addict I think.
- oh_sigh 9y agoHow do you think that ancient indians figured out the speed of light, recorded it for posterity, but forgot how to actually calculate it?
- shortoncash 9y agoWhy did Europe go into the dark ages after several years of incredible advancement and prosperity? We've gotten used to the idea of steady gains and prosperity, but there are cycles that include book burning, knowledge destruction, and civilizational declines. Ancient Aliens forces the viewer to ask what civilizations were even doing with odd constructions and what purpose they served; the only difference is they suggest that extra-terrestrials were involved. Extra terrestrial involvement may seem outlandish to some, but the question of why any civilization was doing what it was remains.
- 9y ago
- cobbzilla 9y agoA minor question/quibble with the article: it states "The first hominins to leave Africa — whoever they were — carried with them oval- and pear-shaped hand axes used to pound and scrape food — a technology called Acheulean" I thought that Oldowan[1] technology was older than Acheulean, and had spread across both Africa and Eurasia before the appearance of Acheulean tech. Regardless, the Levallois technique is considered to be much newer than Acheulean tech, so it's still an interesting find. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan
- nnain 9y agoAh, when I read "very sophisticated" I was hoping to see something more than images of few stones. To clarify: for a few days in my pre-adolescent years in India, I had gotten into a quirky habit of picking chipped-stones lying around (which I imagined could be from pre-historic ages). Finding some really interesting shapes wasn't all that difficult. I'm genuinely curious about how archeologists/anthropologists come up with such definitive conclusions.
- lancebeet 9y agoPerhaps there are signs of knapping on the pieces? I would surmise such signs may not be obvious to a layman, but may be to an archaeologist.
- gcb0 9y agothey seem to have the same doubts as the layman "Alison Brooks, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, said she's not convinced that the smaller tools described by Pappu and her colleagues are true Levallois points. “It's still basically a single point in a giant continent,” she added — more discoveries are required to give context to this find"
- pingu 9y agoThere's something called a Conchoidal fracture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture ... the presence of which is technically diagnostic of material that's been artificially manipulated.
- givinguflac 9y agoLink didn't work for me, this did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture
- pingu 9y agoThanks for the heads up, i fixed the formatting.
- nova22033 9y agoI was expecting an article on make or ant.
- aninteger 9y agoOr how about Turbo C++? It seems there are still technical schools in India that are still teaching using very old (but not sophisticated) tools. It's frustrating too see modern C++ tutorials using 1980/1990s compilers.
- ahamedirshad123 9y agoThis is in Tamil Nadu. As usual, Central Government will stop excavation like they did in Keeladi, because the site was from Sangam Era.
- TwoFactor 9y agoWhy would the Central Government want to stop excavation because its from the Sangam Era?
- dingo_bat 9y agoThey won't. Like USA, we have our own gaggle of extreme conspiracy theorists who are always paranoid that the Central Government is a dictator that wants to reduce states to powerless puppets.
- narag 9y agoBut what's with the Sangam Era that (some people thinks) the gov is trying to cover?
- rrrazdan 9y agoIf I had to guess the conspiracy is that Central government does not want to excavate sites that prove that Sangam culture was greater and earlier than the Northern Indian culture.
- lappet 9y agoI have never heard of this, but knowing the mistrust for the Centre in the Southern states I can believe how it is accepted.
- ahamedirshad123 9y agoIt's simple. Remains from Keezhadi tell that Tamil ancestors had no religion. If it is true, they need to start finding the origin of Sanskrit.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoDid that find seem awfully pat? A neat layering of all know tool types found in one site. Its what you'd find if somebody was constructing a myth. Is this actually atypical? What other sites worldwide compare with this complete history in one plot?
- givinguflac 9y agoIt's pretty typical for this type of site, where it naturally harbors the resources for building tools and being inhabited. It's a somewhat unusual site in that the water brings a lot of quartz and other materials used for tool making.
- perl4ever 9y agoI know that there are ancient sites with an incredible number of layers due to a very long history of habitation. I was just reading about Mount Megiddo which is a so-called mountain because of the accumulated layers (something like 26) of ruins. Human history is long enough that it has happened more than once that a site was appealing for thousands of years, but then it was abandoned thousands of years before the present, perhaps due to climate or technological change.
- gregkerzhner 9y agoOld sophisticated tools in India? We talking about Xcode 6?
- keville 9y agoMaybe older: were the tools _Carbon_ dated?
- Pigo 9y agoA PS4 ad crashed my browser on this page. I wasn't able to figure out what exactly went wrong, just curious if anyone else had problems when trying to view it.
- ultrasounder 9y agoThanks for this! Almost dropped my phone in to the potty laughing out loud. Xcode 9 is that bad huh??
- gcb0 9y ago"spans 385,000 to 172,000 years ago (plus or minus about 50,000 years on either end)" do journalists now get paid by word?
- Steuard 9y agoThis sounds like a perfectly natural description of the estimated date range to me. Is there some significantly more efficient way of phrasing it that I'm overlooking? (Without resorting to scientific ± notation, at least?)
- gkilmain 9y agoI'd be okay if we removed 'on either end'.
- mrkuchbhi 9y agoare you implying they should have said "spans 435,000 to 122,000 years ago" ?
- gcb0 9y agowhy not? if that is exactly what they are saying.
- d13 9y agoHiking in the hills outside of Bangalore I found some absolutely ancient stone dwellings completely covered in thick shrub. The villagers down below told me that they "belonged to an ancient race of dwarves." And a few km away, I stumbled across an obviously very old cave painting in a style I've never seen before anywhere in the world. Not soul in sight and miles from the road. My guess is that there are huge archaeological discoveries waiting to be found in India for anyone who takes the trouble to look for them.
- AdmiralAsshat 9y ago"Dwarves"? Is that just the closest word you have for the rendering, or is that really a thing in their local mythology? I thought they were strictly a Germanic/Norse staple. I've never seen them mentioned in Hinduism.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoWell that would match up, apparently the Elven city was in Guatemala (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261)
- dvv_dvv 9y agoI thought this was going to be something like the Antikythera mechanism, that ancient greek computer they found in the ocean at the turn of the century. wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
- mpreiss111 9y agoGood