> These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including That has zero relevan

> These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age civilization, including That has zero relevance to the statement about Al Biruni unless he magically travelled back in time and was stuck in some x-00 BC and couldn't see newer developments in India. Also strange is the fact that around Al Biruni's time Hindu numerals were adopted by Arabs (and that we all use now). Maybe he did go back in time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who didn't tend to live in fixed structures What? No, the Mahabharata has elaborate descriptions of palaces, cities. Even Ramayana mentions palace. And nomads, usually, don't have palaces or cities lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture/a3627-architecture-in-mythology-architecture-as-described-in-the-mahabharata/ https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/history-of-architecture... Lets leave all that aside and come back to this question: Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian engineering was behind others?