I am bumping this now ancient thread(pun intended) If anything just to say hello to everyone who made this thread possible, and to the people I could not talk with due to my long absence from ATS. It's been several years since I last posted here. I hope everyone is doing well.

An update on Ancient Advanced Indian civilisation. I still very much forcefuly believe that an ancient advanced Indian civilisation existed. In fact, if I be permited to say, I know it existed now. I am still fuzzy on the details though. Since this thread, I have acquired tons of new information, which has served only to further cement the 'proof' I will present a summary of my findings in a form of a narrative:

Before 10,000 years ago in pre-glacial times existed a civilisation based in the Indian subcontinent known as the Aryans. They were a highly spiritually and technologically advanced civilisation, who dominated the entire world with their culture and occupied vast parts of it. The main world language at that time was Sanskrit, but it was never used as a vernecular language, it was a language of intellectual discourse.

Post-glacial times, this civilisation split up into many factions, possibly due to widespread flooding and other global cataclysm. The destruction was significant enough to cause massive rupture in the structure of civilisation. It caused the Aryan civilisation to split into two distinct groups: Indo-Aryan and Indo-European i.e., the foundations of both Eastern and Western civilisations, India and Greece respectively, belong to the same stock.

After the split, civilisation was restablished by the Aryans in the Indian subcontinent and from there they migrated west into Europe, but this civilisation was notably far less advanced than the the pre-glacial one. It became even lesser advanced with the passage of time.

Then there was another rupture in the history of civilisation. The second rupture came approx around 3000BCE with the Mahabharata war. This was the first world war and brought about widespread destruction. So significant was the destruction it rendered the Indus Valley civilisation almost extinct. Almost all of the previous knowledge was lost, except fortunately a strong oral tradition remained which preserved some of that knowledge. The best preservation was in the Vedic oral tradition, but even that by the 1st century AD suffered considerably and people, even in India were baffled by what the Vedas really meant, causing corruption to set in. Only a very elite few still knew its real import.

In the modern ages, there was an even further decay in the knowledge of the Aryan civilisation. This was largely due to Muslim and European invasions into the subcontinent, and partly due to internal corruption. The Muslim and Europeans completely abhorred the beliefs and values of the Indians, mostly because they were liberal, diverse and scientific, posing a direct challenge to any kind of hegemony and totalitarianism. While, the Muslims dealt with the Indian knowledge by ransacking libraries and temples and exterminating learned Brahmins, the Europeans took a more insidious and intellectuall approach, by mistranslating Sanskrit texts and distoring its history. The major distortion was denying the hooary antiquity of the Vedas and introducing a false dichotomy between Aryans and Dravidians. They considerably condensed Vedic history to fit into a eurocentric timeframe, assinging arbitrary and early dates to all Sanskrit literature, in utter contempt of the indigenous records.

The Europeans also introduced an instituationaized racism against Indians, especially Hindus, ridiculing them openly and denying them any contribution to world history. This was opposed to the overwhelming volumes of evidence which clearled showed Indians played a very central role in the history of civilisation right up to 200 years ago.

The succesfull induced amnesia that the Europeans and the Muslims were able to inflict on the world is perhaps the greatest coverup and conspiracy of world history. We humans have indeed forgotten who we really were, and this is largely courtesy of the Abrahmic religious tradition, to whom a spiritually revived and transcedentally free human is anathema. Hence, the resentment towards the Eastern traditions, which promote just that.

But who is really behind this evil? Greedy and powerful meglomanics, satanic cults, repetillian aliens? I am still fuzzy on those details. All I can say, based on the years of research I've done, that there definitely does seem to exist some kind of dark and shadowy force that has consciously and skillfully kept us in ignorance of our true being.

Originally posted by Indigo_Child

Before 10,000 years ago in pre-glacial times existed a civilisation based in the Indian subcontinent known as the Aryans. They were a highly spiritually and technologically advanced civilisation, who dominated the entire world with their culture and occupied vast parts of it. The main world language at that time was Sanskrit, but it was never used as a vernecular language, it was a language of intellectual discourse.

You, surely, Seem to have got your ancient History all jumbled up.
The Aryans, came into the indian sub continent from areas around Iran/Europe.
The original civilization of the Indian Sub continent, mainly the Mohen Jo Dara and Harrapan civilization are Dravidian in nature. during waves of migration of aryans into the indian sub continent, the natives got pushed down towards south, to what is known as southern india (namely Tamil, telugu, kannada and Malayalam Speaking areas).

Well, all will accept that the Mohen Jo daro and Harrapan civilization were advanced for their age but not advanced when compared to ours.

I would suggest you go back study some real history.

Now, if you ask me, I am from India and have a solid interest in my country's/ sub continent's history..and what you have stated above is completely (sorry to say that, it essentially it is rubbish)

[QUOTE]You, surely, Seem to have got your ancient History all jumbled up.
The Aryans, came into the indian sub continent from areas around Iran/Europe.
The original civilization of the Indian Sub continent, mainly the Mohen Jo Dara and Harrapan civilization are Dravidian in nature. during waves of migration of aryans into the indian sub continent, the natives got pushed down towards south, to what is known as southern india (namely Tamil, telugu, kannada and Malayalam Speaking areas).

Well, all will accept that the Mohen Jo daro and Harrapan civilization were advanced for their age but not advanced when compared to ours.

I would suggest you go back study some real history.

Now, if you ask me, I am from India and have a solid interest in my country's/ sub continent's history..and what you have stated above is completely (sorry to say that, it essentially it is rubbish) [/QUOTE]

Thank you for your reply. I am glad you said that I got the ancient history 'jumbled up' that is exactly what I intended to do. I think it would be more accurate for you to say that I have got a particular, but popular historical narrative jumbled up. That is true, because I do not believe in the popular historical narrative, else I would not challenge it, yes?

I am offering an alternative historical narrative to the popular one. Actually, there isn't a single historical narrative which is permenant, they are constantly changing and being revised with new information. A particular one you mentioned was a variant of Aryan Invasion Theory, Aryan Migration Theory, proposed by Witzel. In fact, only since very recently has AIT been replaced by AMT. Prior to that it was the popular historical narrative, and some books still publish it as historical fact.

AIT was replaced because new research, mainly by Indian indologists, but certainly not limited to them, showed that the proposed invasion around 1500BCE could not have happened. None of the evidence found supported this account. Furthermore, it was found that the theory was racist and not founded on legitimate scientific grounds. Somewhat, similar to Social Darwinism. In fact 19th and early 20thcentury European scholarship was notoriously racist.

AMT is more toned down AIT. It still says a mass-migration took place, except it changes the location from Westerm Europe to Iran. Now the narrative is that the Indo-Aryans and the Iranian Aryans both lived together in Iran, and then around 1500BCE or earlier the Indo-Aryans split off from the Iranian-Aryans and migrated into India and joined the indigenious Dravidian population. Again, however, there is no evidence to show that this theory is correct. To its credit, however, it does away with the racism of AIT.

Another model, and this is the model I shared in my narrative, is called Out of India theory. This one is strongly supported by Indian scholars, but again not limited to them, notable proponents being Subhash Kak, professor of neuroscience at Louisiana University. In this model no mass invasions or migrations into India took place, but in fact migrations out of India into Europe took place. This theory is in fact not new, but was proposed by some European scholars in the 19th century.

AIT has been a much politicised issue over the centuries. Much of the controvesy is over the directionality of migrations and is tied in with complexes of ethnic inferiority and superiority. Indeed, it was originally invented by the Europeans for the purpose of projecting ethnic superiority, and hence why AIT is still vehemently guarded by neo-Nazi organizations.
Intestingly, it is also vehemently guarded by Dravidian(South Indian) Nationalists, who use this theory against North Indians to alienate them. Basically: "Were the real people of India, you guys are foreingers" There is even debate that Tamil is the original language, Saivism is the original religion of India, and Sanskrit and the Vedic gods are all foreign imports.

It is important to keep politics away from scientific research. What the real narrative is should be ascertained by evidence alone, and not just by belief. Now, I have of course adopted OIT in my narrative, I have done this because the evidence in favour of OIT is overwhelmingly in favour. I have reads so many books and articles on this subject, to come to an informed judgement on which model has more validity. I cannot really reproduce every article of evidence here, but I will present a brief summary of why OIT has more validity than AIT and AMT:

AIT and AMT:

There is linguistic evidence of migrations/invasions, pointed out by Sir Monier Williams, and even by earlier scholars. There is no debate that Sanskrit is an Indo-European language.

There is no record of any invasions and mass-migrations in the Vedic corpus. The closest record is the so-called battle of ten kings, which is based on an assumption-driven interpretation of the Rig Veda i.e., circular reasoning.

There is no archaeological evidence of any invasions or mass migrations.

There is no genetic evidence of Indo-Aryans and Dravidians beings different.

OIT

There are records of migrations into Europe, not only Indian records, but non-Indian ancient records.

The Indus Valley remains contains Vedic features, showing continuity between the IVC and the vedic period.

Genetic evidence shows that Indo-Aryans and Dravidians are genetically the same. There is also significant evidence of exchange between the two, with some purported authors of the Vedas being of Dravidian origin.

The scientific dating of the Vedas corresponds to IVC times. The traditional date of 1500BCE was speculative, and this itself was admitted by the Mueller who proposed the date. More scientific dating methods yeilded an older date. The most scientific of these is astronomical dating which based on astronomical events mentioned in the Sanskrit corpus. This method was used by 19th century European astronomers and mathmaticians, but their discoveries were deemed 'too old' by academics in Europe. Another method used is satellite photography, which shows that a massive river once flowed throughout IVC(all the sites were built alongside it) which dried up in 1900BCE. However, the Aryans appeared in 1500BCE according to AIT, and yet the Rig Veda(their oldest text) contains dozens of references to this river as a living one.

Sanskrit geneologies trace back far into IVC. The list of kings given, the duration of their rule is all given, and goes back almost 10,000 years. There are even Greek records which record similar geneologies of Indian kings.

So on one hand we have AIT and AMT, with virtually no empirical evidence, and on the other we have OIT with tons of empirical evidence. Hence why I have adopted OIT as my model. In fact OIT is increasingly being adopted by many indologists today. AIT and AMT, for all practical purposes is now obsolete. They are too dubious. Many predict that they will be eschewed as strongly as Flat Earth theory was.

[edit on 12-3-2009 by Indigo_Child]

lol. my sympathies with you.

Indus valley Civilzation is not Aryan. period.

[QUOTE]Well, all will accept that the Mohen Jo daro and Harrapan civilization were advanced for their age but not advanced when compared to ours. [/QUOTE]

Yes, of course. That is why I said that while the Aryans were able to reestablish civilisation post-glacial times, it was notable less advanced than before and progressively became more primitive. There is clear evidence of this in the archaeological remains, which shows IVC to have sophisticated, well-planned urban cities with drainage systems, almost like modern day New York, giving the impression of a vibrant middle-class artistan society. This is of course ananchornistic, because nowhere else in the ancient world, even up to later medival Europe, were such cities created.

Even in India, post IVC, cities like those were not created again. So the IVC were considerably advanced, but certainly do not give an impression of modern technological advancement. That said there are some anamolies like the iron-pillar of Delhi, which seems to exhibit metallurgical technology which still baffles modern science. Recent studies have shown that they employ nanotechnology. Such anomolies can only be explained, I think, by knowledge which is pre-glacial.

As regards to your insistence that IVC was not Aryan, but Dravidian. I seem to sense a bit of emotion in that statement. Could you be by any chance South Indian? I hope you understand that the distinction between Aryans and Dravidians as an ethnicity is modern and a false one to boot. The idea was based purely on unscientific and racist generalizations went something like this: "North Indians are fair-skinned, therefore they are white" and "South Indians are dak-skinned, therefore they are black" and of course because the South Indians were blacks, they must have been dominated by the superior whites. This is pretty much what was said by 19th century theorists. That's the rationale behind AIT.

Then after making the white and black distinction, they proceeded to make cultural distinctions. All of the good stuff, like the high philosophy, Sanskrit grammar etc was white. All of the bad stuff, like tantra, mysticism, idol worshipping, occultism was black.

It is ironical that South Indians actually hold onto AIT, not realising that AIT disparages them ruthlessly. Now of course you being Indian should know that North India and South India do not have any clear cut differences. There are fair north Indians and fair south Indians; there are dark North Indians and there are dark South Indians. Brahmism is practiced both in the North and in the South. In fact, in the South Brahmanism is far more dominant. In North and South Indian languages, Sanskrit and Tamil, we find constant intercourse. Therefore there is no such thing as an Aryan/Dravidian dichotomy. It a totally modern and foreign concept.

Rather than post lengthy posts, give links to other sources that support your theory.

The Indus Valley remains contains Vedic features, showing continuity between the IVC and the vedic period.

what vedic features are those?
If its the Shiva pashupathy found in seals from the Indus valley Civilization, i would like to tell you that Shiva Pashupathy was a Indus Valley civilization God alone which was assimilated into the vedic Mythology and turns into Shiva, one of the trinity (Bhramha and Vishnu being the other).

As far as i have read and learned about IVC (as you call it) there are nothing that relates to vedic "features".

Originally posted by coredrill
Rather than post lengthy posts, give links to other sources that support your theory.

The Indus Valley remains contains Vedic features, showing continuity between the IVC and the vedic period.

what vedic features are those?
If its the Shiva pashupathy found in seals from the Indus valley Civilization, i would like to tell you that Shiva Pashupathy was a Indus Valley civilization God alone which was assimilated into the vedic Mythology and turns into Shiva, one of the trinity (Bhramha and Vishnu being the other).

As far as i have read and learned about IVC (as you call it) there are nothing that relates to vedic "features".

My point was not to argue a case, but simply to present and summarize a narrative, which is based on several years of research. If you want evidence, that is a very tall order and will take time to fully present. There are several books written on AIT. The best I can do is give you some evidence, without trying to be comprehensive. I shall do that over the next few days. I simply need that amount of time to look for citations.

At this moment, suffice it to say, there is no positive evidence for AIT, there is, however, positive evidence for OIT.

Some of the Vedic features found in the IVC are, and again I do not aim to be comprehensive, merely to give a few examples, which I will furnish with evidence later as promised:

1) Swastikas
2) Indus metrics correspond to Vedic metrics. The mud bricks have exactly the same ratio as ones in Vedic texts
3) Fire altars
4) Correspondence between description of urban life in Vedic literature and IVC remains
5) The Saraswati river
6) Yoga seal

There seems to be perfect continuity between Indus remains and the later period.

As regards to the Yoga seal. I am certainly aware that some scholars argue that the seal is a seal of Shiva, but this is by no means conclusive. This point is especially emphasised by a book I read on the origins of Tantra, which shows just how many different interpretations exist on the seal. The interpretation that this is proto-Shiva holds no water, because Shiva is never seen depicted like that again. The seal depicts an animal like man sitting in a very specific yoga-like posture wth a large headress. This is nowhere close to any classical image of Shiva.

There is more agreement that the seal is depicting a yoga posture. Although Yoga is not explcitly mentioned in the Rig Veda, there are implicit mentions of Yogic like elements like meditation and breath control, so Yoga's origins and development can be explained within the Vedic context alone.

As regards to Shiva and Shivaism/Tantra in general. The earliest mention of Shiva, Durga and Shakti, the elements of Tantra are found in the Rig Veda, there is nothing outside of that. So there really is no support for Tantra as an independent religion from the Vedas existing. In fact the vast corpus of Tantric literature is post-vedic, most being composed in the middle ages.

As I said to you before, the categories of Dravidian as an ethnic category is a modern concept. It did not exist until the British. Therefore either the IVC is vedic or it a complete mystery. To say it is Dravidian, when the concept did not exist until modern times, is ananchornistic.

to put it short....as u stated in your post...its an alternative storyline...
it will always stay the same...

the correlations do not posit anything.

its your word for it.

sorry, cant buy that. where the proof for your so called theory?

you make a nice pseudo-history documentary maker for sure.

Ok, so what happened to civilization after this time? I mean we sure did go though a recorded time in history where we didn't have any kind of modern technology.

Was it all hidden somehow? I find that very hard to believe considering how us humans are. We are very hard at keeping secrets for very long and a civilization as advanced as this could not have been lost that easily.

I mean the Romans ruled for centuries and they progressed very little compared to modern man.

I'm not saying it didn't happen. I am just curious as hell as to how we lost it all for such a long time?

Originally posted by northof8
Ok, so what happened to civilization after this time? I mean we sure did go though a recorded time in history where we didn't have any kind of modern technology.

Was it all hidden somehow? I find that very hard to believe considering how us humans are. We are very hard at keeping secrets for very long and a civilization as advanced as this could not have been lost that easily.

I mean the Romans ruled for centuries and they progressed very little compared to modern man.

I'm not saying it didn't happen. I am just curious as hell as to how we lost it all for such a long time?

These are all good questions, and on these finer details I am very fuzzy. All I can conclude is that this civilisation existed in pre-glacial times, but I have no idea just how far back in pre-glacial times it existed. The other part I am fuzzy on is how just how advanced was the IVC. There seems to be conflicting evidence showing high and low technology existing side by side even up to the times of Alexanders invasion of India. His records report him and his army witnessing advanced technology.

How can I know that an advanced pre-glacial civilisation existed. There are just far too many anomolies. The biggest anamoly are the Vedas itself. The extent of development evinced by the Vedic writing is too advanced for its time, but its not just the actual content of the texts, it's the structure of the text. The structure is very precise and very complex, so complex it baffles modern Sanskritists. It's almost like machine code.
The grammars on the Vedas are no longer extant, but the only one we have is of Classical Sanskrit by Panini, which incorporates modern concepts like formal language processing, transformative and generative grammar. It has been compared to a turing machine.

It is really hard to overlook that a treatise containing so many advanced computing concepts would be written in 500BCE(this is only the traditional date, most of these dates are pure guess work, they seem to be considerably older) Another text of similar antiquity uses binary logic and hashing algorithms to denote musical notes in the Vedas. This is hardcore computer science, and it is almost 3000 years old, now if that is not an anamolie, what is?

There is another text called the Samkhya Karika, this text is considered to be oldest of the philosophical schools because it still uses Vedic Sanskrit. It tries to analyse the evolution of the cosmos. The concepts it employs are so uber-modern, it makes QM look contemporary with it. Some examples are observer paradoxes, elemental forces and supersymmetry. It inspired Schrodinger's paradox. It talks about vast universal cycles, beginning from expanding and contracting universes.

Then we have the Yoga Sutra which talks of the mind like an information processing system, and even considers all of matter to be waves within a universal field.

Not behind is the Vaiseshikla school, which talks of particle physics. It basically says the entire universe is made out of atoms, and gives a set of the kind of atoms that form: pairs, triples. It talks of subatomic atoms and also hints at notions of electron valencies. The knowledge of light being formed of light atoms, or photons is taken for granted.

The medical texts contain descriptions of microorganisms, actual visual descriptions. They also have very extensive maps of the human body and they seem to be aware of the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, muscular and skeletal system.

All of this knowledge is anamolus. It does does not at all concide with the physical remains of the Indian or any civilisation. Not with the classical age or the IVC age. When looked at more closely, it turns out the masses in India never participated in this knowledge tradition. The Sanskrit tradition remained an elite tradition since its very dawn. If you read about the luminaries in that tradition they all talk of a very ancient history.

Another anamolie is the appearance of well planned cities with modern-ish drainage systems very early on into the history of civilisation, almost suggesting that the knowledge of how to plan cities existed priorly.

Then of course we have the Indian mytho-historical records mentioning amazing technology like human cloning, aeroplanes, intelligent missiles, weapons of mass destruction. . All of this is heavily cloaked in mythology, hence why I call it mytho-historical.

So basically there are too many anamolies, which is why I am convinced it is pre-glacial. Of course you might not be convinced. For me it is enough evidence, you might want more.


[edit on 12-3-2009 by Indigo_Child]

I reviewed this entire thread today. It brought back so many memories of my debates with Vagabond, Nydgan and Byrd, good memories in retrospect. At the time I was probably frustrated with what I saw as blind skepticism, but over the years I have matured somewhat, to embrace all kinds of skepticism. At the end of the day, it's all about beliefs in end, competing narratives, and everybody has a right to believe in what they want and should not be imposed upon. There is always a logic behind what one believes, supporting by particular evidence. Newton did not believe in action-at-distance, his logic was that the world is like a mechnical clock, everything exists as an individual cog in the machine and only turns when a force acts. It's very logical from Newton's standpoint, but illogical by QM's standpoint. Likewise, advanced ancient civilisations may seem illogical to many, because they believe in modernism, the idea that the present is always a development on the past. The whole notion of ancient advanced civilisations is so illogical to that point of view. But to me, modernism is illogical, because it has brought about an irrational world intent on destroying itself. So something is lacking in the modern world, which was present in the ancient world, nullifying the foundational premise of modernism.

There really is no logical reason to exclude the possibility of advanced ancient civilisations, even within our current framework. The discussion should not be about the possibility of ancient civilisations, but the likeliness of there having been one. I have attempted to show in this thread, that the likeliness of one existing is very high. For myself it is almost certain.


There have been many posts made to this thread since my hiatus from ATS, and I wanted to respond to some of the issues they brought up. I hope the people are still about.

5 elemental theory: The 5 elemental theory is known as pancha mahabhuttas in Classical Sanskrit. It means, "The 5 foundational elements" The foundational elements of what however? We know that fire, earth, air and water are not foundational elements, they are compounds. They are not the Mahabhutas, they are the pancha bhutas, "The five gross elements" The Vedic elemental theory gives a sliding scale theory of the 5 elements. The Mahabhootas are the absolute most basic forms of each element and they are fundamentally immaterial. They are in fact connected to senses.

So it goes a bit like this: Fire is the gross element, seeing is its foundational element; water is the gross element, tasting is its foundational element and so on. The mahabhutas are also known as tanmatras in Vedic Sanskrit, which means 'measuring out extension' The tanmatras are sometimes called virtual particles, that is they do not have manifest existence, but it is them that give rise to all particles. They are not particles at all though. They are what in philosophy is called qualia. They are basic building blocks of conscious reality.

It would not be incorrect to say that all reality is just sensory data, and the human beings reality is composed of 5 basic blocks of sensory datum: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. There is no other empirical sensory data. In other words we come to a very similar concept of the pancha mahabhutas. These really are the five elements.

Vedic metaphysics divides reality into four parts: gross, subtle, causal and absolute. They in turn correspond to states of consciousness: waking, subconscious, unconscious and superconscious. What we see as matter has four parts, each of which only become visible when we enter intro a certain state of consciousness. The objects in front of us in the world thus are on a sliding-scale or continuum of existence. Take for example, what is fire? Fire, according to the Vedic model is a gross form of mahabhuta tejas, meaning energy. Its subtle form is quanta, it's causal form is seeing and its absolute form is pure consciousness. Now what is quite interesting here, every object in the universe has duality only until the last stage of the absolute, where everything just collapses into one. In other words everything at the last stage is pure consciousness.

This conception of reality is known in philosophy as monistic idealism and in Sanskrit this metaphysics is called Advaita Vedanta. It is basically saying that all of reality occurs within consciousness. So it's almost like a great dream. It is not our dream(crude idealism), but the dream of that abolute one, within which we are just participants.

Notice how in the Vedic theory there is no compartmentalization at all. All of reality is treated as a single thing, as opposed to many things. We are not separate things observing a world of individual things. We have no reality without things, and things have no reality without us. In other words we are one and the same thing, existing interdepedently. Our biggest blunder is to separate things with our rational minds. In religion this separation is called god, and in science this separation is called matter. Basically everything that exists has two components: matter and consciousness(known as Prakriti and Purush in the Vedas) and neither can exist without the other.

We are finding out in material science today in the form of QM that the Vedanta model is true, consciousness and matter cannot be separated; one indicates the other. In other words there is an implicit suggestion here that Vedanta is more advanced than the best of our physical theories. Again such models cannot be created by a primitive people. Again, I present, this is the work of a pre-glacial advanced civilisation, who had developed in science-technology well beyond us. I think soon even we will be explaining reality EXACTLY as the Vedic Aryans described it.

[edit on 14-3-2009 by Indigo_Child]

[edit on 14-3-2009 by Indigo_Child]