Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

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RajeshA
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

A bit Off-Topic

Yesterday I was just having a discussion with SHQ on this and that. It came out - that Europeans live in the past, Indians live in the present and Americans live in the future! This is a little bit of generalization here!

In Europe one sees much of the grandeur of the colonial era and the last few centuries of exploration, trade, industrialization, renaissance, scholarship, research, Christianity etc. having built up a solid amount of architecture, art and cultural heritage. This they wish to preserve. Moreover Europeans are also somewhat conservative w.r.t. acceptance of technological innovations - not the mechanical and electrical kind, but the informational and communications kind - around 5-6 behind the curve compared to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and USA. It is of course great that the Europeans pay so much attention to preservation of their heritage, but as said, it has a little cost. Much of the attention span of the people get filled with history. They live in NOSTALGIA!

Americans on the other hand, needed to forge a nation, which had a shallow history of migration and spread and consolidation, and struggle for values (read slavery)! But where they have shallow history, they have still shallower mythology. So the Americans decided to build their nation on the foundation of the future. So one would see that most of the science fiction and superhero comics come from USA. Having no mythology gave them the freedom to be creative in creating a totally new mythology - their own superheroes, their own stories! They live in MAKE-BELIEVE!

Indians on the other hand have a huge body of history reaching back to when the glaciers melted. However in our schools we are taught zilch of that! In our media, we talk zilch about that! AND in our films (not TV) we too have zilch on that! Our Itihaas is often looked upon by the middle class as entertaining stories, without any connection to our past, except that some good story-tellers decided to jot them down. So we get stories, but not history! There has been a generational mentality change on this. On the other hand, our film industry is constantly dishing out stories, which are mostly about love and values, the daily struggle, which take place TODAY, NOW and HERE! It is hero, heroine, mother, father and gangster! We live in the NOW, in the EMOTION!

The Japanese, I feel, live both in the past and in the future! In the Soviet times, the Russians lived in the future, today they live in the past! The Chinese live in the past and the present!

I have just thrown a few theories about various peoples!

The reason I am doing this here is for a reason.

I think the European waves of nostalgia hits the rocks of a realization of present and future decline. This forces the Europeans to enrich that what they even further. They have only history to fall back upon but that too is just 5-6 centuries old. Before that they had 3-4 centuries of Greek and Roman history, but the Anglos and Germans can claim that only marginally. But that too is shallow antiquity compared to other civilizations. They would want to enrich their historical treasure even more, and so they try to extend it into the deep past, to a time from which they have only scanty knowledge. And so they look for the Aryan connection!

The Americans on the other hand have often seen themselves as the people lunging headlong into the future - from the colonization of the Americas to sci-fi! However they have a total loss as far as history is concerned, and thus one sees many Americans trying to look for their genealogy in Europe, Native America and Africa! The love for Myth and the search for Roots means they too are willing to look up any Aryan connection!

Thus the Europeans (British, Germans) and Americans are willing to sponsor the AIT project. As the Indians are obsessed with only the NOW on the one hand and only the Puranic and Itihaasic stories without any historical anchorage on the other, the AIT-Nazis (Anglo-Germans) feel that they can rob India of her historicity without much resistance from us! And even if we should up some resistance, in the battlefield of scholarship, where they have dominance, they think they can beat the Indian, as the Indian themselves have allowed their calendars and temporal tagging of events to get either confusing or to get delegitimated. But we can remedy the situation.

We have to keep on emphasizing that the Anglo-German search for their pre-migration roots is because of their national psychologies of shallow history! We have to use the Freud on them! I consider this an effective way to delegitimize their scholarship by avering to an agenda on their part born out of psychological imbalance, rather than on objectivity.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by Lalmohan »

rajeshji, right analysis, though don't agree with the conclusions. the 'ait project' came about at a time of european ascendancy and/or supremacy at a time when asia was in decline and america was nascent. the 'ait project' was about justifying their ascendancy. there was no inkling of america's rise until the 1920's and no hint of european decline. and i really do not agree with your ct on robbing India of her history. they did then and do now (more grudgingly) view India as irrelevant. if anything ait is a selfish project to justify their supremacy over asia
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Off-Topic: Indian influence on Current Western Mythology

Continuing from an earlier post.

Image

Much of the current American Neo-mythology from Star Wars, to Matrix, to the 1990s Disney classics, etc. are partly based upon the works of Joseph Campbell, who wrote the "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" [Download] in 1949.

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He seems to have been deeply impressed by Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom he met in 1924 on the ship on his return journey from Europe, and with whom he discussed Indian philosophy.

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Joseph Campbell had also taken the Sat-Chit-Ananda principle to heart and used to call it "Follow your Bliss", something he espoused in the TV documentary: The Power of Myth in 1988.

He also wrote "The Flight of the Wild Ganders" in 1969.

Image
The wild gander of the title is a reference to the Hindu concept of the paramahamsa, a great spiritual teacher of exalted illumination, able to transcend the mundane, just as the hamsa is able to fly above the sky-scraping Himalayas.
The reason I am mentioning this here in the thread is to underline that the vast treasure of Indian mythology has acted as a source not only in the ancient religions and occult of Greeks and Vikings, but also in the Neo-Mythology of the West, and this Indian source deserves to be underlined before it is completely digested.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Lalmohan wrote:rajeshji, right analysis, though don't agree with the conclusions. the 'ait project' came about at a time of european ascendancy and/or supremacy at a time when asia was in decline and america was nascent. the 'ait project' was about justifying their ascendancy. there was no inkling of america's rise until the 1920's and no hint of european decline.
Lalmohan ji,

You are looking at the issue of AIT from the historical context - why did AIT come about? We have been discussing the issue here at length, and considering the vast number of 19th century books that have been linked and would still be linked, there is definitely still a lot of analysis to be done on that front too!

However in my post earlier, I discussed "why is AIT still being pushed TODAY?"

However what I proposed was just the national psychological angle to the AIT Project. There are other drivers and motives as well.
Lalmohan wrote:and i really do not agree with your ct on robbing India of her history. they did then and do now (more grudgingly) view India as irrelevant. if anything ait is a selfish project to justify their supremacy over asia
Lalmohan ji,

it is not only my "ct"! Most of the Indians who have been tirelessly advocating the "Indigenist Indians" school of thinking have rightfully speculated on the motives of the Europeans on the AIT.

We have discussed this "viewing India as irrelevant" before! I consider their attitude of India-blindness as a calculated strategy to impose their superiority, whereas you see their India-blindness as a natural outcome of their sense of superiority.

You yourself admit that "AIT is a selfish project to justify their supremacy over asia", but you decline to see that India-blindness is an important part of that project for otherwise the project would simply not work!
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by shiv »

ravi_g wrote:
Shiv ji, you have started some work on Linguistics.

Have you found anything (rationale not claims) to suggest that while Glottochronology is not ok, the ‘Setting up of temporally remote protolanguages’ is ok. To me this sounds as plain double-talk. But then I would be willing to change my mind if somebody of your repute tells me to reconsider my view.

And besides based on your studies, uptill now, how far in your assessment would Linguists be willing to take their work w.r.t. ‘Setting up of temporally remote protolanguages’. Would they like to set up a Proto-proto language say right upto the language of Pikaia gracilens. IOW if they claim they have the rationale do they claim the rationale is applicable to every form of utterance by every form of life that makes a sound. And if they do not then do they provide any reason as to why not
Good God ravi :shock: The more I dig into this stuff the more I am amazed by the level of bullshitting that has gone on and how deeply it is entrenched. I kid you not and I am digging deeper and deeper to try and make sure that I am not mistakenly blaming an innocent group that is doing great work.

Unfortunately it does not seem like that at all. All the "famous" translations and "famous and widely applied algorithms" like Grimm's law and Morris Swadesh's lexicostatistics are all over or nearly a century old. No one has bothered applying rigorous peer reviewed technique to methods that are guesswork to start with. But like a man with severe diarrhoea who has unbelievably managed to put crap inside every square inch of the inside of your house, these fake and cooked up linguistic theories have now been spread every where. There is no stopping the loads of bullshitting because there is 150 years of it and there is almost no one going back to check if earlier theories and observations are valid. Every single reference leads back to the same translations and guesswork done by some key people over a century ago. I have managed to retrieve some of the original books and translations, but some are mind boggling in that work has been done by Czech, French and Germans that are considered "key" evidence for which no ready reference is available - and the works themselves date back over a century. Those works are accepted as law, like the catholic church and its geocentric views. And unlike medicine and other branches of science, I can find absolutely zero signs of anyone even questioning or rechecking the original conclusions reached over a century ago by philiogists. There are all taken as is, and theories built upon those.

It is an outright lie to imagine that these people are ‘Setting up temporally remote protolanguages’ ifro some harmless reason. They have gone the whole hog and they have
1. Set up temporarily remote proto-languages based on the most astonishingly bad presumptions
2. The they refer back those proto-languages and cooked up proto-language dictionaries as if those languages actually did exist. Words are referred to as follows:
"Bullshit" is derived from the old PIE *bwlshoot (from the root *bws - bovis and new Indic "sooth" for asshole)
Note: If I did not mention that I have made this up - people might believe it. That is what philologists are doing.
So PIE has already been given a life of its own and everyone actually acts as if it exists.

But PIE itself has been built up from some very very suspicious roots with very shaky assumptions. I am currently held up because I want to demonstrate firm examples of where and how this has been done. I have some proof - but I am looking for something "in your face".

Will post when I have more info.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by nakul »

Not trying to go offtopic here but all other branches of science have the same of BSing. There are theories spouted for anything that cannot be fully explained currently and the onus is on the others to disprove it, without which the theory stands accepted. This is how science works. I can say that Bharat Rakshak is the handiwork of RAW if I have strong backing and it will be accepted until someone stronger than me proves otherwise. (Cue peer review which believes that what is popular is correct)

Like the AIT theory, there are many others that are accepted because no one has offered an alternative. If anyone wants to disprove AIT, one needs to come with a better suggestion.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

nakul wrote:If anyone wants to disprove AIT, one needs to come with a better suggestion.
The better suggestion is right there in the title of this thread!
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

shiv wrote:"Bullshit" is derived from the old PIE *bwlshoot (from the root *bws - bovis and new Indic "sooth" for asshole)
:rotfl:

That is professorship material! :lol:
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by Lalmohan »

rajeshji - i think shiv said previously that to accept that ait is incorrect, the academic establishment has to admit that most of what they have built their academic foundations on is also incorrect, the tipping point for that has not yet arrived
ait is therefore persisted with

incidentally, its only recently that ancient chinese science/tech/knowledge is being taken seriously by the west - probably a function of chinese global importance

yet other cultures and traditions remain almost entirely ignored - we ourselves have attempted to discuss the east to south african migration of cattle herders, and dare i say it - got bored
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by shiv »

Ohhhhh flippin heck. :eek: This is unfrigging believable. Someone please archive this entire site because it shows up the utter nonsense that has been used to cook up PIE

The site explains how "cognates" from many languages are taken and used to "guess/calculate" a proto word. I have many refs that say that the selection of cognates from different languages is guesswork and you just compare words with vaguely similar meanings and similar sounds. But what is given in this link boggles the mind and is a classic example of the massive fudging that has gone into cooking up PIE!! Wow!

Look at this. Here is a list of words they took from different languages to find a "Proto-Indo-European" word for "man".
I will list the language and the word an put my comments in blue

Sanskrit: "virah" for man (wtf? vira is hero. Not man. You will die trying to find the word vira under man in any sane Sanskrit dictionary)
Avestan "viro".(Please for fuks sake give me a break! Avestan has been translated only be people who know Sanskrit, and that translation is set up as a parallel "sister language" of Sanskrit to guess an older proto language! )
Latin: wir
Gothic : wair (man)
English: were (wolf) ( I mean really folks these guys are f*king with us. they are usng sanskrit "vira" and "English "werewolf" as words to create a PIE word for man!!)

And then they combine all these words and create a "Proto Indo European" word for "man" which is *wi-ro.

Can you believe how bad it gets?

See the link yourself. I will go off and have a cry or simply get drunk.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by shiv »

nakul wrote: the onus is on the others to disprove it
Correct. Disproving it cannot come from strong and blind faith in some other unproven theory. It can only come from serious study of the well accepted theory to check for errors. If errors do not exist, then the theory is on firm footing. If errors exist it could be rubbish. I am doing that study and so far I have found plenty of rubbish that will serve as tools to disprove the existing theory. If I find it all correct I will eat humble PIE and accept that i am wrong.
Last edited by shiv on 16 Jul 2012 17:51, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Lalmohan wrote:rajeshji - i think shiv said previously that to accept that ait is incorrect, the academic establishment has to admit that most of what they have built their academic foundations on is also incorrect, the tipping point for that has not yet arrived
ait is therefore persisted with
The AIT academic project has changed hands many times in the past and it has been pursued over several generations. Anybody anywhere could have used the pick-ax. But nobody ever did so!

It is Indians who would have to take on this work of upturning AIT!
Lalmohan wrote:incidentally, its only recently that ancient chinese science/tech/knowledge is being taken seriously by the west - probably a function of chinese global importance
With Chinese civilizational accomplishments, the Europeans are not locked in a zero-sum game. With Indians they are! Any Chinese accomplishment does not automatically diminish their own.
Lalmohan wrote:yet other cultures and traditions remain almost entirely ignored
Mostly, only the other living civilizations remain totally ignored. The dead civilizations - Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Sumerians, Elamites, Pre-Islamic Persia, Polytheist Greeks and Romans, are all well-studied and their accomplishments well-documented and accepted.
Lalmohan wrote:we ourselves have attempted to discuss the east to south african migration of cattle herders, and dare i say it - got bored
Interesting is often dependent on relevance, which is ego-centric.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by nakul »

shiv wrote:
nakul wrote: the onus is on the others to disprove it
Correct. Disproving it cannot come from strong and bling faith in some other theory. It can only come from serious study of the well accepted theory to check for errors. If errors do not exist, then the theory is on firm footing. If errors exist it could be rubbish. I am doing that study and so far I have found plenty of rubbish that will serve as tools to disprove the existing theory. If I find it all correct I will eat humble PIE and accept that i am wrong.
Pardon this intrusion into your thought process...

You are thinking like a scientist. A scientist rationalizes and eliminates impossible alternatives to arrive at the most probable ones. However, the AIT was never a scientific process. It was a political undertaking from day 1. The aim was to prove the gora's superiority & snatch the natives heritage since it was too sophisticated to be in the hands of the natives. The antidote to a political process is another political process. For this, we need to make the OIT more popular than the AIT. The AIT will automatically get sidelined. The one who has the louder speaker wins.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by shiv »

nakul wrote: You are thinking like a scientist.
I think like i think. If someone else thinks politically that is his prerogative. But political movements can get support from science. And what I intend to tear down is what was passed off as science and used by politics. By tearing down the stuff that is not science, the political rhetoric has the rug pulled from under its feet. I see it as my duty to do that and I am very strongly motivated in this case.

Anyhow i see this as a totally pointless discussion especially considering that I have no specific disagreement with what you are saying. What you say and what I am doing are not mutually exclusive. The political noisemakers cannot suffer if science supports them. Or are you secretly afraid that science will prove AIT and associated linguistics correct and that we should keep off for that reason, and stick to political weight and blind faith?
Last edited by shiv on 16 Jul 2012 18:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by Anand K »

Joseph Campbell's did some ground breaking work in Comparative Mythology - his Masks of God trilogy is considered a starting point for all those interested in this field. He himself draws from James Frazier's "heretical" works..... and his other works are no less monumental. But again he makes some deductions from the prevailing AIT fundae (this was the 60s!) and mistakenly compares (what I believe is) Veeracharam to the Ritual Sacrifice of the King in other cultures.

On that note it's not just the field of linguistics that indirectly rests on AIT/AMT (and returns the structural support).... Besides the human psyche/childhood impression fundae, the comparative religion field rests on ideas such as the "Axial Age" and "Creative Sacrifice" and "Titanomachy" and "Idle Sky God" which is tightly linked with the AIT/AMT narrative. (Also... now that European POVs that shaped Jung/Freud/ityadi theories are being questioned AND new insights on the European neolithic age, I wonder how many of the primary assertions and assumptions Campbell made in "Primitive Mythology" will hold up to scrutiny today. Still... quite interesting). So I guess that is another angle the AIT/AMT thingie has to be probed.......
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by nakul »

RajeshA wrote:
Lalmohan wrote:rajeshji - i think shiv said previously that to accept that ait is incorrect, the academic establishment has to admit that most of what they have built their academic foundations on is also incorrect, the tipping point for that has not yet arrived
ait is therefore persisted with
The AIT academic project has changed hands many times in the past and it has been pursued over several generations. Anybody anywhere could have used the pick-ax. But nobody ever did so!

It is Indians who would have to take on this work of upturning AIT!
Lalmohan wrote:incidentally, its only recently that ancient chinese science/tech/knowledge is being taken seriously by the west - probably a function of chinese global importance
With Chinese civilizational accomplishments, the Europeans are not locked in a zero-sum game. With Indians they are! Any Chinese accomplishment does not automatically diminish their own.
Lalmohan wrote:yet other cultures and traditions remain almost entirely ignored
Mostly, only the other living civilizations remain totally ignored. The dead civilizations - Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Sumerians, Elamites, Pre-Islamic Persia, Polytheist Greeks and Romans, are all well-studied and their accomplishments well-documented and accepted.
Lalmohan wrote:we ourselves have attempted to discuss the east to south african migration of cattle herders, and dare i say it - got bored
Interesting is often dependent on relevance, which is ego-centric.
rajesh ji, what LM is trying to say is that the academicians are not trying to block us out. they are playing in their own sandbox. the people behind these projects are not serious about real knowledge. they are happy in their own little world where they are praised and respected.

the kind of people who undertake have been brought up to believe that certain paradigms are true and therefore not to be verified. they are quite happy to oblige. we are quite guilty of following this on brf as well. when a person with a known background is cited, it is considered authentic. words from people with unknown accomplishments are dismissed more easily. the scientists are doing the same. they are taking the words of great indologists as the gospel and writing about india from 1000s of miles away. that practical experience and knowledge cannot replace books is entirely lost on them.

what they see will sell is what they right. popular acceptance is very important for them. hence the hesitation in redefining the boundaries which causing a lot of angst here.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by nakul »

shiv wrote:
nakul wrote: You are thinking like a scientist.
I think like i think. If someone else thinks politically that is his prerogative. But political movements can get support from science. And what I intend to tear down is what was passed off as science and used by politics. By tearing down the stuff that is not science, the political rhetoric has the rug pulled from under its feet. I see it as my duty to do that and I am very strongly motivated in this case.

Anyhow i see this as a totally pointless discussion especially considering that I have no specific disagreement with what you are saying. What you say and what I am doing are not mutually exclusive. The political noisemakers cannot suffer if science supports them. Or are you secretly afraid that science will prove AIT and associated linguistics correct and that we should keep off for that reason, and stick to political weight and blind faith?
Perhaps i am not able to explain myself properly here.

Science is just a tool to be used to prove theories. While science is used to prove convenient facts, it is also used to hide inconvenient truths. science is the weapon given to us into believing that we can use it to prove the truth.

since you have gone through ait, i believe you agree ait is based on a bunch of assumptions. unfortunately science is just that. if you want to base your stand on science, you will need a large buch of people making the same set of assumptions. ait is a political project. using science to prove it wrong is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Anyway, my last post on this topic.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by brihaspati »

Posting after some time :

(1) I checked out my objections to the "chronological ordering" of RV sections based on claimed "internal evidence and not based on linguistics" -[Witzel, Oldenburg, Arnold] showing that the ordering was based on an external linguistic assumption, that AV came later than RV and Classical "Sanskrit" came later than AV, [in a previous post], with my linguist friends. To a man[and woman] they were surprised. It has been decided in a small group to explore this further - for this may have methodlogical implications for non-PIE threads too. Since they have professional degrees in "linguistics", I feel it would be better to have them on board for academic-politics driven tactical reasons.

I will legitimize the algorithmic component while they legitimize the linguistic component. Will need some time, perhaps 6 months to get initial results at levels expected to be needed to get accepted.

(2) I plan to subject the "laws" to similar analysis. Some linguists acknowledged in private that they had their doubts about the laws too. But each of these laws, in my preliminary analysis,

(a) are based on 19th century "reconstructions" of proto languages
(b) contrary to current claims, they were not formulated based on current real experimental phonology
(c) when forming these laws, people had really very little understanding of statistical models, their prerequisite conditions, and their limitations based on things like say even sample size. When someone is comparing say 23 half broken clay tablets with a living language [or fossil language still used or known] that has thousands of words - statistical techniques cannot be the simplistic and rudimentary entry level ones.
(d) experimental phonology based claims cannot be extended back into historical ones, for the very same reason that naive glottochronology cannot be used. Usage and the very structure of a language may predispose phonological mutation directions or preferences.
(e) genetic models have been applied naively without realizing or understanding the actual drivers of genetic change, and failing to establish the real parallels if any.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by shiv »

nakul wrote: if you want to base your stand on science, you will need a large buch of people making the same set of assumptions.
I think you may have missed two points:
1.There already are a huge number of people involved in tearing down AIT. I am hardly alone. I am just one more person casting a stone.
2. My efforts are not aimed primarily at tearing down AIT at all because AIT has more or less been rejected by everyone, but it still fills the lay media, which can only be changed by sheer numbers and time. My own efforts are aimed at seeing if I can help validate OIT in my own way, to add to the increasing body of literature and increasing numbers of people who are saying just that.

It just happens that I am thoroughly enjoying myself while doing that.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Continuing the Series on Skin Color Evolution from earlier


Filmed Feb 2009



Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color

Transcript
Nina Jablonski wrote:Interestingly, Charles Darwin was born a very lightly pigmented man, in a moderately-to-darkly pigmented world. Over the course of his life, Darwin had great privilege. He lived in a fairly wealthy home. He was raised by very supportive and interested parents. And when he was in his 20s he embarked upon a remarkable voyage on the ship the Beagle. And during the course of that voyage, he saw remarkable things: tremendous diversity of plants and animals, and humans. And the observations that he made on that epic journey were to be eventually distilled into his wonderful book, "On the Origin of Species," published 150 years ago.

Now what is so interesting and to some, the extent, what's a bit infamous about "The Origin of Species," is that there is only one line in it about human evolution. "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It wasn't until much longer, much later, that Darwin actually spoke and wrote about humans.

Now in his years of traveling on the Beagle, and from listening to the accounts or explorers and naturalists, he knew that skin color was one of the most important ways in which people varied. And he was somewhat interested in the pattern of skin color. He knew that darkly pigmented peoples were found close to the equator; lightly pigmented peoples, like himself, were found closer to the poles.

So what did he make of all this? Well he didn't write anything about it in The Origin of Species. But much later, in 1871, he did have something to say about it. And it was quite curious. He said, "Of all the differences between the races of men, the color of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked." And he went on to say, "These differences do not coincide with corresponding differences in climate." So he had traveled all around. He had seen people of different colors living in different places. And yet he rejected the idea that human skin pigmentation was related to the climate.

If only Darwin lived today. If only Darwin had NASA. Now, one of the wonderful things that NASA does is it puts up a variety of satellites that detect all sort of interesting things about our environment. And for many decades now there have been a series of TOMS satellites that have collected data about the radiation of the Earth's surface. The TOMS 7 satellite data, shown here, show the annual average ultraviolet radiation at the Earth's surface. Now the really hot pink and red areas are those parts of the world that receive the highest amounts of UV during the year. The incrementally cooler colors -- blues, greens, yellows, and finally grays -- indicate areas of much lower ultraviolet radiation.

What's significant to the story of human skin pigmentation is just how much of the Northern Hemisphere is in these cool gray zones. This has tremendous implications for our understanding of the evolution of human skin pigmentation. And what Darwin could not appreciate, or didn't perhaps want to appreciate at the time, is that there was a fundamental relationship between the intensity of ultraviolet radiation and skin pigmentation. And that skin pigmentation itself was a product of evolution. And so when we look at a map of skin color, and predicted skin color, as we know it today, what we see is a beautiful gradient from the darkest skin pigmentations toward the equator, and the lightest ones toward the poles.

What's very, very important here is that the earliest humans evolved in high-UV environments, in equatorial Africa. The earliest members of our lineage, the genus Homo, were darkly pigmented. And we all share this incredible heritage of having originally been darkly pigmented, two million to one and half million years ago.

Now what happened in our history? Let's first look at the relationship of ultraviolet radiation to the Earth's surface. In those early days of our evolution, looking at the equator, we were bombarded by high levels of ultraviolet radiation. The UVC, the most energetic type, was occluded by the Earth's atmosphere. But UVB and UVA especially, came in unimpeded. UVB turns out to be incredibly important. It's very destructive, but it also catalyzes the production of vitamin D in the skin, vitamin D being a molecule that we very much need for our strong bones, the health of our immune system, and myriad other important functions in our bodies.

So, living at the equator, we got lots and lots of ultraviolet radiation and the melanin -- this wonderful, complex, ancient polymer compound in our skin -- served as a superb natural sunscreen. This polymer is amazing because it's present in so many different organisms. Melanin, in various forms, has probably been on the Earth a billion years, and has been recruited over and over again by evolution, as often happens. Why change it if it works?

So melanin was recruited, in our lineage, and specifically in our earliest ancestors evolving in Africa, to be a natural sunscreen. Where it protected the body against the degradations of ultraviolet radiation, the destruction, or damage to DNA, and the breakdown of a very important molecule called folate, which helps to fuel cell production, and reproduction in the body. So, it's wonderful. We evolved this very protective, wonderful covering of melanin.

But then we moved. And humans dispersed -- not once, but twice. Major moves, outside of our equatorial homeland, from Africa into other parts of the Old World, and most recently, into the New World. When humans dispersed into these latitudes, what did they face? Conditions were significantly colder, but they were also less intense with respect to the ultraviolet regime.

So if we're somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, look at what's happening to the ultraviolet radiation. We're still getting a dose of UVA. But all of the UVB, or nearly all of it, is dissipated through the thickness of the atmosphere. In the winter, when you are skiing in the Alps, you may experience ultraviolet radiation. But it's all UVA, and, significantly, that UVA has no ability to make vitamin D in your skin.

So people inhabiting northern hemispheric environments were bereft of the potential to make vitamin D in their skin for most of the year. This had tremendous consequences for the evolution of human skin pigmentation. Because what happened, in order to ensure health and well-being, these lineages of people dispersing into the Northern Hemisphere lost their pigmentation. There was natural selection for the evolution of lightly pigmented skin.

Here we begin to see the evolution of the beautiful sepia rainbow that now characterizes all of humanity. Lightly pigmented skin evolved not just once, not just twice, but probably three times. Not just in modern humans, but in one of our distant unrelated ancestors, the Neanderthals. A remarkable, remarkable testament to the power of evolution. Humans have been on the move for a long time. And just in the last 5,000 years, in increasing rates, over increasing distances. Here are just some of the biggest movements of people, voluntary movements, in the last 5,000 years.

Look at some of the major latitudinal transgressions: people from high UV areas going to low UV and vice versa. And not all these moves were voluntary. Between 1520 and 1867, 12 million, 500 people were moved from high UV to low UV areas in the transatlantic slave trade. Now this had all sorts of invidious social consequences. But it also had deleterious health consequences to people.

So what? We've been on the move. We're so clever we can overcome all of these seeming biological impediments. Well, often we're unaware of the fact that we're living in environments in which our skin is inherently poorly adapted. Some of us with lightly pigmented skin live in high-UV areas. Some of us with darkly pigmented skin live in low-UV areas. These have tremendous consequences for our health.

We have to, if we're lightly pigmented, be careful about the problems of skin cancer, and destruction of folate in our bodies, by lots of sun. Epidemiologists and doctors have been very good about telling us about protecting our skin. What they haven't been so good about instructing people is the problem of darkly pigmented people living in high latitude areas, or working inside all the time.

Because the problem there is just as severe, but it is more sinister, because vitamin D deficiency, from a lack of ultraviolet B radiation, is a major problem. Vitamin D deficiency creeps up on people, and causes all sorts of health problems to their bones, to their gradual decay of their immune systems, or loss of immune function, and probably some problems with their mood and health, their mental health.

So we have, in skin pigmentation, one of these wonderful products of evolution that still has consequences for us today. And the social consequences, as we know, are incredibly profound. We live in a world where we have lightly and darkly pigmented people living next to one another, but often brought into proximity initially as a result of very invidious social interactions. So how can we overcome this? How can we begin to understand it? Evolution helps us.

200 years after Darwin's birthday, we have the first moderately pigmented President of the United States. (Applause) How wonderful is that? (Applause) This man is significant for a whole host of reasons. But we need to think about how he compares, in terms of his pigmentation, to other people on Earth. He, as one of many urban admixed populations, is very emblematic of a mixed parentage, of a mixed pigmentation. And he resembles, very closely, people with moderate levels of pigmentation who live in southern Africa, or Southeast Asia.

These people have a tremendous potential to tan, to develop more pigment in their skin, as a result of exposure to sun. They also run the risk of vitamin D deficiency, if they have desk jobs, like that guy. So lets all wish for his great health, and his awareness of his own skin pigmentation.

Now what is wonderful about the evolution of human skin pigmentation, and the phenomenon of pigmentation, is that it is the demonstration, the evidence, of evolution by natural selection, right on your body. When people ask you, "What is the evidence for evolution?" You don't have to think about some exotic examples, or fossils. You just have to look at your skin.

Darwin, I think, would have appreciated this, even though he eschewed the importance of climate on the evolution of pigmentation during his own life. I think, were he able to look at the evidence we have today, he would understand it. He would appreciate it. And most of all, he would teach it.

You, you can teach it. You can touch it. You can understand it. Take it out of this room. Take your skin color, and celebrate it. Spread the word. You have the evolution of the history of our species, part of it, written in your skin. Understand it. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. Go out. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it wonderful? You are the products of evolution. Thank you. (Applause)
Papers

Publication Date: June 21, 2004
By Nina G. Jablonski
The Evolution of Human Skin and Skin Color

Publication Date: March 19, 2012
Authors: Nina G. Jablonski and George Chaplin
Human skin pigmentation, migration and disease susceptibility
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

nakul wrote:rajesh ji, what LM is trying to say is that the academicians are not trying to block us out. they are playing in their own sandbox. the people behind these projects are not serious about real knowledge. they are happy in their own little world where they are praised and respected.

the kind of people who undertake have been brought up to believe that certain paradigms are true and therefore not to be verified. they are quite happy to oblige. we are quite guilty of following this on brf as well. when a person with a known background is cited, it is considered authentic. words from people with unknown accomplishments are dismissed more easily. the scientists are doing the same. they are taking the words of great indologists as the gospel and writing about india from 1000s of miles away. that practical experience and knowledge cannot replace books is entirely lost on them.

what they see will sell is what they right. popular acceptance is very important for them. hence the hesitation in redefining the boundaries which causing a lot of angst here.
nakul ji,

I agree that popular acceptance is very important for a theory.

However AIT has enjoyed and still enjoys a 98% ( :) ) popularity in the West and through the West in rest of the world, except India.

In the West, AIT has support not just among the academics. It has support among the print journalists, writers, TV media, and basically the politicians too are complicit if not by encouragement (as some would like to believe) than by association. In any nook and corner in the West, where ancient origins play any role in opinion-making, there AIT is the dominant theory.

The issue between Lalmohan ji and me was whether there is any anti-Indian conspiracy in this or just ego-centric racism on the part of the Europeans. My opinion is that it is not only academicians-deep. My opinion is that it goes much deeper.

Perhaps one just needs to contemplate a bit what it means to accept the alternative theory - Out-of-India Theory. The language and early religious linkages among the "Indo-European" people are considered pretty strong. True some comparisons are bit over the top, but other comparisons are pretty much self-evident. So if the Urheimat in Central Asia collapses because Indians are not willing to play ball, then it means Europeans ARE either Indian-emigrants from ancient times or they received much of their language and early religion from Indian emigrants. Both of these alternatives would be considered devastating for the sovereignty of the Western Civilization, and it makes it simply an outgrowth of the Indian Civilization.

Also for Indians, there is much at stake politically. Overturning of AIT would mean that the present methods that Christianists use in the South as well as in Dalit areas would experience a setback. Their strategy of "divide and convert" would fail. Also the Islamists in India would have to come up with a different argument than "Aryans too did the same" when they are asked to do introspection of the policies of the Islamic rulers in India, and to take a stand on them.

This is a high-stakes issue!
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by A_Gupta »

^^^^^ Whether AIT or OIT, why should events of 3500 or more years ago be politically relevant today? The whole framework is flawed, this is history-centrism at its peak.

I'm not saying don't fight this battle. But this battle is fighting by the adversary's rules. Any and all possibilities to change the rules of the game should be thought about.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Euro-Aryan Aryans

I had written earlier about the schism among Germanics (Anglo-Germans) - between Euro-Aryan Aryans and the Euro-Aryan Christians. These are both ideological positions.

The Euro-Aryan Aryans believe that Aryans is a race (a superior one at that) and their language was Sanskrit like and their Gods were Rigvedic like, and they should revert to this original belief system! They believe it is their destiny to rule other races.

The Euro-Aryan Christians on the other hand simply believe that Aryans is a race (a superior one at that) and their language was Sanskrit like but whose destiny is to carry the white-man's burden, to proselytize the world in the name of Christ and then to lord over them for they are born to rule. These look for their right to rule over others not just in their race but also in their religious call.

There is an overlap but also a difference.

They both want to rule the others. The question is one of tactics.

Another commonality between the two groups is that they won't accept the Hindu definition of "Arya" as being not one of "noble birth" but one of "noble worldview"! They are not willing to give up their racial claim on the term "Aryan"! They would also try to describe how an "Aryan" looked like in such a way, that they can associate themselves morphologically more closely to him - as white, as blond, as blue-eyed, as long-skulled.

If however the Euro-Aryans were to accept the Indic view of "Arya", which revolves around
  1. Indian Subcontinent has the original home of the "Arya" identity and people
  2. Vedism and Dharma as the life-philosophy of the people
  3. Non-Separability of Indians into Aryans and Others
  4. Solely (current) Indians as true political claimants over the Indian Subcontinent
only then there is a possibility of coming closer, because that is on Indian terms
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

A_Gupta wrote:^^^^^ Whether AIT or OIT, why should events of 3500 or more years ago be politically relevant today? The whole framework is flawed, this is history-centrism at its peak.

I'm not saying don't fight this battle. But this battle is fighting by the adversary's rules. Any and all possibilities to change the rules of the game should be thought about.
As far as India is concerned, the relevance of AIT in political discourse in India has crept in not from the side of Hindus. It is the contention of others, like
  1. Christianists, that because Aryans invaded India and subjugated the original inhabitants of India - the Dravidians and Dalits, it is time that the latter overthrow this subjugation and inequality by rejecting Hinduism, as that was imposed on them by Aryans like upper caste Brahmins, and to accept Christ whose Father, our Lord in Heaven, doesn't discriminate on the basis of color!
  2. Islamists, that the Islamic rulers did not commit any atrocities on Hindus or force any religion on them, and even if there were anything like that, the Aryans did the same, so Hindus have no right to protest or complain, and in fact Islam saved the original inhabitants in India, the lower castes from oppression by the upper castes, the Aryans, thus giving Islam a bigger right to be in India than the Aryan Brahmins!
This is the kind of hyperbole they use, and it is based on the Aryan Invasion Theory! This makes that what did not happen 3500 years ago relevant today, because some fake history is being used for division of Indians, for justification of barbarity.

That is the reality regardless of whether we see it as flawed or not!
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by member_23626 »

RajeshA wrote:Continuing the Series on Skin Color Evolution from earlier


Filmed Feb 2009



Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color
Funnily, I reached the same conclusion, the dark skinned people of southern India live very close to the equator compared to those who live in Northern side of India.. well I am proved right I guess :P
Last edited by member_23626 on 16 Jul 2012 22:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Euro-Aryan Aryans

There is a namoona around by the name of Richard Cassaro, and he represents one of those ideology keepers of the Euro-Aryan Aryanism.

Published Apr 02, 2012
By Richard Cassaro
The Ancient Secret of the Swastika & The Hidden History of the White Race (Pt. 1 of 2)


Published Apr 15, 2012
By Richard Cassaro
The Ancient Secret of the Swastika & The Hidden History of the White Race (Pt. 2 of 2)


He actually ascribes to a half-way house. He doesn't believe that the Aryans came out of ant-hills in Central Asian Steppes, but rather from the Roof of the World - Tibet, where they had gone to save themselves as their original home in Atlantis :roll: sank! But he still believes that Aryans came and fought with the Dravidians and pushed them South.

Furthermore he also does believe that the original religion of Aryans is Hinduism and Christianity destroyed 'European Hinduism'.

He however does offer some information on Swastikas which is interesting.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by RajeshA »

Sridhar.E ji,

on BRF, usually we avoid quoting big long posts to make a small comment. Just a small reminder.

Thanks
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by SaiK »

Many ingrained desis too now-a-days believe out of tibet theory. However, not sure on the separate race aspect. Interestingly tibet has been more on the news since dalai lama hit headlines past decade and a half. The news is more in by word of mouth rather printed documents.. so, I believe the inner CnC of indic structure has an inherent quality [more trusted] of communication setup [word of mouth].. and this neuron graph route and critical path measures are handled well by Euro-Buddhists or Euro-Aryans who does not still want dravidian-indic past rather aryan-indic past. They are only confused now if pure ahimsa technique is enough to encounter the massively a-brahaminic filtered inheritance.

I can see some connections and dots, but some are fading as one travels down south.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by svinayak »

RajeshA wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:^^^^^ Whether AIT or OIT, why should events of 3500 or more years ago be politically relevant today? The whole framework is flawed, this is history-centrism at its peak.

I'm not saying don't fight this battle. But this battle is fighting by the adversary's rules. Any and all possibilities to change the rules of the game should be thought about.
As far as India is concerned, the relevance of AIT in political discourse in India has crept in not from the side of Hindus. It is the contention of others, like
  1. Christianists, that because Aryans invaded India and subjugated the original inhabitants of India - the Dravidians and Dalits, it is time that the latter overthrow this subjugation and inequality by rejecting Hinduism, as that was imposed on them by Aryans like upper caste Brahmins, and to accept Christ whose Father, our Lord in Heaven, doesn't discriminate on the basis of color!
  2. Islamists, that the Islamic rulers did not commit any atrocities on Hindus or force any religion on them, and even if there were anything like that, the Aryans did the same, so Hindus have no right to protest or complain, and in fact Islam saved the original inhabitants in India, the lower castes from oppression by the upper castes, the Aryans, thus giving Islam a bigger right to be in India than the Aryan Brahmins!
This is the kind of hyperbole they use, and it is based on the Aryan Invasion Theory! This makes that what did not happen 3500 years ago relevant today, because some fake history is being used for division of Indians, for justification of barbarity.

That is the reality regardless of whether we see it as flawed or not!
Indian history is by Indians only. Others do not have any say in this matter. Due to colonization we have a large number of westernized Indians who have accepted this. Since Independence this has not been challenged correctly and it is now possible since a new generation has grownup with little connection to colonial past. But they have been indoctrinated with colonial view point which needs to be decolonized.

Hence all the external and foreign theories must be kept foreign inside the education system and the regional history must be dominant view in the text book.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by svinayak »

RajeshA wrote:

I agree that popular acceptance is very important for a theory.

However AIT has enjoyed and still enjoys a 98% ( :) ) popularity in the West and through the West in rest of the world, except India.

In the West, AIT has support not just among the academics. It has support among the print journalists, writers, TV media, and basically the politicians too are complicit if not by encouragement (as some would like to believe) than by association. In any nook and corner in the West, where ancient origins play any role in opinion-making, there AIT is the dominant theory.

The issue between Lalmohan ji and me was whether there is any anti-Indian conspiracy in this or just ego-centric racism on the part of the Europeans. My opinion is that it is not only academicians-deep. My opinion is that it goes much deeper.
AIT is the identity of the Europe and also it is the history of Europe.
It is about Europe and Europeans.

So there is no anti-Indian conspiracy here.
Perhaps one just needs to contemplate a bit what it means to accept the alternative theory - Out-of-India Theory. The language and early religious linkages among the "Indo-European" people are considered pretty strong. True some comparisons are bit over the top, but other comparisons are pretty much self-evident. So if the Urheimat in Central Asia collapses because Indians are not willing to play ball, then it means Europeans ARE either Indian-emigrants from ancient times or they received much of their language and early religion from Indian emigrants. Both of these alternatives would be considered devastating for the sovereignty of the Western Civilization, and it makes it simply an outgrowth of the Indian Civilization.

Also for Indians, there is much at stake politically. Overturning of AIT would mean that the present methods that Christianists use in the South as well as in Dalit areas would experience a setback. Their strategy of "divide and convert" would fail. Also the Islamists in India would have to come up with a different argument than "Aryans too did the same" when they are asked to do introspection of the policies of the Islamic rulers in India, and to take a stand on them.

This is a high-stakes issue!
All the Indians have to start looking at foreign history as foreign to country.

De-colonization in the world history is also proceeding rapidly and peoples history would prevail.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by Lalmohan »

during the ice age, tibet would have been a rather colder and frostier place than it is now? during the great floods (in fact we are still in the post flood landscape) - we are already on higher ground

escape to tibet makes little practical sense
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by SaiK »

Acharya, in my understanding, I think RajeshA concurs with your views. He is making things explicit what lies bare and hidden behind our indic ways of living that needs counter-measures.

Another aspect you have to consider is when you counter, [from a point that you never did in your life - history [or the recent past, not ancient past] speaks volume about invasions of all kinds] the force that plays invasion is still on and active in many forms. This is also part of what RajeshA is trying to counter.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by svinayak »

SaiK wrote:
Another aspect you have to consider is when you counter, [from a point that you never did in your life - history [or the recent past, not ancient past] speaks volume about invasions of all kinds] the force that plays invasion is still on and active in many forms. This is also part of what RajeshA is trying to counter.
This invasion part can be countered with correct history.
With the advent of information flow and internet most of the heresy and myth can be removed rapidly in the soceity. This is happening across the world and there is resistance. Lot of countries have become defensive and are trying to protect what they have.

Yes, There are govt which will try to prevent changes. But times are different now and world has not seen such changes before.
The forces will try to attack India and hence Indians have to employ different methods and process to spread its message

Any changes made by Indians will be seen as a direct attack on the prevailing history and theory.
It will be seen as an attack on their nation directly and will be defended.
Last edited by svinayak on 16 Jul 2012 22:49, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by SaiK »

Sure, but for an institutional change the forces are way too powerful, and could consider honest truthful counters as political in nature and trashed as vested groups. And, it all depends on the capability of the countering force if they are well trained to withstand our political setup. It is easily said than done.

The reason to correct our history is the right approach. But, correcting the history will be deemed as invasion itself by the currently invaded minds. How are we to tackle that?

IMHO, this planning is required to have core changes done initially. Those core changes should be abstracted with what finally we want to read, inherit and pass it to our younger generations. That way, we establish a framework.

I am sure, just replacement outright would be countered more within than external. jmt
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by SaiK »

By superimposing the collective data of Giosan and others, the team came to the conclusion that the decline in monsoon and consequent lack of water had led to the collapse of the Harappan civilization. “The monsoon-fed Ghaggar-Hakra was their lifeline. With the monsoon shifting continually eastward, they began to get less and less water, and consequently little water was available for urban centres downstream. This would have forced the Harappans to move upstream to make use of the little water available, putting pressures on urbanism, finally leading to its decline,”
[youtube]zpYTGHLZHPU[/youtube]
n the past, several attempts had been made to fathom the reason for the mysterious decline of this highly evolved ancient civilisation with its great orderly cities, sophisticated construction, sanitation systems, arts and crafts, and writing. Well, if it was climate change that finished it off, maybe, we should take climate change more seriously. Or, history could repeat itself.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by svinayak »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcGLlLEbmI

This is a good one to show how the Indus civilization was large and as early as 7000 BC
Meluhha: the Indus Civilization and Its Contacts with Mesopotamia
Mark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin, Madison


Meluhha -- the name for the Indus civilization found in Mesopotamian texts -- was an important source of exotic goods, many of which are preserved in the archaeological record of Mesopotamia. The movement of people and goods between these two regions established a pattern of interaction that continued in later periods and is still seen today. This lecture presents an overview of the Indus civilization and its contact with the Mesopotamia during the forth to second millennia BC.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by fanne »

there are two ways to read your history, one on the construct that AIT has and one of the real one that OIT has. See the difference

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/ ... ately.html

The Met office in India, as elsewhere in the world, forecasts monsoons based on the Gregorian calendar. But that system has repeatedly proved unreliable. We must look to the nakshatras for solution.


According to the Hindu panchang, the month of sawan which along with bhadon comprises India’s monsoon season, began on July 4; rains drenched this parched city on July 5. Was the monsoon on time, or ‘'delayed’ as the Met office kept lamenting? The Union Ministry of Agriculture was clueless how to reassure farmers who sowed the kharif crop too early.

CK Raju, who played a key role in building India’s first supercomputer, Param, and received the Telesio-Galilei Academy of Science’s gold medal for 2010 for discovering and correcting a mistake made by Albert Einstein, says the monsoon was similarly ‘delayed’ in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, and 2010. Each time, the rains eventually belied the Met office’s predictions of drought.

This is because the Gregorian calendar on which the scientific community relies is not suitable for such calculations. India must first decide if the monsoon synchronises with the tropical or sidereal year. The tropical (solar) year is the length of time the sun takes to return to the same position in the cycle of seasons as seen from earth, such as from one vernal equinox to the next.

It is not wholly synchronous with the earth’s orbit around the sun (sidereal, actual year) due to the precession of the equinoxes, and is around 20 minutes shorter (the difference can accumulate over long periods). Indian astronomy rests on the sidereal year; a better method of timekeeping as the sun’s transit against fixed stars (nakshatras, for example, Dhruv-tara) is easy to observe and traditionally determined sowing and harvesting activities.

Europe was aware that it lacked the knowledge to precisely calculate the length of either the tropical or sidereal year, which India knew from at least the third century. Hence the Gregorian calendar reform committee headed by Christoph Clavius tried to consult Indian calendrical sources; just prior to the calendar reform of 1582, his student Matteo Ricci was in India, scouting calendrical manuals in Cochin!

The Gregorian calendar reform was needed because the Julian calendar fixed the length of the year very crudely as the Romans were weak with fractions; so the calendar slipped roughly one day every 128 years. By 1582 CE, it had slipped about 10 days out of phase in the 1250-odd years since the Council of Nicaea fixed the date of Easter by fixing the date of the vernal equinox on XII calends (March 21). By the end of the 16th century, the vernal equinox fell around March 11 on the Julian calendar.

The Gregorian reform corrected this anomaly by advancing the calendar by 10 days, and by making every centennial year not a leap year unless divisible by 400 (for example, 2000). It thus came closer to a more accurate figure for the fractional part of the length of the tropical year. The correction was vital for the practical purpose of fixing latitude from observation of solar altitude at noon, necessary for navigation which was then extremely important for Europe which lagged behind the Indians and Arabs.

Shockingly, after independence, the Indian calendar reform committee adopted the Gregorian calendar and said the seasons depend on the tropical year! Superficially, the tropical year seems supported by astronomical treatises like Surya Siddhanta and PancaSiddhantika, but the passages have been misunderstood. Anyway, even prior to Varahamihira and the PancaSiddhantika, Aryabhata explicitly advocated the sidereal year; Marxist historians concur that Indian agriculture was linked to the nakshatras.

Modern India has not seriously studied the monsoons, though even today good monsoons drive the economy. The late Meghnad Saha believed heat balance alone mattered in configuring the monsoons; CK Raju thinks wind regime is the key, but says major research is necessary to establish a paradigm. The ancients coped by creating over 5000 panchangs, each ‘corrected’ to account for latitude (hence the Kerala monsoon arrives much before rains in Delhi) and longitude. There is a powerful cultural context here —the Indian calendar revolves around the rainy season (varsha) as the year (varsh) relates to rain. It is eternally relevant for agriculture as poor calculations can wreak havoc through mistimed agricultural operations.

The Nehruvian quest for “scientific temper” led to slavish adoption of the Gregorian calendar for calculating the seasons and monsoon rhythm, though objective analysis shows that every year the monsoon arrives in harmony with the panchang, though ‘scientists’ keep bleating about ‘delays’. Refusing to learn from experience or history, they have ruined farmers and harvests.

The keynote of the Hindu calendar is the monsoons on which agriculture rests, and not summer or winter which may be relevant in Europe. Monsoons depend upon the wind regime. The global circulation of wind is not decided solely by the position of the sun. Hot air rises at the equator, but does not descend at the poles. Due to the Coriolis force, the earth’s rotation causes air to be deflected and to descend before the Horse-Latitudes (sub-tropical latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees north and south). Thus, the monsoons also depend upon the Coriolis force, which is an inertial force. Since the only possible inertial framework is one fixed relative to the distant stars, the Coriolis force relates to the sidereal motion of the earth, and monsoons relate to the sidereal year. Had monsoons related to the tropical year, the cumulative difference between the tropical and sidereal year would have put the Indian calendar out of phase. This never happened.

By forcing farmers to abandon the ancient nakshatra-governed seasons in favour of the tropical year, Nehruvian secularism and scientific temper have compromised our food security. An eerie coincidence that has facilitated the eclipse of agriculture from public consciousness is the virtual disappearance of rural symbols once associated with major political parties —cow and calf (Congress); plough and farmer (Janata, Lok Dal), while the sickle of the communist parties has degenerated into an offensive weapon. This is a telling comment on the growing urban bias in our polity and our distorted understanding of the economy, the adverse effects of which have already come to haunt us.

Two decades of liberalisation-globalisation and thousands of crores of ‘incentives’ later, the service and the manufacturing sectors have failed to promote growth or made a dent in unemployment nationwide. The economy is gasping for a good monsoon to lift it out of the present morass. Can we at least now trash the liberalisation-era myth that there is no link between agriculture and growth?
ramana
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by ramana »

Shiv, Look up van Dijik's Critical Discourse Theory and see how it relates to the AIT.
A_Gupta
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by A_Gupta »

RajeshA wrote:That is the reality regardless of whether we see it as flawed or not!
Not to hurt the feelings of any Christians here, but if they argue that Christ is the sole begotten son of God sent to assume our sins and save us, and your argument mainly is, no, he is not, that is exactly where they want you. This is an argument they, historically speaking, almost always won.

The Hindu response to simply add a picture of Christ to the puja place and continue as before was infinitely more effective.
SaiK
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Post by SaiK »

fair enough.. nobody in desh will question you or harm you for doing that..but you are guiding the discussion away from OiT to OT. is that okay?
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