Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

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UlanBatori
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by UlanBatori »

And we wonder why a bunch of horses' asses were able to overrun our mighty civilization and its super-organized armed forces? Hain, hain!! page after page of yadayadayada, all because some jackass invented new lies about hordes of homosexuals charging down the Khyber Pass and translating the Vedas into Urdu.

I have a very practical and urgent question for all of you: If you were organizing a Conference to discuss the Vedas, their relevance to the past, present and future in all respects, what would be your list of topic areas?

Past, OK, u r all experts. Rant away.
Present? There are super applications in Yoga, Ayurvedic healthcare, politics, management theory, leadership ethics & smarts, mathematics, computer science, architecture, solar illumination & ventilation, agriculture, u name it.

Future? Few here seem to have thought about it. Consider: In the days of Valmiki etc, they looked up and saw stars. Brilliant and clear. Could discern color.
But it was only a few centuries ago that the heliocentric orbital dynamics were realized in simple formal manner. Empirical observations existed, I am not going to argue that, but not enough to figure out the orbit of a warhead to reach Alaskapuri from Pyonyangabad. But I digress.
The solar system led us to the planets, but no life has been found there.

Then ppl realized that most of those "stars" are really galaxies. With **BILLIONS** of stars. The glowing belt right above (when looking into the summer night sky) was identified as our own Galactic disc seen edgewise. In plane.

Then.. the Hubble Space Telescope sent us all those gorgeous pictures of far-away galaxies in false colors.

Then... The Kepler Planet-Finder telescope went up and focused on a very very very very tiny segment of the sky and stared hard. It found clear evidence of one PLANET orbiting another star, based on the blip in the starlight as a big planet passed in front of it. Then another... Now over 4000.

Then they found Nearly Earth-Sized Planets. Then planets Nearly Earth-Like In Conditions.

I project that inside 20 years we will have found something truly mind-blowing: Clear evidence of what we agree to be Life. Intelligence.

What happens next? What happens to "And Gawd Made Man In His Image?" What happens to "Purusha More Advanced Than 84,232 animals and 1.2 million plants"?

We may find evidence of life that is 1 billion years newer than Earth's. Not a problem.

But we may also find something intelligent, a billion years more advanced than us.
Think about it.

Maybe we will realize that the Galaxies are each Swarm Intelligences, evolved in civilization for 10 billion years.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

Haven't much time but I will say the claim that there is "genetic evidence" of the time agriculture originated, or of the "first" domestication of various crops (rice in China, wheat in Turkey, etc.) is pure bilge. There is no "evidence" from genetics backing any such assertion.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by sudarshan »

Rudradev wrote:Haven't much time but I will say the claim that there is "genetic evidence" of the time agriculture originated, or of the "first" domestication of various crops (rice in China, wheat in Turkey, etc.) is pure bilge. There is no "evidence" from genetics backing any such assertion.
Well, SriJoy has been claiming that such was the case (that geneticists had conclusively proved that agriculture could not have originated before 10,000 BC). Please do elaborate when you get a chance. I'd love to hear the other side of the story on this.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

There is a think called a civilizational narrative - and Hindus have a narrative that in Hindu collective consciousness goes back many thousands of years - the exact number of thousands is not asked for or stated. There are other things in the Hindu narrative that can change if good reasons can be given for changing the narrative.

A book written by my wife's grand uncle reveals the lives of Madhwa Brahmin society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There were frequent epidemics of plague, smallpox and cholera that killed of people early One could not hope to live and nurture a son or a daughter they reached the age of 20 or 25. They were married off early and had children early. Women often died at childbirth and men married again.

Most Hindus did not insist on sticking with old beliefs and habits when the real contributions of "western" medicine came in in the form of vaccination and public health/clean water supply and neonatal care. Sati/Jauhar was never practiced in my part of the country. It was a response to a particular historic period an doing away with that did not result in widespread protests.

But when you try and force fit a fake narrative like Aryan invasion into Hindu society - there is going to be resistance. The stuff we are told about "lack of historic sense" among Hindus ignores the fact that Hindu history is a continuous oral narrative. If you don't accept that as history that is not a collective HIndu problem, it is your problem. Continuous efforts to mindlessly change a narrative will ultimately face robust resistance if it is seen as a pointless or harmful change.

Most Hindus, educated or not do not give a rats ass whether iron came in 1000 BC or 100,000 BC. Most do not even notice when someone insists that agriculture came in 10,000 BC and not 200,000 BC. No one gives a damn. Only the narrative matters.

But you say Aryans brought Sanskrit to India - and that India had Aryans and Dravidians - that is a false narrative. It does not exist in the collective Hindu narrative which serves as history for Hindus. It will be opposed. You want to call this "superstition"? Or "lack of scientific temper"? Or right wing "bigotry"? Feel free. No one actually gives a flying fuk
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Rudradev wrote:Haven't much time but I will say the claim that there is "genetic evidence" of the time agriculture originated, or of the "first" domestication of various crops (rice in China, wheat in Turkey, etc.) is pure bilge. There is no "evidence" from genetics backing any such assertion.
No one knows how many centuries humans cultivated multiple wild varieties of rice until someone struck upon some varieties that suited them in terms of yield and environment. No one knows how many such efforts occurred without any modern day scientist finding the evidence. In theory - if one set of people domesticated one variety in say South America and that variety lasted from 18000 BC to 12,000 BC but was lost because of a natural calamity, we would never know until evidence is found, if at all.

Today one set of scientists finds evidence of one event of domestication that finally spread across the earth and this event is marked as the "first domestication". That judgment is wrong.It is merely "what we think we know today" given that we happened to find this with what we have". Human predictions about colonization of space and undersea colonies (which were to happen by 1990) fall in this category. Based on what they knew then a statement was made. It was wrong.

I have followed the findings of archaeo-anthropology (along with almost anything else) for decades and in my life the history of modern humans has been pushed further and further back. And every time something new was found everyone declared "Humans are no older than X date". So insistence that a particular date is the last and final date ever is similar to saying "Last Propet is xyz" No more dates/Prophets will come. Ever

It is amazing how many people who claim to "know science" are unable to look at the flaws in the dogmatic conclusions they draw. It also reveals how science fails again and again despite many successes.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

SriJoy wrote:
Rudradev wrote:Haven't much time but I will say the claim that there is "genetic evidence" of the time agriculture originated, or of the "first" domestication of various crops (rice in China, wheat in Turkey, etc.) is pure bilge. There is no "evidence" from genetics backing any such assertion.
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8351.abstract

Pure bilge ?
The ability to google a phrase and copy/paste a link doesn't indicate he capacity to read a paper, understand its methodology, evaluate the data it presents, or grasp the implications of its stated results.
Last edited by Rudradev on 05 Jul 2017 09:40, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

SriJoy wrote:
shiv wrote:


Today one set of scientists finds evidence of one event of domestication that finally spread across the earth and this event is marked as the "first domestication". That judgment is wrong.It is merely "what we think we know today"
If the evidence of domestication is genetically driven, they are not wrong.
.
The notion that such "evidence" exists is itself evidence of a pitiful level of ignorance of how evolution works.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote:
if someone claims humans are millions of years old, which is orders of magnitude greater than the dates proposed, they'd be wrong.
This is called dogma. Of course one could call it astrology. "Predicting that an event that has not yet occurred will be wrong". Calling it that would at least be honest. So much for "scientific temper"...just sayin :D

Like you said:
the only dogma involved, is in claiming something is true with no corroborative evidence
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

SriJoy wrote:
Rudradev wrote:
The notion that such "evidence" exists is itself evidence of a pitiful level of ignorance of how evolution works.
Well, it is pretty clear what the paper i posted is saying on this regard. And it is saying it is using genetic analysis to conclude domestication of rice dates and location.
You are only making it "pretty clear" that your claims of being able to "parse" scientific papers are as hollow as the bogus conclusions you routinely tomtom.
Last edited by Rudradev on 05 Jul 2017 09:55, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

For other interested parties, imagine this:

1) In 2017, Tavleen Singh and her five neighbours all have rose gardens.

2) Tavleen almost always gets beautiful roses blooming in her garden. Of the other neighbours, some get few or poor blooms in their gardens. Some get decent blooms but they die quickly.

3) This has nothing to do with Tavleen being a better gardener than her neighbours. She just happened to start her garden with a better stock of seeds than they did, although she started her garden at the same time as they did.

4) At some point the neighbours ask Tavleen for advice. "How do your roses grow so nicely?" Tavleen shrugs her shoulders but shares some of her seeds with her neighbours.

5) The neighbours then all start using the seeds that Tavleen gave them to plant their rose bushes. Because they stop using the seed stocks they were previously using, those stocks become extinct in the neighbourhood. Soon all the gardens in the neighbourhood are getting beautiful blooms every year, derived from the seed stock that Tavleen Singh started with. And everyone is happy.

6) In 3017, some white skinned geneticist looks at the roses in the neighbourhood and determines (correctly) that they all derived from the same ancestral stock (Tavleen's seeds).

7) Some half-wit white-skin-worshipping schmuck reads the geneticist's results. He then "parses the paper" and claims that (a) Roses originated in Tavleen Singh's garden and nowhere else in the neighbourhood! (b) Tavleen Singh was the first and only one in the neighbourhood to be cultivating roses! (c) Nobody else was cultivating roses at the same time as Tavleen, or ever did before Tavleen!

8) QED (Qaid-e-Duh)
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

It illustrates my point very adequately. You think you can frame the terms of argument and dictate what others must prove or disprove to establish how full of dreck you are. In this belief, as in nearly everything else, you are and continue to be wrong.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

>>if someone claims humans are millions of years old, which is orders of magnitude greater than the dates proposed, they'd be wrong.

Well the so called "first human" (i.e. the oldest one discovered so far) was in Ethiopia and 2.8m years old. There's been another discovery in Morocco recently which is probably older.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

One thing we can do is discredit these ridiculous theories of "Aryan" invasion the standard way, namely mention everytime that these are not part of the Indian civilisational narrative, and cannot be found in any of its literature, that these were formed at the onset and in the immediate aftermath of the colonial period and not surprisingly these theories are emanating from Europe or descendants of Europeans in the US. As such, these theories must be regarded as valid as their self-serving histories of the Native Americans, Africans and East Asians.

The internal problem, i.e. the domestic advocates of "Aryan" invasion, are mainly Communist, or communist supported, as well as themselves linked to or associated with the foreign elements in the Indian polity. They can be handled through internal debate.

Of vital importance, however, is to put forward both the discrediting argument and our own narrative with appropriate scholarship behind it.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

Thanks, but who guarantees sentience and intelligence started with Homo Sapiens (just because someone decided to call it "Sapiens")? Another thing, it is now established that various homo species were co-existing. For all we know, some of our stories could be from a time when those memories of inter-species engagement were simply verbalised and carried on.

All we can say about discoveries so far, is that this or that is the oldest discovered yet. So when our own narratives speak of a time that is 15-20,000 years old, I would be very wary of dismissing it just because some European colonialist bred in that milieu and their local pets find it suitable in their social, career or financial interest.

The rest is political fantasy backed up by convenient facts, pretty much on every side. It's only a question of disclosing/exposing which side each commentary comes from.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

JE Menon wrote:One thing we can do is discredit these ridiculous theories of "Aryan" invasion the standard way, namely mention everytime that these are not part of the Indian civilisational narrative, and cannot be found in any of its literature, that these were formed at the onset and in the immediate aftermath of the colonial period and not surprisingly these theories are emanating from Europe or descendants of Europeans in the US. As such, these theories must be regarded as valid as their self-serving histories of the Native Americans, Africans and East Asians.

The internal problem, i.e. the domestic advocates of "Aryan" invasion, are mainly Communist, or communist supported, as well as themselves linked to or associated with the foreign elements in the Indian polity. They can be handled through internal debate.

Of vital importance, however, is to put forward both the discrediting argument and our own narrative with appropriate scholarship behind it.
The article is written and forwarded for publication. It will come online somewhere soon
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

^^^Wonderful...
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote:
shiv wrote: This is called dogma. Of course one could call it astrology. "Predicting that an event that has not yet occurred will be wrong". Calling it that would at least be honest. So much for "scientific temper"...just sayin :D

Like you said:
You got it wrong, good doctor. If one claims something is X years old, when all evidence points to it being orders of magnitude younger than X, still holding on to it, is dogma, since dogma = belief in something uncorroborated/non-empiric.
You have moved the goalpost from what you said to something else o great rhetorician
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

>>Some elements of the story could be.
Good. Which elements?

>>Some elements of them cannot be.
I don't know anyone saying that any single narrative is 100% correct here. But first, it must be recognised that these are narratives, and where one narrative comes from and where the other comes from. There is no single narrative here which is objective by any standard acceptable to all. This is the reality.

>>Its got nothing to do with colonialists,
That's what all colonial narrative supporters say, although you are clearly not one. Let me put it to you like this: Had we not been been colonised, there would be no talk of an "Aryan" invasion, or an "Aryan migration" today. This entire discussion arises from that colonial narrative.

>>its got everything to do with there being zero evidence - from anywhere on the planet- for ice age civilizations. As the paper i provided shows, all evidence of farming, genetically speaking, is from after ice ages. Remember, our narrative is not from unchanged shrutis,its (in the case of Ramayana and Mahabharata), from repeatedly revised smritis.

So? From our point of view our narrative, however it emerged, is evidence. Our people said it. Unless this was the first instance of collaborative social-science fiction.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

>>Our people were no different from other people, just because our people said it, doesn't make it any more/less credible.

When our people talk of our history and our narrative, it is more credible than when others with no skin in the game other than a predatory or potentially predatory intent do it.

>>Also, what is written in epic literature, is not empiric evidence. Empiric evidence is stuff like archaeology, genetic analysis, etc.- that which stands on its own, bereft of any literary support.

Provided that (a) the "empiric evidence" does not arise from an intention to justify or supplement existing narratives, such that the study is rhetorically skewed in that direction; (b) the study methodology and evidence that is thrown up is verifiable by all parties to any narrative that may be affected by the result, and (c) the resultant data in raw form is available to aforementioned parties.

Just taking a report in a "reputed journal" and quoting that study as "empirical evidence" is no longer sufficient - given the colonial and post-colonial impulses that are still prevalent.

>>But when we talk of ramayana-mahabharata, which are smriti literatures, allegations of colonialism is obfuscating from the analysis.

Where has anyone actually alleged colonialism in anything to do with Ramayana/MB other than where colonial historians have commented on it? They have neither the knowledge, the language, nor the civilisational background to generate a narrative that is anything other than a product of their own civilisational and historical milieu. What they have managed to do though is to also generate "trust" in their commentary among the formerly colonised. That edifice of "trust" is now crumbling, and rightly so. We are watching it happen. And some of us are helping it happen.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

sudarshan wrote: I agree with your observation about "those who talk of back calculations don't know what is involved." That is what I was trying to explain - first you need the knowledge of the governing equations (calculus), and then you need the data to feed into the governing equations. Without the data, the governing equations by themselves are useless for back-calculation. Over so many thousands of years, even smaller bodies such as asteroids, comets, or moons of planets will produce enough gravitational perturbations to throw off calculations based on periodicity. For the purposes of planetary position specifications based on nakshatras, all it will take is a difference from the "periodicity-calculated" position of 1/27th (<4%) of a full revolution, to put the planet in the "next or previous" nakshatra. So back-calculations will only work when you have a sufficiently detailed database of all the gravitationally significant objects within the solar system, and the number of gravitationally significant objects will increase as you try to push your back calculations further into antiquity (say over 7500 or 14000 years).
Which is why back-calculation errors might throw the dates off tremendously, when the results are taken to be correct today.

Of course, dating attempts are also "back-calculation," it's just that somebody back in say 0 AD would not be expected to have the extensive database required to back-calculate and insert planetary observations into the MB. If the claim is that they did have such a comprehensive database back then, then that's a pretty revolutionary theory by itself (as you pointed out in your book).
The ancient Indians do seem to have had a comprehensive database.
e.g., see this: (PDF file)
http://124.108.19.235:12000/jspui/bitst ... ayanan.pdf
The Manda Puzzle in Indian Astronomy, Anil Narayanan, 2012
Indian Journal of History of Science, 47.3 (2012) 317-343

IMO, it is a speculative paper, but promising.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

There are at least 7 million untranslated manuscripts sitting in the National Manuscript Documentation Board (may have got the name wrong). The upper estimate (by a Brit) is 30 million documents. As our own people start to spend time on these, the narrative will change.

People bullshitting about Indians had no historical record (mainly colonials or their local lapdogs) should keep this in mind. These records probably form the largest historical database of mankind from a single country.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

I think Shiv is entirely correct and strategic in addressing AIT within the existing framework. Everything else is a distraction **for that purpose**. The Talageri framework, the Nilesh Oak framework may one day mature and explain all the other information that we have. I hate using this cliche, but "the need of the hour" is to show that even the existing framework does not support AIT. This is difficult to do, not because of the limitations of science, but because of the entrenched political and religio-political interests that have a stake in keeping AIT alive. In a sense, it is not AIT that needs to be defeated, but rather these interests. AIT is only one leg of the stool on which these interests sit; the others also need to be sawn away.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

>>not necessarily. Since we have a skin in the game, we have the motive to fudge it in favourable terms for us, just like the corollary for our counterparts.

Yes, and I prefer that we fudge it in favourable terms for us, until we find that mythical absolute reality which is "what REALLY happened" with a narrative that we can all agree for all countries' histories as being "the truth". Not just for India. You?

>>Sure. But one can't arbitarily trash data on domestication events derived via biology simply because its inconvinient.

This is a bit of a "sun rises in the east" comment, if I may say so. Why would Indians do this more than others?

>>We are not talking about a stray history article cherry-picking empirical data, but an article in peer reviewed, empirical science that has nothing to do with politics in the first place. domestication event of rice has nothing to do with aryan invasion theory.

How do you know that it has nothing to do with politics in the first place? You "trust" what they say. The system. If you are an academic, you are well aware that there are hundreds of papers commissioned from students by intelligence agencies to support one agenda (strategic or tactical) or another. Similarly many papers are directly classified after publication, sometimes the viva is done with military officers present - even when it has nothing apparently to do with defence, a social study let's say.

As for peer review, while there are many perhaps the majority, of legitimate cases, I who am not an academic have peer reviewed articles for academic journals on behalf of xyz (who is a top academic in her field). You also know that this whole peer review business is increasingly a back-scratching mafia who approve papers by their academic friends and acquaintances (oh after some easy changes are advised) in order to secure speaking (or non-speaking) invitations to conferences in a different locale everytime (mysteriously), accompanied by their spouses or man/woman friends.

My regard for "empirical evidence" is tempered by the above knowledge, being closely involved for two decades (though I'm not an academic myself by any means).
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote: Which is why i am less inclined to look at the messenger and more inclined to look at what the message is.
You really like to tell us a lot about yourself, but seem to enjoy it less when others tell you what they feel. Remember that this is a well known rhetorical tactic that is meant to deniably make the reader of your post imagine that he does not have all the superlative qualities you ascribe to yourself. I think you should leave out these pointless self descriptions because rhetorical word games can only take you so far. Its the substance or lack of it in your posts that count.

SriJoy wrote: that Aryan invasion theory is wrong, has less to do with racist colonialists coming up with it and more to do with inherent flaws to the notion itself.
This statement of undeniable wisdom suffers from twin issues of ignorance or "binkers wearing" so to speak
1. It ignores the fact that people will believe and follow even racists or murderers if the latter are placed on a sufficiently high pedestal by means of rank, office or award.
2. When racist theories become mainstream, their racist origins cannot be pinpointed without going back to the source and where possible quoting passages from literature produced by the racists or other literature that has recognized and called out the racism

Of course this reply to you is not for your benefit or, perish the thought, change your views on any way. I write for my own entertainment and for others to read. If you benefit from it I offer my views free of charge with my compliments.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

>>I prefer we indulge in least amount of fudging- be it from anyone. Which is why i am less inclined to look at the messenger and more inclined to look at what the message is.

Now that we have agreed that fudging is involved, I would submit to you that, the position above is the default position for pretty much everyone here who is participating. Why wouldn't other posters prefer to indulge the least amount of fudging? Why would they be more inclined (than you let's say) to look at the messenger and not at the message? My view, at least, is that everyone is here with the most honourable motives, considering the reality of fudging involved. The only question then becomes who do you want to fudge for, or whose fudge would you prefer to align with - considering the "empirical evidence" that keeps being generated? I have made my position clear.

>>that Aryan invasion theory is wrong, has less to do with racist colonialists coming up with it and more to do with inherent flaws to the notion itself.

Actually, it is both. If the colonialists hadn't come up with it, we would be looking at it's inherent flaws. And of course it is flawed, substantially enough to render it a farce, but that is what generally happens when an imperial motive is overlaid with the righteous patina of academic virtue. People keep scraping at that patina to get to the underlying truth (in, order, of course to be more right, and more righteous, than the next academic) and what do they discover. Motive. That's always a problem.

>>because bhai, we are talking about rice domestication in this example. I see no ulterior motive... So what possible motive is there to fudge it ?!

If I understand correctly, what you are saying here is that you see no ulterior motive, nor can conceive of a motive for someone to fudge it? That, however, does not mean there isn't one and won't be now or in the future. Consider, for example, that Basmati rice had it's origins traced in some obscure academic study in January 1987 to the Mississipi Delta wild rice of 10K years ago, do you think our patent claim to Basmati may have been affected by the vigorous protestations of Uncle Ben? Given the power balance today, I think it might. It would be nice if we also had a study which showed that, in fact, it must be traced to the Godavari delta because a paper in the "Journal of Rice DNA" (Published by Rice University in the US - otherwise who will give it credibility?) by Antoine Josephe, Gromila Thappad and Shamartya Ben said so in June 1987 which "took into account" the January 1987 study by the Uncle Ben Institute of Texmati Rice Research .
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Srijoy wrote:
the easiest way to defeat AMT is to attack it on its linguistic problems. One of them is to point out the relationship between Uralic languages and Indo-European languages.
:) Allow me a smile of amusement here.

You know the "easiest way" to defeat AMT is using a linguistic route that you have suggested. Clearly you won't be the one to help defeat AMT because you have already said you are not a linguist. Or you are not in the least bit interested in "defeating" AMT/AIT

I put it to you that you are trolling because you are attempting to set people off on a wild goose chase by pointing at a solution and simultaneously washing your hands off actually reaching that solution. You did say that linguistics is not your strong point - but I suspect that is not true. Odd that you boasted about your singular capabilities in every sphere but modestly backed off on linguistics alone.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

The rice domestication debate for the past few years has been tilting in favor of a single domestication event in China.

The multiple domestication events theory is not conclusively dead though. Note that if there were multiple domestication events, they happened all roughly at the same time. There are claims of archaeological finds in India and Korea that, if substantiated, might move the scale back to favor multiple domestication scenarios.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote:
this is a pattern with you: you will first trash the evidence presented for why some of your suppositions is unsubstantiated claim. (for e.g.,supporting some fantastic, ice age Indian story). then you will proceed to rant about racism in overall histography (true, but completely not pertaining to the point). then you get personal. Occasionally throwing in 'absence of evidence != evidence of absence' in midst, while ignoring complete lack of framework for your proposal, then dismissive of evidence, yet again. Rinse and repeat.

No need to get upset sir. I merely respond to your posts in exactly the same manner that you respond to mine. Full of verbose rhetoric and self aggrandizement. Clearly you do not appreciate anyone responding to you in the way you respond to others. Not my problem. I dearly love and immensely enjoy engaging people in arguments that go nowhere in which I pay no attention at all to what the other person is saying, accuse him of being wrong and claim that I am right. There is nothing wrong with doing that. I thought you would enjoy this series of completely pointless exchanges. But now you seem to want walk off in a huff offering me advice.

Your advice, like your verbose rhetorical games and boasts are worthless as far as I am concerned. Bu Im ready to argue with you forever and fill another 20 forum pages with what I think is correct as opposed to what you think is correct. If I did not enjoy this I would not be doing it. Please do not disappoint me by saying that you dont enjoy these exchanges.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote:Hence, for the educated audience (which here mostly are, regarding racism in western arts academia), deviation from evidence & suppositions for the framework, is largely unrequired.
That is an assumption by you about what the audience here know or may not know. I say that BRF is populated by uneducated stupids. Heck compared to your towering presence here I am also an uneducated stupid. However that falsifies your assumption about what the audience here know or do not know.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

SriJoy wrote:
Rudradev wrote:It illustrates my point very adequately. You think you can frame the terms of argument and dictate what others must prove or disprove to establish how full of dreck you are. In this belief, as in nearly everything else, you are and continue to be wrong.
^^
If thats not dogma, i don't know what is.
Your refutation, of a scientific paper, in a nutshell is 'could be another entirely closed off domestication event is not accounted for'. Sorry, but thats not science, its wishful thinking.
.
You are hiding behind strawmen as usual.

That is not my refutation of a scientific paper. It is my illustration of how the scientific paper you copy-pasted a link to does not support the phony arguments and bogus extrapolations you are making in any way.

It isn't surprising that you don't know what dogma is... people who confuse their own white-worshipping dogmatism for "scientific rationalism" are rarely perceptive enough to recognize it.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

A_Gupta wrote: Which is why back-calculation errors might throw the dates off tremendously, when the results are taken to be correct today.
This is correct. This is always a possibility. And this is what makes my theory and corresponding inferences....falsifiable, and hence 'scientific'.

I should remind you of your 'astute' observation that 'reasonable back calculations are possible based on knowledge of 'precession of equinoxes'

Well, That is how I defined 'approximately right' ranges for the events of Mahabharata (All observations related to Bhishma Nirvana) and also Ramayana ( 4 specific observations only governed by the phenomenon of 'precession of equinoxes' and having nothing to do with planets).

Mahabhrarata - Plausible range based on AV observation and other observations due to precession of equinoxes

[~7000 BCE - 4508 BCE]

Ramayana - Four observations of Chaitra and season, Ashwin and season, Abhijit as pole star and Sun setting on nakshatra Pushya during the Hemant season

[10500 BCE - 15000 BCE]

Note: In case of Ramayana, these are the latest date. There is nothing in the astronomy evidence that would stop one from going back in antiquity to other such intervals, defined by precession of equinoxes, occurring every ~26000 years.

I did place a limit of 50,000 BCE as the upper limit on the timing of Ramayana, based on hydrology evidence (Clift Peter et al , 2012).
--

Let's couple this with your next observation...
The ancient Indians do seem to have had a comprehensive database.
e.g., see this: (PDF file)
http://124.108.19.235:12000/jspui/bitst ... ayanan.pdf
The Manda Puzzle in Indian Astronomy, Anil Narayanan, 2012
Indian Journal of History of Science, 47.3 (2012) 317-343

IMO, it is a speculative paper, but promising.
While you are at it, you may want to (if you have not done it, already) read 3 of his other papers. Equally promising.

--
When we couple these two, this may lead to the conclusion...

That some poet might have used this extensive knowledge of astronomy, prevalent in India, during (pick anytime of your choice... 500 CE through 500 BCE or before) this period, to write massive science fiction(s) [Ramayana and Mahabharata]....

If so, we can think of two scenarios...

(1) The poet wrote it from scratch, with ingenious usage of astronomy observations spread across the epics. 215+ in case of Mahabharata and 575+ in case of Ramayana. Granted his calculations did generate errors in few cases (about 5+ in case of Mahabharata and about 25+ in case of Ramayana).

(2) Or, the epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata) existed when this astronomer with able poetic skills decided to employ his/her astronomy knowledge of back calculations/precession of equinoxes and insert these astronomy observations, spread across these epics, with appropriate narrations. It was all done well.

My point is, I have considered these scenarios as possibilities (in my mind and in my books), and them as valid as Valmiki or Vyasa (and their assistants) making visual observations at the time of occurrence of Ramayana or Mahabharata, and then encoding them while writing these epics.
--
In first two scenarios (astronomer poet using astronomy data in writing of his fiction, or inserting astronomy couplets in already existing epics) all I can say is that these astronomy poets decided to build their fiction around some arbitrarily chosen time intervals (period fiction, period novels, like period films) around 6th millennium BCE (in case of Mahabharata) and 13th millennium BCE (in case of Ramayana).

In the second scenario (Valmiki or Vyasa noting down astronomy details in their writing of histories of their own times), the events described can be dated to 6th millennium BCE (Mahabharata) or 13th millennium BCE (Ramayana) based on numerous astronomy observations of the text. Granted, there are few (very small number.. <5% in both cases) astronomy observations from the epics that conflict with these time frames, but that also means they conflict with rest of the 95% of astronomy observations. These could be due to various errors that epics are exposed too through the passages of times - translation, transliteration, transposition, loss of text, additional commentaries getting incorporated as part of the text, interpolation etc.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

A_Gupta wrote: Which is why back-calculation errors might throw the dates off tremendously, when the results are taken to be correct today.
And while I am at it, I should add that the very dependable cycle 'Precession of Equinoxes' may not be as dependable as it is thought.

There are alternate theories (to theory due to gravitation pull) proposed to explain nuances of 'precession of equinoxes' (keywords: The Lost star, Sun as part of binary star system, Shri Mukteshwar and what not) discussed possibly on this very thread.

While the evidence for alternate theories is still to be found, some of the objections raised by them for existing evidence in the context of theory of gravity pull is impressive. This alternate theory proposes accelerating (positive and negative) rates for the 'precession' of equinoxes.

This possibility, also makes my theory and its inferences for Ramayana and Mahabharata timing ...falsifiable and hence scientific.

Of course, this theory (only conjecture at this time) does make the argument of 'back calculation based on our current knowledge of astronomy or more important, based on ancient knowledge of Indian astronomy and such usage in inserting astronomy references in our epics, equally suspect and problematic.

Brihaspati ji had made this point, with clarity, a long time ago (as far back as 2012). The point being opponents are using the arguments of my very theory to make arguments against my theory, without realizing the contradiction and limitation of their arguments. This he did in responding to, then, our in house AIT expert on Linguistics, Shri ManishH.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Here is a statement that is absolutely brilliant in its construction
Srijoy wrote: racists came up with a theory, gives a strong motive for the theory to be wrong. Its not evidence of the theory being wrong.
Of course no one has claimed that if a statement is made by the racist the statement must be wrong. Therefore one can ignore the person's racism and try and tear down the assertion made. Interesting advice

So let me take a few quotations and state them without naming names or saying that the speakers were racist.
“There was and is an Aryan race–that is to say, the characteristic modes of speech, termed Aryan, were developed among the blond long-heads alone however much some of them may have been modified by the importation of non-Aryan elements.
“the purest blood is found in Scandinavia among the fair-haired, blue-eyed, dolichocephalic Swedes. The pure Aryans, he maintains, are represented only by the North Germans and Scandinavians, a most prolific race, of great stature, muscular strength, energy, and courage, whose splendid natural endowments enabled it to conquer the feebler races to the East, the South, and the West, and to impose its language on the subject peoples”
“We can only conclude that the cradle of the undivided Aryans was in the North, because the words for snow and ice are common to all Aryan languages, and because only two, or at most three, seasons of the year were originally distinguished. To this it may be added that the primitive type of the Aryan race was probably that of one of the energetic Northern races.”
So far as India is concerned, the internal evidence of the old literature sufficiently proves that the Aryan invaders were "white" men. It is hardly to be doubted that they intermixed with the dark Dravidian aborigines; and that the high-caste Hindoos are what they are in virtue of the Aryan blood which they have inherited, and of the selective influence of their surroundings operating on the mixture.
These gross corruptions were.. due to the intermingling of Vedic Aryans with the masses of black heathendom present in Aryavarta and the Dekkan before their arrival..in imparting their higher culture, arts, and letters to the Dravido-Kolarian aborigines the Vedic Aryans received a deep taint”
he peoples who are not of white blood approach beauty, but do not attain it. Those who are most akin to us come nearest to beauty ; such are the degenerate Aryan stocks of India and Persia, and the Semitic peoples who are least infected by contact with the black race.* As these races recede from the white type, their features and limbs become incorrect in form.
The need to name the people who said this is simply to allow readers to cross check with the written works of these people to confirm that they really said all that. In a scientific paper the source documents would be listed in the footnotes or end refs

But are the statements wrong? That is up to the reader to decide. You read and make up your mind whether these statements are wrong or right. I make no judgements about the truth or otherwise of the statements. I only state that the people who made those statements were racist. Click on the names to see what history records them as

One man said "There was and is an Aryan race". Did Sayana say this? Yaska? Panini? Aurobindo? Rishi Kashyapa? I would not be so stupid as to leave out the identity of the man who said that - it was the Brit Thomas Huxley. he was also responsible for the statement "the internal evidence of the old literature sufficiently proves that the Aryan invaders were "white" men"

Arthur De Gobineau, a Frenchman said "the peoples who are not of white blood approach beauty but do not attain it."

Otto Schrader- a German said "the cradle of the undivided Aryans was in the North,"

So you find a series of "scholars", all Europeans, all white men from the west whose words asserted that
1. Aryans existed
2. they were white
3. They came from the North
4. They were corrupted by black people
5. Darker races are inferior

I see my job as only to state what people said. What they make of it is their problem. Someone else will have to disprove these statements made by great men who are remembered as scholars in western history. Clearly Indians have believed that there are Aryans. many accept that they came from the north. Many Indians have accepted that they are Dravidians.

These are facts that need to be known. Yes I have opinions about the intelligence of the people of made these statements and the people who swallowed them. But I would use that to make a point if I wanted.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by sudarshan »

SriJoy wrote:
Rudradev wrote:
Posting a link clearly doesn't demonstrate the capacity to read a paper, understand its methodology, evaluate the data it presents, or grasp the implications of its stated results.
Sure, but the paper says " Bayesian phylogenetic analyses implementing the multispecies coalescent and using previously published phylogenetic sequence datasets also point to a single origin of Asian domesticated rice. Finally, we date the origin of domestication at ∼8,200–13,500 y ago, depending on the molecular clock estimate that is used, which is consistent with known archaeological data that suggests rice was first cultivated at around this time in the Yangtze Valley of China."

Ie, it is claiming they are using molecular analysis, aka genetics, to conclude when and where rice was domesticated.
:-? 8200 to 13500 ybp. Look at the margin of error, with the upper bound being almost at the timeline proposed by Nilesh ji for the Ramayana. How many standard deviations is that bound?

Rudradev ji, your example about Tavleen Singh's roses is exactly what I myself said a little before your post. The response I got was - it is extremely unlikely that any species of wheat went extinct without leaving any trace in the 20,000 odd species which exist today. Just out of curiosity, would you agree with that (about the "extremely unlikely" part, I mean)?
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by sudarshan »

And when I see "Bayesian," I know it means "probabilistic." Bayesian methods can mess up pretty badly. Let me (drop my inhibitions about genetics and) take a look at the paper itself to see if I can figure anything out.

And I would like to point out that the paper says "point to," and "suggests," and not "conclusively proves once and for all."
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by SBajwa »

May be ancient eating people were eating bark, fruits and leaves? and thus there is no evidence of grain

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... ent-human/
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by sudarshan »

A_Gupta wrote:
Which is why back-calculation errors might throw the dates off tremendously, when the results are taken to be correct today.
I think 200+ observations all lining up well with the stated date is very good corroboration by itself, and indicative that back-calculation errors are not a factor. Of course it is not a guarantee, but it does suggest that the proposed date is sound. This is the best we have to date, at any rate.

The ancient Indians do seem to have had a comprehensive database.
e.g., see this: (PDF file)
http://124.108.19.235:12000/jspui/bitst ... ayanan.pdf
The Manda Puzzle in Indian Astronomy, Anil Narayanan, 2012
Indian Journal of History of Science, 47.3 (2012) 317-343

IMO, it is a speculative paper, but promising.
This only talks of planets. Back-calculation over such a time scale will also involve lesser bodies like planetary moons, asteroids (millions of them within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), maybe even comets, etc. And then there are large planets like Uranus and Neptune, which usually do not figure in the visible sky.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by wasu »

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/scie ... ution.html

With fossils and DNA, scientists are piecing together a picture of humanity’s beginnings, an origin story with more twists than anything you would find at the movie theater.

The expert consensus now is that Homo sapiens evolved at least 300,000 years ago in Africa. Only much later — roughly 70,000 years ago — did a small group of Africans establish themselves on other continents, giving rise to other populations of people today.

To Johannes Krause, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human History in Germany, that gap seems peculiar. “Why did people not leave Africa before?” he asked in an interview. After all, he observed, the continent is physically linked to the Near East. “You could have just walked out.”

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, Dr. Krause and his colleagues report that Africans did indeed walk out — over 270,000 years ago.

Based on newly discovered DNA in fossils, the researchers conclude that a wave of early Homo sapiens, or close relatives of our species, made their way from Africa to Europe. There, they interbred with Neanderthals.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Primus »

SriJoy wrote:
If thats not dogma, i don't know what is.

It is very simple- if you wish to claim a settled urban society at a certain date, one needs to prove mankind was capable of farming or biome supported semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers at the said date. Otherwise, its just fanciful, uncorroborated stories.
thats not controlling the narrative, thats demanding a narrative be held accountable.
Srijoy Ji, I've been trying to say it politely that you are the one who is being dogmati(x) here.

One camp says there likely was an advanced enough civilization in ancient India and base this on our oral narratives (which again also included the river Saraswati for which the evidence has only emerged in the past 50 yrs or so), the astronomical data within those narratives and most importantly our own herd memory and an acceptance of such a possibility - which by the way does not send most of us off in a tizzy of self-flagellation.

The other camp (you for example) base your argument on a single point from a single paper you keep quoting. It is a bit like a lay person claiming all cholesterol is bad for you simply because he has read it in one paper in a journal. Unless you are an endocrinologist and well versed with fat metabolism and conversant with all the research before and after it would be foolish to tell all your patients to stop taking any cholesterol containing foods.

As I've been saying, there is much that we don't know, much that may learn as new methodology develops and new pre-historic sites are discovered.

In the end this is not so much about the exact period of the Ramayana but more about the Indic narrative being allowed to breathe and exist - at least from where I am coming.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote:
Rudradev wrote:
You are hiding behind strawmen as usual.

That is not my refutation of a scientific paper. It is my illustration of how the scientific paper you copy-pasted a link to does not support the phony arguments and bogus extrapolations you are making in any way.

It isn't surprising that you don't know what dogma is... people who confuse their own white-worshipping dogmatism for "scientific rationalism" are rarely perceptive enough to recognize it.
Nonsensical inferiority complex at display here.
Welcome to the club Rudradev. I was also psycho-anal-ised and declared to have an inferiority complex because white men have studied Sanskrit texts and not Indians. The scientist par excellence who can parse all papers says so.

Like I said - the man gets angry when you point out his errors of talk about him. He is allowed to stonewall, bait and switch, analyze, boast , misquote, fudge and deny.
Last edited by shiv on 05 Jul 2017 22:17, edited 1 time in total.
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