After I offer an explanation for why there are such vastly differing dates, you go saying "see, there are so many differing dates, so archaeo-astronomy is not simple!" Have you actually read the dating attempts for the MB by Yardi, Pushkar Bhatnagar, etc., and seen the assumptions they make and the observations they ignore? Have you compared that with the methods employed by more honest researchers such as Vartak and Nilesh Oak? And minor nitpick - Nilesh's dating of the Ramayana is 14000 YBP or 12000 BC, not 14000 BC.
the list is endless practically and starting to sound like various sects of Islam/Christianity, each accusing all others to be wrong/flawed and only they are correct.
All depending on which nakshatras to choose.
Interesting that you mention Islam/ Christianity, because the agenda-driven dating by some researchers is exactly like those religions. I already told you that this is the reason why there are seemingly so many different dates for the MB or Ramayana using astronomy, and that these dating attempts can't be trusted. Certainly you can't place agenda-driven "science" on the same pedestal as honest science, and claim that "see, science doesn't work, the scientists can't even agree with each other." This is what you are doing. Looks like you haven't made the attempt to understand the process of archaeo-astronomy, and more importantly, you are unable to distinguish between the quacks and the genuine practitioners, so you take the easy way out of labeling all of them as quacks. And most interestingly, you quote back at me what I have already told you - that it all
depends on which subset of nakshatras you choose. To do a serious job of dating, you have to consider the largest subset of the observations, or ideally all the observations, and explain all of them. This should be your ranking criteria to choose between the vastly differing dates that various "researchers" came up with - "what fraction of the observations do they actually explain with their date?" Instead you tar everybody with the same brush.
Needless to say, there is a good reason why Archaeo-astronomy is not entertained by anyone in academia in India or outside : its like Palmistry, with wildly different claims, simply based on star alignments. And conclusions for such varience is obvious : these nakshatras are later insertions into the text, which is why they diverge so much from each other.
Dude, you seem to be confusing archaeo-astronomy with astrology. Looks like you have no clue how the process works. There's an entire thread that discussed archaeo-astronomy over a couple of years, right here on this forum. I suggest you go through it.
Just because a favorite book of mine which i consider holy makes a claim, it doesn't have to be true. Faith-based arguments are data-mining: pre-supposing the correctness of a scenario and then hunting for evidence to support it, instead of taking where the evidence leads us. thats how we end up with absurdities like Ramayana being preserved for 15,000 years in a complex tale, while no other human story has made it unchanged for even 5,000 years. Or how Rama's farming city was thousands of years prior to existence of agriculture.
Ha! I already told you that most of the dating attempts of the Ramayana and MB are exactly like this - presupposing a date and then hunting (selectively) for evidence to support it. I also told you that the attempts by Vartak and Nilesh Oak were not like that, that they were genuine attempts which considered a much larger subset of the available data (though still not all of it), and that these attempts are the most trustworthy. Instead of addressing specific instances of errors in the attempts of Vartak and Oak, you keep parroting your original claim - "all the dating attempts of the R or the MB are fraudulent." Without even reading through the specifics. What do you expect me to say to this?
Our ancestors got it right when they labelled the Ramayana and Mahabharata as Smriti : it is not completely, adulterated and not preserved exactly. Which is why it is a Smriti. If it were accurate, reliable and unadulterated, our own ancestors would've designated it as a Shruti. Pretty self-explanatory with the designations in Hindu tradition itself.
Just curious. How does your pronouncement above gel with your claim of being interested in "scientific accuracy?" Have you made an accurate assessment and concluded the above based on certain data, within given bounds of error, or is the above just your own hot-air?
So trying to get super-technical and holding each and every item of the texts as correct, in 2017, when Ramayana and mahabharata have mass divine status, is a bit ironic, when our own ancestors saw it as non-cannonical.
Lol! Again, please go through the specifics of archaeo-astronomy and the various dating attempts, and then tell me which ones of them makes this claim that each and every item of the texts is correct. And why should we take what our own ancestors said as fact, when our ancestors said that the Ramayana occurred in the Treta Yuga, which should have been at least 864,000 years ago (being the duration of the Dwapara Yuga)? Did we have farming back then, and does this gel with your claims of scientific accuracy?