We are taught in school that the earliest civilizations rose 6,000 years in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. However, the mainstream academia has said that the earliest signs of civilization stretch further back to at least 8,000 BCE, or 10,000 years ago. And yet, there are some fringe scientists who disagree, who say (with some very good points and some sketchy conjecture) that advanced civilizations existed before and during the Younger Dryas period, or what many religions have defined as the time before the “great flood”.
I have already written an article about this flood, but for the layman, here’s the basics: An overwhelming majority of faiths talk about a great deluge sent from God to destroy man, with usually a large boat and a devout person involved. In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) it’s Noah’s Ark, and in the Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism) it’s Manu’s Ark. Ancient Mesopotamia talks about the immortal ancestor Utnapishtim and his canoe, while the Greeks had sunken Atlantis. Interestingly, Hinduism also has Dwaraka, which sank into the ocean and is a real archeological underwater site today.
Promoters of this fringe theory claim that there were highly advanced civilizations, perhaps even with some technology comparable to our modern-day society, that was destroyed by either the beginning or the end of the Younger Dryas period, when gradually rising temperatures marking the end of the Ice Age suddenly went down again, causing glaciation for 2,000 years. Many point to these ancient legends, with some even saying that gods and other supernatural creatures were aliens contacted by these prehistoric super-civilizations that were later remembered by the small number of lonely tribes that survived. Some in India, like author Nilesh Nilkanth Oak, point to the epics of India to prove that Indian civilization, and with it HInduism, have a most ancient history and that it extended on a global spectrum.
Among the two Itihasas or epics of India, the Ramayana is the textually older one, telling a story far before the other epic, the Mahabharata. While modern-day history tells us that the people who spoke Sanskrit and likewise wrote the Ramayana came to India only in the 1st millenium BCE and originated in the 3rd millenium BCE in Ukraine (read: Aryan Invasion Theory), pseudohistorians like Mr. Oak (don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against pseudohistorians, because I myself often dabble and conjecture about unknown areas of history. I merely dislike that they promote their ideas as fact or even gospel. I also feel the same way towards many historians :P) have resigned themselves to the fact that it took place 14,000 years ago, during the Younger Dryas period. They also argue, that the addition of the Pushpaka Vimana, a marvellous flying machine, proves the existence of advanced aircraft at the end of the Ice Age.
The Ramayana also has a part where the Vanara (humanoid monkey) king Sugriva describes the ends of the earth. In it, he describes the flag of Ananta on a mountain at the eastern end, which is attributed to the Paracas Candelabra thought to be made 12,000 years later in 200 BCE. Sugriva also describes the north of India as covered in ice, where one can see the northern lights, but warns his subjects to never go there. Similarly, the south is also described as covered in ice, which is taken by many as evidence that Indians knew about Antarctica.
Mr. Oak also asserts that the other Indian texts are even older, with a rather flabbergasting date of 30,000 years ago for the Surya Siddhanta, a treatise on astronomy. He also says that the Rigveda (the ancient founding text of Hinduism) is older than Ramayana because it mentions the dynasty of the main hero Rama, the Ikshvaku dynasty, but doesn’t mention Rama, a central figure in Hindu mythology. The main problem here is that: 1. The characters canonically and IRL speak in Sanskrit, which is a language no older than 1500 BCE, or 3,000 years ago. When you take 10x that amount of time, the whole language is bound to change. And 2., Ramayana mentions distant nations that existed only from 800 BCE onwards, like the Greeks and the Scythians.
With all these claims, it remains to be seen whether anything is true or not. In the next post, I’m going to talk about what history has accepted and what some of my own conjectures (read: I am not a professional. What I say is just conjecture and nothing more) entail. Until then, Happy Reading!
Anay Ganesh 