varnam

“We found the more mindful you are, the more activation you have in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the less activation you have in the amygdala,” Creswell said.“We also saw activation in widespread centers of the prefrontal cortex for people who are high in mindfulness. This suggests people who are more mindful bring all sorts of prefrontal resources to turn down the amygdala. These findings may help explain the beneficial health effects of mindfulness meditation, and suggest, for the first time, an underlying reason why mindfulness meditation programs improve mood and health.

“The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex can turn down the emotional response you get when you feel angry,” he said. “This moves us forward in beginning to understand the benefits of mindfulness meditation. For the first time, we’re now applying scientific principles to try to understand how mindfulness works. “This is such an exciting study because it brings together the Buddha’s teachings — more than 2,500 years ago, he talked about the benefits of labeling your experience — with modern neuroscience,” Creswell said. “Now, for the first time since those teachings, we have shown there is actually a neurological reason for doing mindfulness meditation. Our findings are consistent with what mindfulness meditation teachers have taught for thousands of years.”[The Science of Mindfulness Meditation]

Today morning's WSJ's main story  was on why some American software companies are shutting down their business in India and bringing back their engineers to United States.

Across Silicon Valley, some technology companies, particularly start-up and midsize ones, are beginning to turn away from India for low-cost labor to do sophisticated tech work. Kana Software Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., eliminated 100 software-development jobs in India in late 2005 and expanded its U.S. hiring instead. Teneros Inc. shut down a 30-member India office and brought 12 of the people to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Some tech start-ups are choosing other low-wage foreign locales, such as Romania and Poland.

Against a backdrop of rising wages and international competition, it's important for India's economy that its tech giants expand into higher margin business, in order to sustain their growth rates and gain market share. Large Indian outsourcing companies are trying to expand into higher-margin programming and design work, rather than just basic call-center outsourcing and tech maintenance, which now may be done more cheaply in countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam.[Some in Silicon Valley Begin to Sour on India]

The main reason cited for this turn around is that some engineers are getting paid almost 75% of the salary of an American software engineer and the high rate of turnover. Considering that this is the main story of WSJ, it is going to get lot of traction among politicians and business men.

Some of the major headlines in United States today are related to the war in Iraq,  the Lal Masjid siege,  the presidential candidate parade in Iowa, the heat wave striking the west coast, the new al-Qaeda video, and the terrorist attack in Scotland. For some reason, CNN thinks that the top story of the day is the plight of Hindu widows (not South Asian widows), in Vrindavan.

Why is this the most important story in the United States today? 

(A bunch of people protesting against something, blocking traffic in Trivandrum)

A sales girl working long hours in a traditional shop in Kerala gets paid about Rs. 600/month. A consumer who wants to drink Frooti in Kerala is instead offered Maaza because the profit margin on Frooti is less. If you are a shop owner, you have to join this mafia type organization called Kerala Vyapari Vyavsayi Ekopana Samithi (KVVES) and they decide what is to be sold to the consumer and what not to be sold. Everyone including the suppliers and Government are blackmailed and they protest if legal action is taken against their illegal activities. While employees and consumers are exploited, any effort to provide an alternative is threatened with violence.

Upset that their hostage taking of an entire state is about crumble, the members of KVVES have  threatened to physically destroy Reliance outlets. At this point you would think that the State Govt. should step in, warn the traders, and advice them that they don't live in Cuba but in India where citizens have the right to trade wherever they like, provided they follow the law. Instead in Kerala, members of the treasonous Communist Govt. are busy drafting legislation preventing the entry of retail giants.

The Communists have successfully converted Kerala into a protest state for events which they cannot influence like globalization and the imaginary American imperialism. Their brain damaged supporters also walk around attacking everyone, including farmers and the Chief Minister threatens businesses with severe action if they assert their fundamental rights like  going to the courts. Recently when it was mandated that all motorcycle riders would have to wear helmets, people protested by wearing plastic pots with holes in it with the attitude that they would rather die in road accident than wear such things.

Sitting in their air conditioned offices and residences in AKG Bhavan, their HQ in Kerala, the Communists have always said that they stand for the poor, but in reality the Communists are the biggest obstacle for the poor. Supermarkets like Reliance and Spencers can offer goods at a lower price than shops owned by the trader mafia which can benefit the low wage earner. It has been seen that supermarkets like Wal-Mart  have dwarfed anti-poverty programs and the biggest beneficiaries are the poor and so the opposition to giant retailers exposes yet more hypocrisy from the Communists.

Poor people are walking that extra mile (literally) to buy groceries from Reliance Fresh because fresh vegetables are fruits are 10-15% cheaper there than the street vendor. Private companies are investing in techniques to boost farm practices and irrigation systems which would raise farm income by 30 percent. Farmers in Ratnagiri have obtained 90 percent of the original cost compared to the 70 percent they would have obtained by going to Govt. regulated mandis. Then facts should never obstruct an opportunity to keep Kerala as the economic waste land that it is now.

A new Malayalam movie from Lal Jose exposes how the party of poor has  moved away from  ordinary people, its voter base, to be a party controlled by a corrupt leadership devoid of any ideology or social commitment and how the dogma of Communism has been kept alive by the leaders for their own survival. The lies peddled by the Communist leaders are swallowed by the "enlightened public" without any questioning.

In fact this opposition to the entry of retail giants very clearly shows where the loyalty of the Communist party lies. Rather than support something which will bring low prices for the poor, they would stand with the labor aristocracy, the bourgeoisie. This shift in stance has the logical explanation that the poor are, well poor, while the bourgeoisie traders have money.

What else do you expect from a party which has become filthy rich playing poverty politics?

When Israel became a nation, they chose Hebrew as their official language, while we in India ditched Sanskrit to chose Hindi as the national language. We now stand low, at the eminent historian level, having to depend on English translations of our scriptures to understand their meaning.

Due to work of an organization called Samskrita Bharati, Sanskrit is experiencing a revival and people around the world are getting a quick introduction to the language. The idea behind these classes are to get people comfortable talking in Sanskrit as soon as possible and the teacher does that by conversing only in Sanskrit for the entire 10 day duration.

Today, spoken Sanskrit is enjoying a revival – both in India and among Indian expatriates in the United States. There is even evidence of Sanskrit emerging in American popular culture as more and more people roll out yoga mats at the local gym and greet one another with "Namaste."

Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago, among others, have long offered Sanskrit courses to undergrads. But the demand for these classes is growing beyond academic settings. A decade-long economic boom has brought Indians some measure of prosperity, and with it a sense of pride in the nation's past. In large part, however, the revival is the result of the efforts of a private group, Samskrita Bharati, headquartered in New Delhi. The volunteer-based group's mission: Bring the pan-Indian language back to the mainstream and lay the groundwork for a cultural renaissance.

Yoga practitioners in the US are seeking out the authentic Sanskrit names of various poses such as "downward dog" or "spinal twist" and the philosophy behind the practice as spelled out in the Yoga Sutras – the original treatise on the subject written in Sanskrit thousands of years ago.

Science-history buffs see old works in Sanskrit as treasure troves of ancient knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and metallurgy. When Copernicus announced that the sun was the center of the universe in 1543, it was a defining moment for Western science. In Samskrita Bharati's recently released "Pride of India" – a compilation that offers a glimpse into India's scientific heritage – Sanskrit scholars point to calculations from AD 499 that indicate astronomer Aryabhatta's underlying concept of a sun-centered planetary model.

"This knowledge tradition is what we hope to revive through the spread of Sanskrit," says Shastry.[Sanskrit echoes around the world]

Check the site for courses in your area.

Reader Sabarish wants varnam readers to share their experience in learning Sanskrit. We would like to know how you learned it (Samskrita Bharati, self taught, any other organizations, teachers etc.), the books you used (eg, Sanskritasya Vyavaharikaswaroopam) and what you think is the best way to learn.

Any tips and words of wisdom will benefit lot of readers as my post on Sanskrit Revival seems to have generated good interest.

1. I always wanted to be an astronaut. That dream came to an end on the realization that I puke even on the simplest of a theme park rides.
2. I hate bananas. This is considered very strange for a Malayali.
3. One of the countries I have lived is Brazil.
4. Till 1999 I had no interest in history. After that I got deeply interested, but there is no defining moment for that transition, unless it can be proved that the revolt against white washed history by the eminent historians lay dormant in my subconscious mind and during one session of meditation that vritti came to the surface and manifested)
   
5. I have met Dave Barry.
6. I cannot cook. The only thing I can make to perfection is green tea and that too only if hot water and tea bags are provided.
   
7. In college I (along with three others) hand wrote a monthly class newspaper which pissed of pretty much everyone in the class.
8. I had an e-mail address in 1993 in India.

Just when you thought that  theatrics has reduced in politics, there is a revival of that art form thanks to the octogenarian Communist chief minister of Kerala. Achyutanandan is riding a popularity tsunami wave unseen in Kerala politics due to a demolition drive he has triggered all over Kerala. A special task force  assigned by him has been camping in the hill resort of Munnar demolishing any building constructed over encroached land,  mostly holiday resorts. The task force did not even spare one of the offices of CPI, a coalition partner, resulting in an increased sales of heart burn medicine in the capital.

The demolition drives were not just restricted to Munnar but also in towns all around Kerala. While driving into Kottayam last month we were held up for an hour because a bull dozer was pulling down a building right in the town and while driving from Thrissur town to Thalikkulam, a beach town, we saw that even church walls were not spared. Achyutanandan became the fearless Robinhood receiving support from everyone for taking such bold steps and Sugatha Kumari, the poetess, went on to write an op-ed piece in Mathrubhoomi praising him.

That's when Achyutanandan decided to move it up a notch. He drove to Munnar in heavy downpour on a day in which his coalition members had decided to investigate the excesses done in Munnar and personally threw away a board from land which he said belonged to the Tatas. He touted that no one had the courage to touch the Tatas till then. He also warned the Tatas not to approach the judiciary and threatened that if they did so they would be left with no land at all.

The last statement sounded like it came  from a kidnapper who after saying, Tumhari maa hamare kabze mein hai, warns the victim not to go to the police than a person who has sworn to uphold the follow the laws of India. Then what can you expect from a Communist whose only claim to fame is destroying crops planted by farmers.

Events took a comic turn when Achyutanandan's Revenue Minister stated in the Assembly that the land which the Chief Minister claimed belonged to the Tatas actually belonged to the Forest Department and the nearest Tata plantation was 2 KM away. In fact the land had been under the Government control since 1971. Instead of following the law Achyutanandan thought he was Suresh Gopi in his old age, decided to take the law into his own hands,  and ended up with coconut tree manure on his face. Thanks to the excellent  media coverage, Achyutanandan's stupidity was telecast to a wide audience.

You would think Communists would learn from such embarrassments. Instead they have decided to threaten major newspapers for exposing corruption within the party.

Yet another anniversary has passed away and the victims have not got justice. The Prime Minister has not lost sleep over last years Mumbai train blasts  since all has been taken care of by the Mumbai Spirit, which he must be thinking should be something along the lines of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit after all he spends much time listening to the lady from Rome.

Following the days of the attack there were many suspects ranging from Dawood to SIMI, but soon that too faded away. The National Security Advisor was very sure that the evidence pointed to the ISI, but later he was not even talking about it. The ATS officials leaked the confessions of one of the suspects to prove that they had cracked the case, but the political class decided not to act for they did not want to disrupt the Indo-Pak love fest that is still going on.

One year after, a Compact Disk (CD) containing the confessions of one of the arrested suspects, Mohammad Ali, leaked to the media allegedly by some ATS official. In that CD, Ali can be seen admitting to the blast conspiracy and taking names of Faisal Sheikh and Azam cheema and their connection across the border. Plausibly, the ATS might have wanted to show that it had actually cracked the case long back, but the agency was under some kind of duress. So it opted now to show the people of India to instill confidence.

However, why and how the CD reached media is not the question (the CD leak case could bring whole ATS under scanner). The point is since the Mumbai blast, there were many more terrorist attacks including– Samjhauta train blasts and Mecca Mosque blasts, but the intelligence and security agencies have failed to fathom any of them. May be there is a lack of strong political will as far as present government is concern, which can push those (intel and security) agencies to run that needed extra mile[Mumbai Train Blasts: Masterminds Still At Large, Question Marks Remain!]

Stephen Devassy, the 24 year old keyboard player from Palakkad was unknown to me, till I head his version of Mahishasuramardini Stotram (link has a sample) at the Melody Corner Music Store in Trichur last month. He was the music director of the album which  mixed traditional devotional songs with non-traditional music along and vocals from Saindhavi, Uma Mohan and Ghayatri Devi. A student of Chetana Music Academy, he has played along with Hariharan and L. Subramaniyam as well as composed music for a bad Mohanlal movie called Hariharan Pilla Happy Aanu.

His music which has elements of gospel music  is not intrusive, but gives importance to the vocals. While the music is soothing and uplifting, the vocals too are clear and perfect with their pronunciation. The store had only the above two CDs, but like others I too would buy any of his Sacred/Holy Chants series in a heartbeat.

See Also: Video Interview with Stephen (Malayalam/English),  stage performance, The right keys to success,  Village boy from Palakkad climbs the music ladder

Thubron last saw China 18 years ago, before its market economy took off. In Xian, searching for the “coal dust” and “autumnal mud” he remembers, he finds instead a “hectic procession of shopping malls, restaurants and high-tech industrial suburbs,” the invasion of Givenchy, Bally, Dior and L’Oréal. He sees “couples walking hand in hand, even kissing — a Maoist outrage.”

Yet the past, as Thubron amply demonstrates, is no haven for angels. In China, he visits an old friend , a professor of English literature. A survivor of the Cultural Revolution’s mass terror, in which more than a million people are said to have died, this man’s concerns are confined to the forwardness of college students and, ironically, the widespread teaching of English. As Thubron makes his way through the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, he finds other living contradictions — like the Uzbek grandmother who reveres Stalin, killer of her husband and father.[The Way West]

In 1864, a group of sailors were castaway in Auckland Islands, some 300 miles south of New Zealand. Very few had survived shipwrecks in that area and one such group was led by Capt. Thomas Musgrave of Britain. Eight days after surviving the wreck  the sailors came out of the tent on seeing the sun and when the captain read a passage from the Bible in which Christ asks his disciples to love one another, the group consisting of a French gold miner, a leprosy-deformed Portuguese cook, a  Norwegian and an Englishman burst into tears. Some modern days followers of Jesus have forgotten or have chosen to ignore this message.

All you need is ask Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., who recently gave the brief prayer that opens each day’s Senate session. His prayer was disrupted by some anti-abortion activists who shouted "No Lord but Jesus Christ", "There's only one true God," and ''this is an abomination''. While the Indian Parliament does not open with a prayer, legislative assemblies in United States have opened with prayers since the early sessions of Congress, but so far the prayers had been only of the monotheistic religions.

Christian historian David Barton said that the prayer was unconstitutional since Hindus worship multiple Gods and it violates the motto, One Nation under God. Mr. Barton would have to spend a lifetime to understand the concept of Brahman to realize the shallowness of his statement, but much simpler for him would be to read Ann Althouse's explanation that the motto isn't in the constitution and by protesting Mr. Barton is foolishly asking the motto to be declared unconstitutional.

While  intolerance for other faiths has been accepted without any introspection by some of the foot soldiers, it is also worth looking at the leadership of some of these sects as well. A 16-page document prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI headed when he was a cardinal has declared that Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church are not full churches of Jesus Christ. The document also claims that Roman Catholic Church alone is the mediator of salvation while other defective Christian faiths, like the Protestants, can be just instruments.

The Pope is also planning to issue a decree allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass, the Latin rite which was codified in 1570 and and used till the 1960s when the  second Vatican council reformed it. The Tridentine mass is supposed to be more beautiful with Gregorian chants and a much dignified service than the present day mass. The Jews are not very happy about it since there are prayers in the Mass which calls for their conversion and the Pope's explanation is that whatever was held sacred by ancient generations remain sacred to us too and cannot be forbidden. Imagine for a moment what would have happened in India if such argument was used for reviving the caste system.

When the leadership lacks sensitivity to other monotheistic religions and even members praying to the same God, it is too much to ask for some of their brain washed followers to respect a religion which they don't even understand. Fortunately a vast majority of the people think the ant-abortion protesters are idiots,  and stupid jerks

Calligraphy, considered to be one of the highest art forms in Islamic world resulted in  beautiful writings in mosques and various calligraphed Qurans. The practitioners of that art form are getting killed or not finding people to carry it forward.

In India, there is still one calligraphed Urdu daily newspaper, The Musalman, but it too faces an uncertain future.

Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs -- writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.

In the meantime, the office is a center for the South Indian Muslim community and hosts a stream of renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty who contribute to the pages, or just hang out, drink chai and recite their most recent works to the staff. The Musalman publishes Urdu poetry and messages on devotion to God and communal harmony daily.

...

But the Musalman has survived and operates much as it has since it was founded in 1927. The biggest change came in the 1950s when Fazlulla unloaded a massive offset printer from a cargo ship. He salvaged the machine from a defunct American newspaper, and the paper has used it ever since.

Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts -- there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page.

The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai. [A Handwritten Daily Paper in India Faces the Digital Future]

On the side bar of the main page of the blog, you can see a new box titled "Interesting Links" which displays some  articles I have read. These articles are also listed on a public google reader site and can be subscribed using your feed reader. This feature comes via the sharing feature of Google Reader.

The History Channel documentary on the Lost Years of Jesus mentioned a possibility that the concept of baptism came to Jesus when he and John the Baptist lived among the Essenes  and that later the Essenes moved to Qumran in the West Bank from Jerusalem due to the fear of Romans. The documentary also suggested a theory that Jesus was a revolutionary fighting the Romans and those activities have been left out of the Bible since it would be difficult to circulate such a document while being governed by the Romans due to which there is no mention of what he did between the ages of 12 and 30.

We know that the Essenes consisting of about 75 men, moved to Qumran,  a desolate desert site, sometime between 130 and 100 B.C to escape Roman persecution. It is believed that they lived in a monastery, whose ruins are present even now, and wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only surviving texts of the Hebrew Bible written before 100 AD.

For years archaeologists have argued about the ruins which indicate an assortment of buildings and spaces over a 20,000 square foot area. Now a virtual 3-D reconstruction of the site has revealed that the building was a fortress once occupied by warriors called called the Hasmoneans  and others before the Essenes converted into a monastery. The original structure was built around 160 BCE and consisted of a two-story building and four-story tower.

 In 183 BCE, in India, the last Mauryan emperor Brhadratha  was assassinated by his general Pusyamitra Sunga. By that time the empire built by Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya and Asoka were disintegrating with Afghanistan, Gandhara, Kashmir, Punjab and Malwa all breaking away. While the Roman-Essenes fights were going on in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Sunga dynasty, established by Pusyamitra was ruling a large portion of India from Vidisha. (Pusyamitra's son Agnimitra is one of the principal characters in Kalidasa's Mālavikāgnimitram).

Around 70 CE, the monastery was destroyed by the Romans but  now you can take a virtual tour of the monastery/fortress through the following YouTube video.

See Also: Virtual Qumran Blog, Virtual Qumran Visualization Project

The journey of man animation on the Bradshaw foundation site shows how man reached various continents moving out of Africa starting around 150,000 years back. According to the journey, humans reached India around 85,000 years back and went to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Then, around 74,000 years back, there was an eruption in Toba in Sumatra called the Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT) which resulted in an ice age and volcanic ash covering India. It is believed that the volcanic ash flung into the atmosphere blocked sunlight resulting in a nuclear winter. There was also a population reduction and according to one model, present day humans are descendants of few survivors of the Toba catastrophe.

Investigation of the Toba ash deposited in an Andhra Pradesh village called Jwalapuram in Kurnool district has revealed that the blast was not that catastrophic and that some of the hunter gatherers of India survived.  Stone blades and other tools  as well red ochre used in cave paintings were found both above and below the ash layer indicating that whoever lived at that time survived and there was technological continuity.

These tools were also similar to the ones used to the ones found in Africa around the same time indicating that Indians had closer affinities to African stone age traditions than European ones. It also validates the theory that humans took the route from Africa, through Arabia into India and that India was populated much before Europe. The best evidence to seal the argument would be the discovery of fossil evidence, either human or Neanderthal, but none has been found.

According some experts of Hinduism in American academia, Ganesha's trunk is a “limp phallus”, Devi is classified as the “mother with a penis”, Shiva is “a notorious womanizer” who incites violence in India,  Sri Ramakrishna is a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda, bindi is a drop of menstrual fluid and the “ha” in sacred mantras is a woman's sound during orgasm. These scholarly works, peddled by powerful academic cartels who make our own eminent historians look like Winnie the Pooh, have been passed on as interpretations of Hinduism in schools and colleges, thus brainwashing future generations of students. Some of these scholars are also on the editorial committees of encyclopedias and thus misinformation is easily passed around without much dissent.

William Wilberforce, the 18th century British politician in a speech in the House of Commons talks about an incident in which some abusive pamphlets against various religions were released by missionaries in India, but found that the natives were tolerant and "even the grossest imprudence could not rouse them to anger". When something you hold sacred is denigrated with an agenda, there has to be reaction against it, not the Iranian way of dealing with Salman Rushdie or Sambhaji Brigade's way of dealing with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, but by exposing faulty works through research.

That is what Rajiv Malhotra has been doing all these years through his writings on Sulekha. Rajiv Malhotra's articles on the RISA Lila sparked off many articles which exposed the prejudice behind Hinduism studies. Many Hindu parents who were shocked to read misinterpretations of their religion became activists and the work of this grassroots movement has resulted in the articles compiled in this new book Invading The Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America , edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. The book, as Sankrant Sanu writes in his review, is also a testimony to rising economic affluence of India and Indians who are now able to use the Internet to challenge established thinking and get books published bypassing the guardians of the establishment.

See Also:Invading the Sacred

The proto-Siva seal found in Harappa (shown on the left) was treated as one of the proofs that Hinduism had its roots in Indus Valley. Analysis of the seal has led to various contradictory theories about the origins of religion, but a 1987 paper says that the posture of the depicted character has been overlooked and new analysis reveals something interesting.

The body of the figure shown in the seal is naked, except for many bangles and what appear to be necklaces. He wears a peculiar headdress consisting of horns and a plant like object between them. This pattern was found in five seals and in one of them he is surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros and a buffalo while beneath his stool are two deer's which is also found in the representations of Buddha teaching his first sermon in the Deer Park in Varanasi.

The name proto-Siva was given by Sir John Marshall who led excavations that led to the discovery of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in 1920s. Marshall thought that the protuberances on the sides were the second and third faces and  Siva is often depicted with three faces and is also known as Pasupati (The Lord of Beasts). From this Marshall concluded that Saivism has a history of five thousand years making it the longest living faith in the world.

While Marshall identified the image as Siva, others have suggested that it is Agni. This was countered by others who thought that the the horns on the head-dress are suggestive of the trident and fertility aspect of Siva. Other interpretations include

• figure depicted on the seal is neither three faced, nor human but is a combination of various animals 
• since the Indus religion was centered around the Mother Goddess cult, the figure on the seal is female.
• the figure is not Siva, but divine bull-man

While the head-dress, animals and other symbols depicted on the seal have been interpreted in various ways, Yan Dhyansky of University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the posture, which Marshall and few others called "yogic posture" has never been carefully examined. In his paper, The Indus Valley Origin of Yoga Practice, he suggests that Yoga was known and practiced by the people of Indus Valley civilization.

The person on the seal is seated with his legs drawn close to the body with two heels touching, which A L Basham calls, "a posture quite impossible for the average westerner". This posture, has been identified by Yan as Mulabandhasana, which is difficult even for people who practice Yoga. (See this video and try it).  The same posture has been depicted on all five proto-Siva seals found disproving the theory that it was the work of an imaginative artist. Besides this other seals have been found with figures in other yoga postures suggesting that people in the Indus valley were the practitioners of Yoga.

"Alexandria was built on top of an existing, and perhaps quite important, settlement, maybe one that was minimized in importance because we can't see it now," Stanley told LiveScience. "Nothing really concrete about Rhakotis has been discovered until now."

Alexander the Great likely chose this area for Alexandria since it had a bay to protect a harbor against fierce winter storms in the Mediterranean.

"There are very few places in the Egyptian Mediterranean coast where the coastline is not smooth," Stanley said. "This would have been the best place to establish a harbor."

Stanley added this bay was even noted in Homer's epic Odyssey: "Now in the surging sea an island lies, Pharos they call it. By it there lies a bay with a good anchorage, from which they send the trim ships off to sea."

This area might have been a haven throughout ancient times for the Greeks, Minoans, Phoenicians and others. Future research could shed light on the life of mariners at this settlement before Alexander came.

"Virtually nothing is known of the people who would have lived there," Stanley said.[Hidden Egyptian City Found Beneath Alexandria ]

The discovery of ancient cities beneath the present day ones also reveal a great deal about the continuity of cultures and how conservative they were. Archaeological excavations in Mohenjo-daro reveal intense conservatism. Among the nine strata of buildings that have been revealed, new houses that were built over the previous ones were found to have almost the same floor plan for nearly a millennia. This conservatism was seen even in the script which remained unchanged even though they had contacts with other civilizations like Mesopotamia.