Stegodons in India

The stegodon was a elephant like animal that lived in Asia about 5.3 million to 1.8 million years before present. These animals were about 13 feet high, 26 feet long and had 10 feet long tusks. Stegodons were earlier considered to the ancestor of elephants and mammoths, but now they are considered to be the sister group of the mammoth and the Indian and African elephant. Recently archaeologists from the ASI (where else?) found some tools in Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum which resemble the stegodon.

The deep elephant-shapped furrows stunningly resembled ‘stegodon’, the first of the true elephants that had probably roamed in this part of the world during the ‘pleistocene’ period, the official said. Chauhan said the length of the ‘elongated’ truck is very long and the about four-inch imprint point to a primitive species. “This unusual figure of an elephant on the stone at Basadera takes one back to a primitive period,” he said.
“The technique ‘block-on-anvil’ and ‘block-on-block’ adopted to shape and size the tools found by us and their striking similarity with the tools discovered in the river valley indicate the age of human habitation which could be older than the one discovered near Jamshola by the anthropologists from Kolkata,” he said. The discoveries should be enough pointer to the perception that East Singhbhum might have seen transformation of primitive men, he said. [Vital clues about primitive human beings]

Tags:

Adichanallur skeletons spill beans

In 2004, there was a spectacular archaeological discovery in Adichanallur, near Tirunelveli when 2800 years old human skeletons were found in urns. These urns also contained writing resembing early Tamil Brahmi. Later a three-tier burrial system was discovered in which earlier generations were burried in urns at 10 ft depth and recent ones above them. Soon the habitational site of the people who were burried was also discovered.
Analyzing the habitational site, it was understood that people lived in a fortified town and it had a separate potters quarters. There was also evidence of industrial activity and archaeologists think that it was a crowded busy town. The analysis of these skeletons have revealed some new facts.

  1. These people were tall, contradicting an earlier hypothesis that pre-historic Indians were short
  2. People consumed refined food, though there is no description of what constitutes refined food
  3. They had Southern Mongoloid features indicating sea trade between east coast of India and south east Asia in 800 B.C.

Tags:

Oh God, Where art thou?

Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (NAY’-gin) is suggesting that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that “God is mad at America” and at black communities too

Pat Robertson, Conservative Christian evangelical broadcaster

Pat Robertson on Thursday linked Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke to God’s “Enmity against those ‘who divide my land.’” “He was dividing God’s land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America,” Robertson said on his television program, “The 700 Club,” Broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach. “God says ‘this land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.’”

Before this God was seen talking to George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also. This is why when I call Him, he is not around.

Entry of Non-Hindus in Guruvayoor

Recently there was a controversy in Kerala over Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s visit to Guruvayoor temple. It seems his wife entered the temple and the issue was if she was a Christian or a Buddhist. In Guruvayoor temple only Hindus are allowed to enter and there is a strict dress code. Men have to remove their shirt and wear a mundu. Women are allowed to wear only sarees and girls have to wear a skirt and blouse.
This is one busy temple and there is a guard at the door checking to see if you confirm to the dress code and I am not sure if he checks the religion also. If so, it would be an amazing skill, for there is no easy way to find the religion of an Indian, unless he is wearing a symbol, like the cross. Due to this it is possible for people of any religion to enter the temple, but only famous people are stopped.
So when Congress leader, Vayalar Ravi’s son’s marriage was conducted in Guruvayoor, the authorities had to clean the temple because Vayalar Ravi’s wife was a Christian. If it were two ordinary folks, no one would have questioned this nor cleaned the temple. Other famous people who have been denied entry are singer Yesudas, who is a devotee of Guruvayoorappan and poet Yusuf Ali Kecheri, who lives close to the temple and has written many devotional songs.
But then how can we assume that all Hindus too are devotees? Communists are known to be atheists and what is the logic in allowing them to enter the temple. Recently in a statement, the temple authorities said that people of Buddhist and Jain faiths are allowed entry, since they are treated on par with Hinduism. This even more odd since both these religions do not recognize God as Hindus do. In Jainism, there is no creator god and a person is responsible for his actions. Buddha claimed that his enlightenment was not due to any divine intervention. It seems illogical that when followers of such agnostic religions are allowed entry, people who believe in Guruvayoorappan are not.
Related Links: Anand writes on the reforms initiated by his father at Guruvayoor. Bhavane rolls his eyes as he reads about the marxist temple minister. Rajeev Srinivasan makes the counterpoint.

Oldest fort in Kerala?

Before the Cheras established themselves as a major force in Kerala, it was ruled by the Ay dynasty sometime between 7th to 11th century AD with Vizhinjam as the capital.The Ay dynasty ruled the land between Nagercoil and Thiruvalla. In A History of South India, Nilakanta Sastry writes that the Ay kingdom lay around the Podiya hill, the southernmost section of the Western Ghats. He also writes that the Greek geographer Ptolemy wrote about one ‘Aioi’ was ruling the country at that time which included Cape Comorin and Mount Bettigo.
Last year there was news that a 9th century Vishnu temple was being rebuilt due to the initiative of the local people. This temple is unique since it is one of those which have a circular sanctum santorum. Much before this, when the kings of the Ay dynasty shifted their capital to Vizhinjam, they built a fort which is now considered to be the oldest fort in Kerala dating to the eighth or ninth century.

A preliminary investigation by the team has revealed the fort might have originally been 800 sq. m in area. The fort’s wall can be found on the northern and western (seaside) parts and has been constructed using large boulders set in mud mortar. The wide base of the wall tapers on its way up. According to Dr. Ajit, one important clue in dating the fort is that the walls have no battlements or `loop holes’ (holes to place cannons in). This is typical of early forts, he says.
The team was also able to trace literary and epigraphical references – of 9 AD to 12 AD vintage – to a fort and port at Vizhinjam. Sangam literature such as `Pandikkovai’, `Iraiyanar Ahapporul Urai’, `Kalingattup-parani’, of Jayamkondar, and `Vikrama-solan-ula’ are said to have numerous references to the existence of a fort, port and a mansion at Vizhinjam.
Moreover, the Srivaramangalam copper plate s of Pandyan King Nedum Chadayan ( 8 AD) have clear reference to Vizhinjam and its fort. “Here, the fort is described as surrounded by waters of three seas, protected by a wide moat, high walls which the sun’s rays do not touch and so on. Leaving aside the hyperbole typical of such inscriptions, the ground evidence at Vizhinjam that we got fits this description of the old fort. In fact the port at Vizhinjam has been mentioned in the work `The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’, a work of the first century AD. Here Vizhinjam has been called as Balita,” said Dr. Ajit. [Ninth century fort discovered at Vizhinjam]

Tags:

Quick Intro to Indian history

Do you want to know about Indian history and how European Aryans came to India? Take a look at the SABHA version, assembled from the works of “scholars”.

Stanley Wolpert explains lucidly in his book, The New History of India, the fate of the inhabitants of this civilization.

Around 2000 B.C. the original Indo-European speaking, seminomadic barbarians, who most probably lived in the region between the Caspian and the Black seas, were driven by some natural disaster, possibly drought, prolonged frost, or plague. Elaborating on the type of natural disaster, he writes,

Whatever the cause of their dispersion – it may even have been a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia – the ancestors . . . were forced to flee from Southern Russia to survive.

We chose “whatever” as the cause (since we haven’t yet figured out how a series of Mongol invasions falls under the category of natural disasters), and were in luck when we found the actual explanation buried in an article by Michael Witzel! Apparently, civilizations developed on pond sides! A tsunami from the pond must have drowned the entire civilization. Well, not quite the entire civilization. The male members and horse chariots survived! [SABHA 4M Report]

More and more evidence is surfacing which is disproving the Aryan Tourist TheoryTM. Archaeological and genetic evidence do not show that there was a massive migration of Europeans to India. They did not teach us agriculture also.

Kadakkarapally Boat

The Thaikkal-Kadakkarappally Boat, Kerala

Last year we had some posts about an ancient boat discovered in in Kadakkarappally, Kerala. This boat was considered to be somewhere between 600 to a 1000 years old and the 72 foot boat, according to initial reports was built using anjili, a wood found in Kerala. The boat according to report was built by foreign seafarers
According to a new research paper we have more details on this boat, which was apparently used to transport people or commodities between coastal ports and interior backwaters. Traditionally boats built in Kerala never used iron and it was assumed that such practice started with the arrival of Europeans in Kerala, starting with Vasco da Gama in 1498.
This boat which has been dated between 13 and 15th centuries, provides proof that shipmakers in Kerala were using iron fastners before the arrival of Europeans. The authors suggest that since Kerala was a main port in the Indian Ocean trade network, it is possible that local shipmakers would have encountered ships using iron fastners and got â??inspiredâ?.
What about the theory that it was built by foreigners?

The Thaikkal-Kadakkarappally boat, therefore, has features in common with several different traditions of boatbuilding. The form of the boat appears to mirror one strand of Chinese boatbuilding and the lashed lugs are a feature commonly found in South-East Asian shipbuilding. The use of lap joints between adjacent planks is typically Indian while nails clenched over a rove are normally only identified with north European building traditions. The boat itself, however, was clearly built locally. All three species of wood identified in the remains are indigenous to Kerala. Anjily, in particular, is used for almost all of the plank-built craft in Kerala today as it is strong, resilient, fairly cheap and widely available. It is possible that the boat was constructed by foreign shipbuilders settled in Kerala, but there is no reason to conclude that the Thaikkal-Kadakkarappally boat is not an Indian vessel, built in India by Indian shipbuilders.[The Thaikkal-Kadakkarappally Boat]

It was expected that the climate of Kerala would not allow for the preservation of of archaeological material, especially in waterlogged areas. But this boat somehow survived.

Heinrich Harrer

The first time I came to know about Heinrich Harrer was when I saw the movie Seven Years in Tibet. The movie was kind of boring, but Harrer’s life was fascinating. In the movie he escapes from a POW camp in Darjeeling in 1944 and crosses the mountainson foot to reach Tibet, thus being one of few westerners to reach there. He spends 7 years there, tutoring a young Dalai Lama, who many years later would take the reverse route to India

He was an accomplished mountaineer as well, climbing the Eiger, regarded as a major test of climbing ability.

After the Eiger’s hazardous east ridge was scaled in 1921, only the north face remained unconquered. The first nine climbers who attempted it in the 1930s all died.

In August 1935 two Germans, Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer, made their assault on the wall. The men were abruptly halted 3,000 feet up by a terrible storm, accompanied by freezing temperatures and frequent avalanches.

They survived on the face for five agonising days, bivouacking there for four nights before freezing to death. Four more climbers died the next year while trying to retreat.

Then, in July 1938, an Austro-German team of four, Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Fritz Kasparek and Heinrich Harrer, made it to the top. It took the men, who had only decided to team up at the base of the wall, more than three days to reach the summit.[The ultimate alpine challenge]

They met Hitler and Goebbels who praised them for their achievement. Harrer died this week. In such an eventful life his only regret must have been that he was portrayed by Brad Pitt on screen.

Question of the day

By Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to Kerala Communists

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took a swipe at the hardline fringe of the Kerala unit which has yet to come to terms with the reforms within. ”Why should we oppose foreign companies if they bring in jobs? Why should we oppose shopping malls from MNCs if they provide employment to our jobless youth?” he said. [Why are you afraid of foreign firms if they give jobs]

Jobless youth are required to destroy public property and bring life to standstill depending on if Achyutanandan or Pinarayi Vijayan got out on the wrong side of the bed. Giving such lectures will not change anything and so we need to follow the tactics in HOWTO: Develop Kerala document.

What Aryan Invasion – II

“The perennial concept of people, language and agriculture arriving in India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny,”

The proponents of the Aryan Invasion/Migration theory believe that Central Asian people bought agriculture to India. Also since we Indians descended from them, there should be some evidence for this in our genetic makeup.
May such theories are being put to rest now. Newly surfaced evidence shows that agriculture developed in Middle Ganga Valley much before Europe. Research by Oppenheimer, Michael Petraglia and Hannah James show that Europeans are descendents of people from India. Two recent genetic studies done in India dispute the European parenthood theory.

A study by scientists at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Calcutta has revealed that most present-day Indians are the descendants of early humans who began to arrive in India about 60,000 years ago. It suggests that modern Indians do not owe much genetic makeup to central Asians who arrived much later.

The findings do lend support to the migration of people from central Asia into India.

“Although we did find genetic signatures from central Asian populations in Indian communities, there are not enough (signatures) to prove large-scale mixture with local populations,” research team leader Vijendra Kashyap told The Telegraph.

“The perennial concept of people, language and agriculture arriving in India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny,” Kashyap and his colleagues at the University of Oxford and the Estonian Biocentre said in their research paper.[Aryan impact myth crumbles]

A separate study by Partha Mazumder at ISI Calcutta also proves that genetic signatures of Indian men are older than 10,000 years and this predates the arrival of Europeans in India.