Numitor and his brother Amulius were descendants of fugitives from Troy and upon their father’s death, they received the throne of an ancient city near Rome. Numitor became the king and Amulius in charge of the royal treasury. Soon Amulius dethroned Numitor and fearful that Numitor’s daughter would produce children, she was sworn to abstinence. Well, we all know how well abstinence works, and before the daughter realized that she was pregnant and gave birth to twins. Amulius ordered that the daughter and both her children be killed.

The servant who had to kill the twins did not do it and instead put them in a basket on the banks of the Tiber river. The basket was carried downstream and the twins were  found by a shepherd Amulius who raised them as his own children. One of them grew up to be a dacoit and the other a software engineer. No, they grew up to be Romulus and Remus, known as the founders of Rome.

If this story has an uncanny similarity to the story of Karna don’t be surprised. The seventh century BCE  biography of Sargon says

My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and […] years I exercised kingship

Besides Moses, and Karna, others who have undergone this ordeal include Perseus who was cast into the open sea, but was saved by the fisherman Dictys, and King Nyatri Tsanpo, regarded as Tibet’s first recorded monarch, who was sent floating in a casket down the Ganges. Like the story of the great deluge, this is also one of the recurring themes across cultures. Also, without this pattern the Hindi movie industry would have folded in the early 70s.

The Pyramids of Caral

Caral, in Barranca province, Peru, is one of the oldest cities of the Americas. The site was inhabited between 2627 BCE and 2020 BCE and had  an elaborate complex of temples, an amphitheatre and ordinary houses.The official web site of the project lists all those societies which created civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Peru, China and Mesoamerica. The web site calls Caral,the oldest civilization of America.

Writing in the Times of India, Shobhan Saxena decided to be more Peruvian than the Peruvians themselves, According to him, Caral is the mother of all civilisations. He also writes, “the earliest known civilisation in South
Americas—at 2,627 BC–was much older than the Harappa Valley towns
and the pyramids of Egypt.” Shobhan needs to know something: Google is your friend. The Indus valley civilization had its roots in Mehrgarh and reached the Mature phase by 2600 BCE. Ancient Egyptian civilization began around 3150 BC and they were building pyramids by the time of Caral.

One more thing. Even Tom Friedman does not use metaphors like “mother of all something” these days.

The Archaeology Magazine has published their Top 10 discoveries of 2007. Among the top 10 are the Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru, Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet, Greater Angkor, Cambodia, and Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria. While nothing from India made it to the top 10, there is one story among the nine which did not make it to the final cut – Toba Survivors in Andhra Pradesh

The Lupercal

That was probably the date when Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th for the first time and now we have a theory on the location where Christmas was first celebrated on the “official day.” The place is Basilica of St. Anastasia and the basis for the theory is the discovery of a pagan shrine, the Lupercal, dedicated to the founders of Rome – Romulus and his brother Remus. The Basilica of St. Anastasia was built around 326 CE near the Lupercal shrine  and the location was chosen to link pagan practices to Christian celebrations.

According to Roman mythology, the brothers were abandoned by their parents and was bought up by a wolf. They were discovered by shepherd, Faustulus who raised them as his own children. In January of this year, archaeologists found the Lupercal believed to be the one where the brothers were bought up by the wolf, and in November, the first photos were released. This cave is located between one of the seven hills of Rome and the Basilica of Santa Anastasia.

In the early days of Christianity, the practice was to appropriate pagan practices and celebrations.  The Roman emperor Constantine presided over the First Council of Nicaea and it was there that Dec 25 was picked as the birth date of Yeshua. During those times, two important pagan festivals were celebrated – the first one starting on Dec. 17 honored Saturn, a major Roman deity of agriculture and harvest and the second one starting on Dec 25, celebrated the birth of Mithras, the Persian god of light. Constantine combined both and we now have Christmas.

See Also: Merry Christmas!