From Bharata to India: Volume 1: Chrysee the Golden

By M K Agarwal

The origin of world civilization can be traced to the Sindhu and Sarasvati river valleys (located in present-day Pakistan) as early as 8,000 BC. Here, innovation and originality in every aspect of human endeavor, from mathematics and science to art and sports, flourished. Yet the importance of this civilization, known as the Vedic period, has been deliberately downplayed.

Thoroughly researched and including an extensive bibliography, From Bharata to India rectifies this mistake in the perspective of world history and seeks to offer a comprehensive reference source. Author M. K. Agarwal shows how this early culture, where ideation by enlightened philosopher Brahmin kings, brought material and spiritual wealth that was to remain unchallenged until the colonial era. This Vedic-Hindu-Buddhist legacy subsequently influenced peoples and paradigms around the globe, ushering in an era of peace and plenty thousands of years before the Europeans.

By using original sources in Sanskirt as well as regional literature, Agarwal compares corresponding situations in other civilizations within the context of their own literary traditions and records to prove that Bharata forms the basis of world civilization. This is in direct contrast to the Greek or Arab miracle hypothesis put forth by numerous scholars.

The first of two volumes in this series, From Bharata to India offers a fascinating, in-depth glimpse into ancient Indias contribution to the modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475907667

M K Agarwal

M.K. Agarwal (known as Maharaj Krishan to his relatives and close friends) received his college education at D.M. College, Moga (Punjab). He did civil engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India). Through an all-India competitive examination by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in 1960, he was appointed to the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), and posted to Eastern Railway, Kolkata. In another examination held at about the same time by Punjab Public Service Commission for recruitment to class I service of three branches of Public Works Department (PWD) of the state of Punjab (then comprising present Punjab, Haryana, and much of present Himachal Pradesh), he stood first; in fact, he was the only candidate to clear the written examination and to be called for the interview. He resigned from the railways, and joined Punjab PWD as direct class I officer. On re-organisation of the state of Punjab in 1966, he was allocated to the new state of Haryana, where he rose to the rank of Engineer-in-Chief with effect from 1986. For long years he headed the state PWD (Building & Road), and retired on superannuation in 1994. He was elected President of Indian Roads Congress for the year 1992-93. In recognition of his service to the profession, the Congress, in 2016, conferred upon him Lifetime Achievement Award. Many a time, he was called upon to act as arbitrator, dispute review expert to adjudicate upon construction related disputes between the contractors and various government bodies, which he did with due diligence and probity. Besides the present book of literary essays, he wrote the following monograph and treatise: • ‘Roads in the Service of the Nation’: Indian Roads Congress (1994; pp 46) • ‘Urban Transportation in India’: Indian National Academy of Engineering (1996; pp 272) Further, he was commissioned to prepare the drafts of the following manual/code, which, after vetting by the concerned steering committee, came to be published in the years mentioned against them: • ‘Manual of Works’: National Highways Authority of India, Govt. of India (2006; pp 314) • ‘Haryana PWD Code (2009)’: Government of Haryana (2009; pp 262). This is a premier publication of its kind in the country. His interests are English literature and Urdu poetry.

Book preview

From Bharata

to India

VOLUME 1: CHRYSEE THE GOLDEN

M. K. AGARWAL

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

From Bharata to India

Volume 1: Chrysee the Golden

Copyright © 2012 by M. K. Agarwal.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-0765-0 (sc)

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1    PREFACE

2    THE UNIVERSE GETS STARTED WITH A BIG BANG

3    THE MOTHER EARTH TAKES SHAPE

4    LIFE ORIGINATES AND EVOLVES

5    MAN APPEARS AND PEOPLES THE GLOBE

6    HUNTING GIVES WAY TO AGRICULTURE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

7    THE INDUS WORLD PIONEERS THE WORLD CIVILIZATION

8    THE MARITIME EXPANSION

9    TRADE ALONG THE OVERLAND ROAD NETWORK

10    MAJOR RELIGIOUS SCRIPTURES AND PARADIGMS

11    FROM THE VEDIC IDEAL TO KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES

12    DAILY LIFE BETWEEN THE TWO EMPIRES

13    THE IMMORTAL DISCOVERIES IN NATURAL SCIENCES

14    YOGA AND AYURVEDA HARNESS THE SECRET OF LIFE

15    SPIRITUAL HARMONY THROUGH FINE ARTS

16    DHARMA AND KARMA IN SECULAR LITERATURE

17    GANDHARVAVEDA: PERFORMING ARTS AND THEATER

18    CELEBRATING LIFE BY GAMES AND LEISURE

19    GLOBALIZATION OF THE DIVINE IDEAL

20    CHRYSEE THE GOLDEN

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TO

ALMA MATER

honor

scholarship

uncompromising integrity

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research conducted for this book stems from my lifelong quest to assign correct historical perspective to the rich patrimony of ancient Bharata, also known as Jambudvipa, Melhuaa, Madhyadesha, Aryavarta, Aryadesha, Ophir, among others, that was usurped by the successive aliens who were to invade India over the past 1000 years and more. After having freely stolen the insights gained by the ancient sages of Bharata since the beginning of recorded antiquity, the invaders despised the very peoples whose material and intellectual riches were usurped by armed might, mutilation, murder, slavery, torture, deliberate mistranslations, omissions and the like. Thanks are due to my alma mater, Bryn Mawr College, for opening the door to inquiry and instilling in me a sense of balance, justice, objectivity and righteousness.

I am indebted to the staff and facilities of libraries at Bryn Mawr College, the TriCollege collections and their Inter library loan services, as also the libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and many others. Some of the rare books were made available to me by various sources in India where several leading experts in Sanskrit provided valuable insights into the message hidden behind the apparently specious poetry of Vedic aphorisms. For illustrations, I am thankful to the patient enterprise of many who went through the trouble of understanding technical terms for a non-specialist public. Many colleagues at the University of Paris, despite their own hectic schedule, gave me their invaluable advice, ideas, criticisms, and suggestions for improvement.

Finally, the sheer abundance of the unsurpassed patrimony of ancient Bharata, both in terms of quantity and quality, is so rich that my journey into the past cannot be accomplished within one lifetime. Just a scratch on the surface of any subject reveals an underlying Vedic core in most cultures around the world. However, I have decided to stop here and share my experience with those who seek truth in place of bias, inquiry in place of dogmatism, wisdom in place of ignorance, self-analysis in place of condemnation, and ideation in place of indoctrination. Although several other authors have also attempted this sort of rehabilitation, their efforts have been very limited in scope. The present book forms the only complete reference source to understanding the genesis and diffusion of the glory that was Bharata. The present era has been called the ‘Asia Century’ so I hope that my effort will contribute to the revival of those peoples and traditions that have either been destroyed by the intolerant treachery of the invaders, or are gathering dust on the forgotten shelves of human endeavor. All boldfaces and highlights throughout the text are mine to underline important concepts and events.

Jai Bharata. Satyameva Jayate. Bande Mataram.

Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

M. K. Agarwal, March 2012

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

African Development Bank (AFDB)

All Indian Congress Committee (AICC)

Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Bactria Margiana Archaeological complex (BMAC)

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

East India Company (EIC)

Grand Trunk (GT)

Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR)

Indian National Congress (INC)

Indus-Sarasvati Civilization (ISC)

International Development Association (IDA)

International American Development Bank (IDB)

Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Middle Eastern Interaction Sphere (MEIS)

Prime Minister (PM)

Prime Minister’s Office (PMO)

Ribonucleic acid (RNA)

Rigveda (RV)

The Times of India (TOI)

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)

World War (WW)

1

PREFACE

The history of what is called India since 1947 can be divided into at least three distinct periods. During the first phase, from 8000 BC to the arrival of the Arabs sometime in the 8th century CE, she was held in awe the world over for her wealth, wisdom, humanity, selfless sacrifice for universal good, and indeed all that is desirable in life. She was both a highly developed manufacturing country and an agricultural country. If even some of her inventions could be patented, most of the world wealth would flow into her coffers even in this day and age. Right up to the 18th century, no other peoples could compete with her methods of production, distribution and commercial organization. So refined were her products that the East India Company (EIC) and others came to buy the luxury articles made in Bharata for resale at a high profit in Europe. Trading companies from other European nations competed with the EIC to wrest control of Indian Ocean shipping from the hands of the native traders. So efficient and highly organized were her methods of production that they had to be stifled by heavy duties in Europe and taxes in Bharata. So reliable and efficient was her banking system that the bills of exchange issued by her financial houses were honored everywhere in Greater Bharata, including Central Asia. So elaborate was her network of agents, brokers and middlemen that the news of market reached them even before they reached the EIC. No wonder she was called The Golden Chrysee by the British explorers and described in Sanskrit literature as suvarnabhumi or the land of gold within the Greater Bharata.

Although her vaults were overflowing with the world’s wealth, her philosophers and thinkers understood the inevitable reality of an afterlife and formulated the theories of karma and dharma to promote righteous conduct in this life, leading to rewards in the next. Whereas life was celebrated by music, song, drama and sexual freedom, renunciation and detachment were integrated into everyday life in order to help the individual welcome, not dread, the last moments of physical existence. Her performing arts provided inspiration for European dance, drama and theater. The sexual act of creation was worshipped as a divine gift and could be used to find salvation through Tantra Yoga. Her archaeologists had deciphered the Vastu shastra to live and work in harmony with nature while her scientists had harnessed the laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry, life sciences and astronomy thousands years before the Europeans. Her pioneering medical traditions as well as emphasis on hygiene were also several thousand years ahead of time and many cannot be improved upon even now. Her literary genius had invented story telling that was to become the staple backbone of the European folklore. Her games and sports were acclaimed far and wide and were even patented during the Raj period. Her freedom of thought was so total that the scriptures advised the individual to become an arya, as similar to God as possible. Despite the wholesale destruction of written records by foreign invaders in the name of ‘true’ religions, enough literature has survived to show that all her accomplishments are based on detailed theoretical treatises inspired by the Vedic thought that permeated around the world as of 8000 BC.

Like a loving mother, she provided religious and cultural models for her adapted siblings in most of Asia as her glory spread through the Sri Vijaya and the Majapahit Empires, Indonesia, Malaysia, Fu-nan, Khmer strongholds, Champa, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Siam and Philippines. To the West, her influence reached Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, the Russia Republics, Greece and the Roman Empire. To the north, she took China, Korea and Japan in her embrace while to the south her message reached the East Coast of Africa. She inspired the Celts who brought culture to Europe where many countries now vie with each other to claim Celtic heritage. Sea farers from her bosom landed in the Americas, Oceania, Africa, and Polynesia, well before the Europeans. No other Empire in history was greater and founded by such peaceful means, based solely on unparalleled ideation. Instead of sending armies to kill, mutilate, torture, rob and enslave, she sent ambassadors of hope, learning and peace around the world such that peoples in some alien lands begot great Empires and monuments to honor their foster mother. Prince Nordom Sihanouk of Cambodia pays a befitting homage (see Coedes and Chandler for further details):

In fact, it was about 2000 years ago that the first navigators, Indian merchants and Brahmans brought to our ancestors their gods, their techniques, and their organization. Briefly, India was for us what Greece was for the Latin Occident.

During the second phase, alien peoples and ideologies came as conquerors to unleash a reign of physical and mental terror in the name of faith that had prohibited free thinking, enterprise and inquiry in its native land. Consequently, the believers toiled in general depravity, perpetual misery, superstition, poverty, disease, hunger and the like, all of which were written off as God’s will that was never to be questioned. The Arabs came wielding the sword of Islam in the one hand, and Koran in the other, to usurp the riches of Bharata by sheer plunder, murder, theft, torture, castration and slavery. The foundation of Arabic literature and sciences was laid only between 750-850 CE where everything is foreign, except the religion. Al-Biruni has noted that the Arabs changed Sanskrit names into Arabic to camouflage the real origin (details in Priyadarshi). Many centuries later, Arabic translations of the Vedic patrimony were to spur the revival of Europe that had remained mired in superstition, cannibalism, magic, sorcery, bestiality, homosexuality, disease epidemics, poverty, prostitution, slavery, illiteracy, and the like because the Bible remained the despotic instrument in the hands of the clergy to stifle all inquiry.

Lured by the Eastern Bounty, the British entered Bharata with Bible and Guns, first to expropriate its riches and then its culture. Clive describes Murshidabad in Bengal in 1757 CE (further details in Wolpert):

"As extensive, populous, and rich as the city of London, with the difference that there are individuals in the first possessing infinitely greater property than in the last".

Whereas the European miasma suffered from the same privations as the Arabs before their conquests, the British nevertheless dubbed their plunder a "noble mission of ruling a lesser people for their own good". Having acquired affluence through stolen riches, the British could no longer tolerate the fact that the Vedic heritage was far superior to their own barbaric past. Attention was therefore turned to Greece as the sole source of Western Civilization, thanks in part to Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, who had translated the dialogues of Plato in the 1870s. Almost all of the original Greek literature was lost during Christian-Muslim religious bigotry so Greek-sounding names were invented by Latin translators of Arabic texts, just as Sanskrit names had been changed by the Arabs. Chakrabarty has underlined western efforts to rewrite Indian history according to foreign conquests and their aftermath. Through such devices the threat that the Vedic-Hindu past presented to the Greek miracle could be obviated by chronology. Similarly, Jones and others came with a comparative genealogy where the Vedic literature would merely be repeating the events described in the Bible.

An effort was finally mounted to manipulate the time maps such that all scientific knowledge of ancient Bharata could be derived from Alexandrian Greece and the feigned ‘Greek miracle’. Edith Hamilton categorically proclaimed that the world before Athens was all engulfed in darkness and barbarism. Kaye in 1915 insisted that Indian mathematics was no older than 12th century CE and that the present day numerals could not possibly be Indian. In 1981, Pongee prepared a chronology of Indian astronomy that had no Indian contributions at all. The British engineered a local fifth column through Thomas Babington Macaulay, Chairman of the Education Board, to set up an education system modeled along British lines in order to undermine the Hindu tradition and to facilitate the conversion to Christianity. Macaulay was entrusted to create English educated elite in India that would repudiate its tradition and become British collaborators. The policy speech by Macaulay in 1835 CE stipulated an education system to create a native sub caste that would ape the British and help propagate the British rule. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, he enthusiastically wrote to his father:

"Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be affected without any efforts to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project."

The educated ‘elite’ in modern India are clinging desperately to the dream of Macaulay.

Although the British trace their cultural origin to the Greek ideal, racism was not to be found anywhere in Greece or Rome in contrast to modern colonialism based of feigned white superiority over nonwhites. This has belittled the Greek ideal because Alexandrian paiedia meant cultural assimilation with the locals in contrast to the British hatred for the native. McEvilly summarizes:

"So there is a distinct ideological difference between the ancient Greek and the modern British colonization of India—the one nonracially based, the other racist; the one a settler colony designed to participate in rather than destabilize and exploit the indigenous community, the other a racial colony bent on exploiting then leaving".

The myth of Aryan invasion, based solely upon comparative linguistics, was furthermore invented to pass off the Vedic culture as stemming from the white race. Chakrabarty summarizes: "British wanted to appear at the end of a long line of invaders of the land, beginning with the Aryans"; the British now formed the original Aryans.

In the third and the final phase, post-independence Indians acquired the inferiority complex, thanks in part to the education policies inherited from the Macaulay era. Starting with Nehru and Gandhi, Western-oriented politicians now exploited India much as the invaders had done. The modern, educated Hindu has his cultural antennas tuned to the West in general, and the British in particular, and belittles his own heritage; Nehru even admitted that he was a "Hindu by accident". Unfortunately, 1000 years of slavery have pushed the Hindu psyche into a subservient position such that the ‘educated elite’ in modern India espouse a colonial ideology that was meant to demean the ancient Vedic glory and the Vedic-Hindu-Buddhist way of life. Consequently, the native exploitation of India since Independence is no less virulent than under the invaders.

Volume I is designed to rehabilitate the Vedic patrimony that was deliberately downplayed and maligned by false translations, distortions, omissions, and the like. Although several authors have come up with timid attempts in this context, limited to their respective fields of interest/expertise, the present book forms the only comprehensive reference source. All human endeavors from the Indus World 8000 BC on have been referred to the original source in Sanskrit, as well as regional literature, and compared with the corresponding situation in other civilizations within the context of their own literary traditions and records. It will become immediately obvious that the genius of ancient Bharata indeed forms the basis of world civilization, in contrast to the idea that ‘miracles’ in Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt etc. influenced India somehow and anyhow from somewhere and anywhere. Authors who subscribe to the ‘Greek miracle’ hypothesis have consistently failed to cite sources to support their bias and the burden of proof lies squarely upon their shoulders. These cultural imperialists simply dismiss and negate all evidence not in tune with their racial hegemony.

Volume II analyzes the period following Muslim conquests down to the present era when India was exploited to its bare bones, demonized, and seeded with traditions that the West is gradually weeding out of its own soil. Consequently, the ancient Bharata was the civilization of tomorrow in contrast to the modern India that epitomizes and propagates the Western conformism of yesterday. A comparison between the ‘true’ religions and the Vedic ‘paganism’ exposes the hypocrisy used to decimate non-white races and expropriate their intellectual and material wealth in the name of civilization. The present generation in the West profits from the wealth looted by its ancestors through sheer genocide but refuses to accept the legacy via which such wealth was procured in the first place. The cause has thus been severed from the effect. Finally, following independence, the exploitation of India by the native polity is even worse than exploitation by alien powers. Uprooted from his cultural foundation, the so called educated Hindu has forgotten his own patrimony and aping Western mannerism to be passed off as modern and be accepted by his ex-colonial masters. Such stoicism can only lead to the eventual downfall of the Vedic ideal as the Hindu is reduced to an orphan in his own geopolitical space.

2

THE UNIVERSE GETS STARTED

WITH A BIG BANG

Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going, are the questions that have perpetually obsessed the humanity. Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the term Big Bang during a 1949 radio broadcast which was picked by Georges Lemaitre to explain the origin of the Universe from a primordial hot and dense ‘something’. The Big Bang was recreated artificially on 30 March 2010 at CERN headquarters in Geneva and could lead to the discovery of the Higgs boson, also called as the ‘God particle’, that is believed to have existed when the universe was born. Alexander Friedman calculated that the Universe and Space are expanding, in contrast to the static Universe model advocated by Einstein, but what are they expanding into! Lemaitre further stipulated that the forward expansion model meant that the Universe would eventually contract backwards, bringing all universal into a single, primeval atom, when time and space will cease exist. The salient features of the Big Bang scenario may be summarized as follows.

Approximately 13.7 billion years ago, our universe was present as an atomic singularity, when space and time did not exist. An ineffable explosion, trillions of degrees in temperature, created not only the fundamental, subatomic particles, and thus matter and energy, but also the time and space. The elementary particles known as quarks began to bond in trios, forming photons, positrons and neutrinos, along with their anti-particles. The density of the Universe in its first moments of life is thought to have been 1094g/cm3, the majority as radiation mixed with ionized plasma. The particles and anti-particles equaled each other as did the neutrons and protons. For each billion pairs of these heavy particles (hadrons), created due to particle-anti-particle collisions, one was spared annihilation to constitute the majority of our universe today. During this creation and annihilation of particles, the universe was undergoing expansion many times the speed of light such that in less than one thousandth of a second it doubled in size at least one hundred times, from an atomic nucleus to 1035 meters in width. At the age of one hundredth of a second, neutrons began to decay on a massive scale which permitted free electrons and protons to combine with other particles. The genesis of matter from energy was made possible by photons materializing into baryons and anti-baryons whose subsequent annihilation transformed them into pure energy. Like water trapped inside a sponge, radiation was so dense (1014g/cm3) that no light was visible; as the temperature dropped to a mere 1013 K the Strong Nuclear, Weak Nuclear, and Electromagnetic interactions were able to exert their force.

As the gas cloud expanded one full second after the initial explosion, and the temperature dropped to ten billion degrees, photons no longer had the energy to disrupt the creation of matter, or to transform energy into matter. After three minutes, at the temperature of one billion degrees, protons and neutrons underwent nucleo-synthesis of deuterium from the bonding of two protons with two neutrons to form helium. The next important phase of expansion occurred thirty minutes later when the creation of photons increased through the annihilation of electron-positron pairs. For the next 300,000 years, the universe expanded further and cooled down to 10,000°K, such that helium nuclei absorbed free floating electrons to form helium atoms. Meanwhile, hydrogen atoms were bonding together and forming lithium such that the density of the universe expanded to the point where light as photons was no longer trapped within matter. Finally, the expansion allowed for light and matter to go their separate ways as radiation became less and less dense and the oldest fossils in the Universe were born. The three possible types of known matter are, cold dark matter, hot dark matter, and baryonic matter, of which the first one is by far the most dominant, the other two types amounting to less than 18% of the total. The cold dark matter neither emits light nor interacts with the normal baryonic matter. It is not yet understood why the Universe has more matter than anti-matter, although when very young the Universe contained equal numbers of baryons and anti-baryons. The Universe is dominated by a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy which permeates space; 72% of the total energy in the Universe is this dark energy.

The first quasars and galaxies were formed about a billion years after the Big Bang. A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally-bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed the dark matter. Whereas some of the galaxies contain as few as ten million (107) stars the giants ones may contain one trillion (1012), all orbiting around a central mass. Most galaxies in the universe appear to be dwarf galaxies, about one hundredth the size of the Milky Way, containing only a few billion stars, multiple star systems, star clusters, and interstellar clouds. There are probably 125 billion (1.25×1011) galaxies in the observable universe, most 1,000 to 100,000 J in diameter, usually separated by distances of millions of parsecs (or mega-parsecs). Ultra-compact dwarf galaxies have recently been discovered that are only 100 parsecs across. The average separation between galaxies within a cluster is a little over an order of magnitude larger than their diameter. Galaxies have been categorized as elliptical, spiral, irregular, and peculiar, all of which stem from the gravitational pull of the neighboring galaxies. Many dwarf galaxies may orbit a single larger galaxy; the Milky Way has at least a dozen such satellites, with an estimated 300-500 yet to be discovered. The majority of galaxies are organized into a hierarchy of associations called clusters which, in turn, can form super-clusters that are generally arranged into sheets and filaments. The dark matter appears to account for around 90% of the mass of most galaxies and super-massive black holes may exist at the center of many galaxies; the Milky Way galaxy appears to harbor at least one such object within its nucleus. The Sun is one of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy which includes the Earth and all the other objects that orbit the Sun.

The Greeks coined the term "galaxias (γαλαξίας), or kyklos galaktikos", for our Milky Way galaxy, meaning milky circle, according to their own mythology wherein Zeus placed his son Heracles, born of a mortal woman, on Hera‘s breast while she was asleep, so that the baby could drink her divine milk and thus become immortal. Hera woke up to find that she was nursing an unknown baby so she pushed the baby away and a jet of her milk sprayed the night sky, producing the Milky Way. The Greek philosopher Democritus (450-370 BC) proposed that the Milky Way might consist of distant stars but Aristotle (384-322 BC) believed that the Milky Way was caused by:

"The ignition of the fiery exhalation of some stars which were large, numerous and close together and that the ignition takes place in the upper part of the atmosphere, in the region of the world which is continuous with the heavenly motions".

No other scripture or mythology comes as close to the Big Bang model of the Universe as the Creation Hymn in Rigveda, revealed to the Great Rishis during their super-conscious meditation, which excels in the abstract ideation by seeking the origin of the universe in a primary principle, not related to either a deity, the Greek logos, or the Unmoved Mover. The Song of Creation to the Unknown God states Truth is one (though) the wise call it by many names.

1.    Then there was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered it, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

2.    Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider.

   That one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

3.    Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this all was indiscriminate chaos.

   All that existed then was void and formless: By the great power of warmth was born that unit.

4.    Thereafter rose desire in the beginning. Desire the primal seed and germ of spirit.

   Sages who searched with their hearts’ thought discovered the existent’s kinship with the non-existent.

5.    Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then and what below it?

   There were begetters; there were mighty farads, free action here and energy up yonder.

6.    Who verily knows and who can here declare it, when it was born and whence comes this creation?

   The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then when it first came into being?

7.    He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,

Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not. (Hymn 129, book X, Rigveda, Griffith translation).

The orthodox Christians and Jews take the Hebrew text of Genesis as a literal, historical, fact and reject cosmological evolution altogether. They hold that the Heavens, Earth, and life on Earth were created by direct acts of God in six 24 hour days, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. In 1650 CE, Archbishop Ussher published a chronology which dated the creation to the night preceding 23 October, 4004 BC, much like other Biblically oriented estimates such as that of Bede (3952 BC). God planted the Garden of Eden for the habitation of an original human couple (Adam and Eve) but as a result of the subsequent Fall of Man, humanity was forced to work hard for food, childbirth became painful, and physical death entered the world. Adam and Eve were the universal ancestors of the entire human race produced by intermarriage among their progeny. A Biblical flood, variously dated anywhere between 2350 BC and 7000 BC, is supposed to have killed all humans on Earth with the exception of Noah, his sons and their wives. The whole human race today is therefore believed to descend from this single family of a homogeneous gene pool. This idea has been rejected altogether by modern population genetics (chapter 5).

Creationism asserts that the native Americans, Australian aborigines, as also all other races, arose from the migration of people, speaking a single language, after the construction of the Tower of Babel in Babylon in the 3rd millennium BC, at the beginning of Nimrod‘s kingdom. Genealogies in Genesis mention Egypt, Gamer, Sheba, Canaan, and Sidon, who are said to have founded the cities and civilizations that bear their names. Prior to the fall of man, there was no predatory or carnivorous activity amongst animals, and no death, as all animals and humans subsisted on an entirely vegetarian diet. Venoms and poisons were used either for digestion or miraculously bestowed upon animals by either God or the devil at the time of the fall. The belief that the universe appeared as the work of a rational Creator was held by many founders of modern science, such as Scaliger, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, John Lightfoot, Copernicus, Faraday, Galileo, Maxwell, Boyle, Pascal and Nicolas Steno, all of whom followed the empirical method of Francis Bacon (1561-1626 CE), but which has now been abandoned by the mainstream science.

3

THE MOTHER EARTH TAKES SHAPE

The discovery of radioactivity permitted an assessment of the antiquity of the mother Earth. The universe was already 9 billion years old when the Earth started to assemble from cosmic dust and debris about 4.54 billion (4.54 × 10⁹ years ± 1%) years ago and the process was largely over within 10-20 million years, as determined by radiometric dating of meteorites, the oldest known terrestrial and lunar samples. The Solar System (including the Earth) was formed from a large, rotating, cloud of interstellar dust and gas called the solar nebula, composed of hydrogen and helium, produced during the Big Bang, as well as heavier elements ejected by supernovas. The Sun is about 4.57 billion years old, some 30 million years older than the earth. The nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium soon began and, after contraction, a Tauri star ignited to create the Sun.

The Earth is part of some 100 billion stars in an archipelago of galaxies, the closest to the Milky Way being two million light years away. The Proto-Earth grew by accretion until the inner part of the proto-planet was hot enough to melt the heavy, siderophile metals. Only 10 million years after birth, the heavy densities of liquid metals made them sink to the Earth’s center, resulting in the metallic core 3750 miles wide, consisting of iron and nickel, and responsible for the Earth’s magnetic field. The crust is of diverse composition and varies from twelve to thirty miles in depth on land and only four miles under the sea. The core was separated from the crust by a mantle of iron and magnesium. During the accretion of material to the proto-planet, a cloud of gaseous silica must have surrounded the Earth, to condense afterwards as solid rocks on the surface.

The Moon was formed during a giant impact of the proto-Earth with another proto-planet, sometimes named Theia, thought to have been a little smaller than the current planet Mars. It could also have been formed by accretion of matter about 150 million kilometers from both the Sun and the Earth. The radiometric images show that the Earth had existed already for at least 10 million years before the impact, after the Earth’s primitive mantle and core had already been differentiated. The impact released a gigantic amount of energy, causing both the Earth and Moon to be completely molten such that the Earth’s mantle was a large magma ocean. The impact is also thought to have changed Earth’s axis to produce the large 23.5° axial tilt which is responsible for the seasons; it may also have sped up Earth’s rotation.

Throughout the history of the Earth, land masses have come together to form super continents which eventually broke up, only to reunite again. About 1000 to 830 million years ago, most continental mass was united into the supercontinent Rodinia which was probably not the first supercontinent to be formed. After the breakup of Rodinia about 800 million years ago, the supercontinent Pannotia was formed some 600 million years ago, only to break apart a short 50 million years later, at the end of the Proterozoic, into Laurentia, Baltica, Siberia and Gondwana. Laurentia and Baltica collided between 450 and 400 million years ago to form Laurussia whose traces can still be found in Scandinavia, Scotland and the northern Appalachians. During the Devonian, 416-359 million years ago, Gondwana and Siberia began to move towards Laurussia and collided with it during the Carboniferous period (359-299 million years ago), leading to the formation of the last supercontinent named Pangaea in the late Paleozoic, more than 250 million years ago (Figure 1).

Pangaea consisted of two smaller supercontinents joined at the hip near the Equator: Laurussia (North America, Greenland, Europe and much of Asia) and Gondwanaland (South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica). Pangaea started to fragment 250 million years ago, in the age of dinosaurs, and by 180 Ma it had broken up into Laurasia and Gondwana. Pangaea is still dispersing but 250 million years hence the land masses will come together again. The Gondwana junction marks the 550 million old suture where India, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, East Antarctica and Australia were once joined together, near the modern Kanyakumari. The formation of Pangaea, coupled with the removal of carbon dioxide from air by plants, triggered the great Gondwana ice age which lasted for millions of years as Gondwanaland joined the northern land mass at the close of the Devonian (Figure 1).

1%20FIGURE%201A-1B%20CONTINENTS.JPG

Figure 1

The Supercontinent Pangaea (left) and the

Gondwana land (right).

The Atlantic Ocean was to split North America from Asia and South America from Africa, though there were many other splits as well. India emerged like a pie from where it had lain wedged between Africa, Antarctica and Australia, drifted northwards across the Southern Ocean, and smashed into Central Asia to make the mountain range in Southern Tibet some 70 million years ago; further movement produced the nascent Himalayas 10-16 million years ago, followed by the towering Himalayan peaks 800,000 to 500,000 years ago, along with the Mahabharata and the Shiwalik Hills. This shifting of the earth’s crust continues today and the Himalayan ranges are rising 5 mm-1 cm every year. The rise of the hills dammed some of the rivers flowing south towards the Ganges such that the mythical accounts of the draining of Nepal valley by Manjushree or Pradyumna could well form the basis of the oral traditions handed down over more than 3000 generations. A Chinese folk story speaks of a land link between Taiwan and the mainland until 8000 years ago. Australia drifted from Antarctica and headed off north for South East Asia and is likely to merge with the Eurasian continent. Africa moved north to collide with Europe and will continue to do so, pinching the Mediterranean and driving up a Himalayan scale mountain range in Southern Europe. Americas will continue heading west to collide with Asia and Australia, decimating the Pacific in the process. The ocean floors, nowhere older than 250 million years, reveal centers of expanding plate tectonics, like scars that mark the original junction between rifted continental fragments. The oldest rocks on Earth (tonalites) are found in Canada, dated 4.0 Ga.

The world’s most powerful ice research vessel, the Polarsterm has shown that a continental fragment of a size hitherto never suspected must have existed between India and the Antarctic. This undersea Kerguelen Plateau was orphaned after the ancient continents separated, and India drifted away from Antarctica. The plateau, about the size of Germany and France combined together, appears to be the tip of a bigger piece of a lost continental crust. The geophysicist Karsten Gohl observed: "This plateau was created by a massive volcanic eruption shortly after India and Antarctica separated about 120 million years ago to form the Indian Ocean" (TOI May 2007).

During the first billion years, the Earth’s mantle remained molten but as it cooled the volcanoes belched out massive amounts of carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and steam, but no oxygen. The steam condensed to form water which then produced shallow seas. Additional water was imported by collisions from ice-containing comets, a million or more, ejected from the outer asteroid belt under the influence of Jupiter‘s gravity. The modern world would not exist were it not connected to the global ocean via the Straits of Gibraltar which is shallow and which did not exist during the Miocene. The sea levels fell so much during Miocene that the water connection was broken and the Mediterranean dried out, leaving a vast desert basin which was reclaimed by sea 900,000 years later. Around 2.3 Ga, the Earth underwent its first big ice age, called Makganyene, so severe that the planet was totally frozen from the poles to the equator, though not all geologists agree with this scenario. This Great Ice Age decimated the lush tropical swamps near the equator and deposited some 35.78 billion tons of coal now being exploited at Talchir, sixty miles north-west of Cuttack. The flow of rivers deposited top soil, sometimes 2 miles wide on the Gangetic plain, and 10-30 mile wide on Tarai strips in southern Nepal, which grows most the country’s food and contains almost one half of its population.

The earth is rotating about its axis daily at 1000 miles/hour and around the sun annually at 20 miles a second. The entire solar system is moving within the local star formation at 13 miles/sec which is moving within the Milky Way 200 miles/sec; the latter is drifting 100 miles/sec with respect to the distant galaxies albeit in different directions. While galaxies about one million light years away are traveling 100 miles/sec, those 250 million light years away are flying 25,000 miles/sec. Although they were all clustered together in a fiery mass at some epoch of cosmic time, they started drifting away from the center about five billion years ago. At the time of maximum entropy (randomness), cosmic time will cease and the universe will enter final darkness and decay. This movement can be described only with respect to each other as in space there is no boundary and no direction. The velocity of light is constant throughout the universe, unaffected by either the motion of its source or the motion of the receiver. An hour is just an arc of about 15 degrees in the apparent daily rotation of the celestial sphere.

All this scientific evidence contrasts with Plato’s allegorical ‘lost world’ of Atlantis which was once regarded as true history, as was Aristotle’s geocentrism. The idea of a great Southern Continent, named Antichton, to balance the Northern Hemisphere, was advanced by Hipparchus of Rhodes (190-125 BC); Sri Lanka might represent the northernmost trip of this southern continent. Next, the land of Lemuria was an idea which appeared before that of the lost continent of Mu in the late 1920s, where the Easter Island, Hawaii, Tahiti and a few other Pacific islands were its last remains; first humans appeared in Mu 2 million years ago.

4

LIFE ORIGINATES AND EVOLVES

The details regarding the origin of life remain to be elucidated, but some broad principles have been established along two schools of thought. One suggests that the organic components arrived on Earth from the outer space (Panspermia), while the other argues that they originated on Earth. If life arose on Earth, perhaps around 4 Ga, a molecule gained the ability to replicate and thus make copies of itself. RNA is a likely candidate for an early replicator, because it can both store genetic information and catalyze reactions; at some point DNA took over as the replicator and storer of genetic information from RNA. Current evidence suggests that the last universal common ancestor (or a population thereof) lived during the early Archean eon, roughly 3.5 Ga or earlier. This LUCA cell, the ancestor of all life on Earth today, was perhaps a prokaryote, possessing a cell membrane and probably ribosomes, but lacking a nucleus or membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts. Like all modern cells, it used DNA as its genetic code, RNA for information transfer and protein synthesis, and enzymes to catalyze reactions.

Bacteria flourished as early as 3.8 billion years ago, some 700 million years after the Earth was created, followed by worms (1000 million BC). These primitive life forms then took the next evolutionary step and started photosynthesis, some 3.5 billion years ago, where carbon dioxide and water were converted under sun light to nutrients and oxygen. Ammonia and methane reacted with oxygen to produce nitrogen which was also synthesized by denitrifying bacteria. Because oxygen is toxic, a catastrophe ensued and probably much of the life on Earth died out. The most severe extinction took place 250 Ma, at the boundary of the Permian and the Triassic periods, when 95% of life on Earth died out, possibly due to the Siberian Traps volcanic event. However, the excess of oxygen permitted the development of an ozone layer which could filter out harmful ultraviolet radiation and new life forms evolved in the shallow seas.

Modern taxonomy classifies life into three domains whose origins remain speculative. The domain of Bacteria probably first split off from the other forms of life (sometimes called Neomura), but this is controversial. Soon after, by 2 Ga, the Neomura split into the Archaea and the Eukarya. Around this time, the first proto-mitochondria were formed, probably when a bacterial cell, related to today’s Rickettsia, entered a larger prokaryotic cell. Similarly, photosynthetic cyanobacteria entered the larger heterotrophic cells and became chloroplasts. Next, a line of cells, capable of photosynthesis, split off from other eukaryotes more than 1 billion years ago. After the end of the last Snowball Earth in the Precambrian, about 600 million years ago, the evolution of life on Earth accelerated. About 580 million years ago, the Ediacara biota formed the prelude to the Cambrian Explosion. During the Paleozoic era (meaning: era of old life forms), lasting from 542 to 251 million years ago, many modern groups of life came into existence. The land was colonized first by plants and then animals, although the Prokaryotes had probably colonized the land as early as 2.6 Ga, even before the origin of the eukaryotes. The rate of evolution accelerated in the Cambrian, giving rise to shellfish and scorpions around 530 Ma, followed by vertebrate fish (450 million BC); the tetrapods evolved from the fish around 380 to 375 Ma. Some 20 million years later (340 Ma), the amniotic egg evolved, which could be laid on land, giving a survival advantage to tetrapod embryos. This resulted in the divergence of amniotes from amphibians. Another 30 million years later (310 Ma) the synapsids (including mammals) diverged from the sauropsids (including birds and reptiles). Other groups of organisms continued to evolve to diverge into fishes, insects, bacteria, reptiles (350 million BC), apes (30 m BC) and man (250000 BC?), but details are hazy. Some two million species inhabit the earth now and form but one percent of the total that once thrived.

5

MAN APPEARS AND

PEOPLES THE GLOBE

A small African ape living around six million years ago was the progenitor of the modern humans, bonobos, and the chimpanzees. Whereas chimpanzees diverged from humans 5-7 million years ago and share 99% of their DNA, lower primates evolved in Europe 65-40 million years ago though fossil evidence for them in Africa has yet to be found. Recently, Dr. Jorn Hurum of Oslo University has unveiled a crucial ‘missing link’, formally named Darwinius masillae, between the evolutionary branch of human life and the rest of the animal kingdom (Rediff 21 May 2009). Very soon after the split, one branch differentiated into the ancestors of the chimpanzees and of the bonobos while apes in the other branch developed the ability to walk upright and gained rapidly in brain size. By 2 Ma the genus Homo had appeared but the ability to control fire probably began with Homo erectus (or Homo ergaster) between 1.5 Ma and 790,000 years ago; one such skeleton was discovered in 1984 on the western margins of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The genus Homo expanded out of Africa between 1.8-0.8 million years ago in early Pleistocene, and archaeological remains have been found in China as well as the Southeast Asia. Another group called X-woman also shared ancestry with humans and Neanderthals, about a million years ago (Rediff 26 March 2010). In India, Homo sapiens remains are dated 75,000 years fromTamil Nadu while Homo erectus remains are 500,000 years old.

Neanderthals were succeeded by new arrivals from Africa, Homo sapiens sapiens, during the Upper Paleolithic or the Stone Age, from about fifty thousand years ago, to the end of the Ice Age about 6000-9000 BC. Homo sapiens also evolved from Homo heidelbergensis 660,000-200,000 years ago, as evident from the African fossil record of 300-150,000 years ago. The ‘Swanscombe’ skull and the ‘Steinheim man’, whose fossils were discovered in Germany in 1856, form the prototypes of recognizable humanity. The Neanderthal and modern human lineages had started to diverge long before the migration of modern humans out of Africa. Nevertheless, H. sapiens sapiens shares more DNA affinity with Neanderthals than the 98.7% shared with chimpanzees. From 30,000 to 18, 000 years ago the earth’s climate fluctuated widely, perhaps leading to the fall of the Neanderthals whose artifacts are well preserved at El Sidron in Spain. Population genetics has confirmed that H. sapiens replaced Neanderthals, possibly within a span of 1600 generations. The basic tools of Homo sapiens were stone, bow and arrow, spear, bone needle, and they survived primarily by hunting and fishing. The total human population of the Upper Paleolithic world amounted to no more than 10 million humans. The age of the most recent common ancestor is between 40,000 and 140,000 years, whereas the most recent common ancestor of all non-Africans is 35,000 to 89,000 years old. Some 5 million years span all human evolution, 670 million years encompass the evolution of all animal life, and 3.6 billion years go back to the beginning of life itself. Remains of bacteria 3.6 billion years ago, to dinosaurs 200 million years ago, are all present in Africa.

Climate determined ethnicity as well as skin color best suited for survival; black is believed to be the original color of man who fanned out of Africa. Three million old footprints, preserved in petrified surface of a mud pan, speak of two adults and a juvenile who walked away from a volcano that was spewing fine ash behind them into the fertile plains of Serengeti. It has been estimated that about one million people inhabited Africa at the time of first emigration and this rose to 47 million by 1500 CE, to reach 129 million by 1900 CE, but during the same four hundred years the out of Africa population rose from 500 million to 2 billion.The actual number of people who left Africa was perhaps no more than fifty breeding into 500 over 200 years, coming close to extinction out of their original habitat. Lucy skeleton suggests that she stood no more than 122 cm high, weighed 30 kg, walked upright and retained the primate ability to climb trees.

2%20MIGRATION%20copy.jpg

Figure 2

Human migration out of Africa started some 200,000 years

ago to populate the whole world via a route where India was at the

cross roads of this great human drama. The circle denotes the land

bridge across the Bering Straits.

HI = Hawaii islands; T = Tahitian islands; EI = Ellis island; NZ = New Zealand; AUS = Australia; NA = North America; SA = South America.

Some 160,000 years ago, migrants from East Africa reached the West African Coast (Cape of Good Hope, Congo basin, Ivory Coast). A second wave of migration, some 125,000 years ago, reached the Nile from where, some 85,000 years ago, they reached the Red Sea, Arabia and India; all non-Africans stem from this group. Sometime between 85,000-75,000 years ago, the migrants travelled down the coast in Bharata to reach Western Indochina (then attached to Asia), Borneo, Australia, New Guinea and China. During the period 65,000-52,000 BC, migrants from Western India reached the Fertile Crescent, Levant and Europe via the Bosphorus, as also Hungary and Austria via the Danube. During 45,000-40,000 BC, peoples from the East Asian Coast reached the Asian Steppes and NE Asia whereas those from the West Asian Coast (Punjab) reached Central Asia, Indochina, Tibet and the Quing Hai Plateau. The period 40,000-25,000 BC saw Central Asians going west to Eastern Europe where they met East Asians and together peopled NE Eurasia. Americas were populated via the land bridge in the Bering Straits connecting Siberia to Alaska during 25,000-22,000 BC. The Ice Age of 25,000-22,000 BC closed the Bering Strait but people now moved down the South American Continent 19,000-12,000 years ago (Figure 2).

In a more detailed scenario, based on a comprehensive review of human genetic, environmental and archaeological evidence, Pope and Terrell suggest that India was at the cross roads of migrations for the migrants arriving from Africa. During the first pulse 37,000 years BC, people fanned out southwards to Asia, Australia, the Melanesian islands and Oceania, and northwards to eastern Russia and Japan. A second pulse of migration from the Russian settlements took advantage of the coastal plains of the Bearing Sea into North America. A third migratory pulse reestablished coastal settlements and populated the majority of the Pacific region. The fourth and final pulse of migration came after a drop in sea levels 6,000 to 4,000 years ago leading to another migratory movement to Oceania around 3,500 years ago, followed by expansion to Hawaii and Easter Island by 2,000 to 1,000 years ago.

Population genetics supports the conclusions arrived at by archeology. The diversity of genetic markers is greatest in Africa, indicating that it was the earliest home of modern humans. As mitochondria are inherited maternally every living person contains copies of maternal mitochondrion and mutations in mitochondrial genes are carried by all her descendants as there is no recombination. This permits the construction of a genetic tree which shows that all humans are the progeny of a single woman who lived in Africa roughly 150,000 years and 10,000 generations ago because after 10,000 generations, all but one of the maternal lineages would have become extinct. This mitochondrial Eve was soon joined by a Y chromosome Adam. Both mtDNA and Y chromosome DNA trees overlap completely to show that out of the18 original Eves, three stayed in Africa, six migrated to Asia 60,000 years ago, and nine to Europe 40,000 years ago. Between 30,000 to 7000 years ago, Eve lineages from both Asia and Europe crossed the Bering Straits to populate North and South America and most Amerindians carry markers that link them unequivocally to Asia. The Brazilian nuclear physicist Arysio Nunes dos Santos, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, holds that the Dravidians colonized a vast region of South America 11,000 years before the Europeans reached the New World. Vestiges of the Dravidian presence in America include the strange phonetics of Gourani, Paraguay’s national language, as also the cultivation of bananas, pine apple, coconut and cotton, all indigenous to Bharata. Dr. P.V. Vartak mentions that Bali went to South America in 17,000 BC when the vernal equinox was at Moola Nakshatra.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that Australia was colonized in several waves, generally in a north to south direction. Europe was colonized in three waves the first dated around 50,000 years ago; the second and third between 10,000 and 8500 years ago, respectively. The western European DNA resembles that of people in India, suggesting inland migration from Asia to Europe 40,000-30,000 years ago. Analysis from various locations in India, China, Caucasus, Anatolia and Europe has shown that the node of the phylogenetic tree of mitochondrial DNA, ancestral to more than 90% of the present day European maternal lineages, is present in India at a relatively high frequency corresponding to about 50,000 BC. On the other hand, Indians are closely related to SE Asians going back to tens of thousands of years but their link with Europeans or Eurasia find no support. The haplogroup U is the second most abundant mitochondrial DNA variety in India as it is in Europe. All this not only discredits the Aryan invasions theory, whose proponents have got both the origin and the direction of movement wrong, but also places India in a common gene pool ancestral to human maternal lineages in Europe. Furthermore, >98% of the maternal gene pool is common to Dravidian and Indo-European speakers.

Two different genetic trees for the Y chromosome, carried only by men, have been constructed, based on two different sets of mutations. Hitherto, only 10 major Y chromosome lineages have been described. While the marker M168 on Y chromosome mutated some 50,000 years ago, M9 is found only in the Middle East and Central Asia; M3 arose in those Asians who had reached the Americas. The analysis of Y chromosome has indicated an early split between Indian and the east of India lineages while Indian (Sanskrit as well as Dravidian speaking) and European Y chromosomal lineages are much closer than the corresponding mitochondrial DNA variants. There is almost no overlap between Indian and southern Chinese Y chromosomes. The claim that Indians, especially the upper castes, carry European genes is thus totally unfounded. The M17 genetic marker, which is supposed to be a ‘Caucasian’ trait, occurs with the highest frequency and diversity in India. This means that among the M17 carriers, the Indian population is the oldest and extensive gene exchange occurred between Indians and Southeast Asians.

Based on a new genetic study across 10 countries, Mitali Mukerji from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, recently announced:

"When humans moved out of Africa, there was a migration to India and from India to Southeast Asia and then East Asia, and finally to the Americas. So, all Asians have a genetic connection with India".

This study contradicts earlier conjecture that humans directly went to East Asia from Africa. 100,000 years ago. Remarkable similarities were found between the Dravidians of south India and specific populations in Malaysia and Singapore. More interestingly, north Indians and Dravidians, too, were found to be genetically related (Rediff 11 December 2009).

6

HUNTING GIVES WAY TO AGRICULTURE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY

Bipedalism is a highly inefficient mode of locomotion in terms of energy required to move body mass over a given a distance but appears to have evolved for access to new, rich and reliable food supply when faced with the threat of extinction in the original homeland. Bipedalism preceded tool making by at least 1.2 million years; hominids were making tools for at least 700,000 years before any appreciable increase in brain size. Stone tools permitted hominids to externalize food processing (hitherto done by teeth), to cut meat from carcasses, crack open marrow bones, pound plants to a pulp; hunting is a recent and sophisticated innovation. The evolution could be traced thus: Homo habilis at Olduvai gorge 1.7 million years ago gave way to Homo erectus at Lake Turkana 1.6 million years ago that spread to Java, Europe and China; its brain size was 1000 cc, roughly ¾ of the modern average (1330 cc) but it disappears from the fossil record around 200,000 years ago as Homo sapiens appears 130,000 years ago.

Modern day humans in southern Asia and Australia created visual arts and musical instruments (flute) along their route of migration, collectively called culture. Flakes of stones in the Soan and Indus river valleys indicate the presence of Paleolithic (unpolished stone tool age) man between 200,000 and 600,000 years ago. The Madras Industry in the South, perhaps contemporary with the Soan valley, shares some features with tools in Africa, Western Europe and Southern England and extends as far south as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP, Orissa, and MP. A second great wave of human migration from East Africa during the Mesolithic around 30,000 BC is attested by pygmy stone tools and numerous microliths in Central India, Punjab and Deccan. The Neolithic (Stone Age) revolution ushered in polished stone tools and agriculture around 10,000 BC, to be followed by the Chalcolithic tools, produced from stone and metal, found both in the Gangetic valley and peninsular Bharata, prior to or contemporary with the Harappans. Stone Age rock shelters with paintings at the Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh are the earliest known traces of human life in Bharata.

Dr.P.V.Vartak, in his book Vastava Ramayan has shown the existence of Vedic culture as far back as 72,000 years BC. Archaeology confirms the appearance of culture in ancient Bharata dated 30,000 to 40,000 years BC, as evident by tool assemblage, while a human skeleton from Sri Lanka (connected to Bharata at that time) dates back to 34,000 BC. The cave paintings at Bhimbetaka in Madhya Pradesh have been dated 40,000 BC by Padmashri Late Mr. V. S. Wakankar. Recently, Dr. S. B. Rao, Emeritus Scientist of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, mentions cave paintings dated 40,300, and the ruins of Dwarka 5000 to 6000 BC. The cave paintings in Europe have been dated to 35,000 years ago, whereas those in Africa go back 27,000 years. In Egypt, the Old Kingdom, the pyramids and the reign of Imhotep are dated 2900 BC, contemporary with the rise of Sumer and Akkad cultures in Mesopotamia. The Egyptian Middle Kingdom (2050 BC) preceded by 100 years the rise of Babylonia 1950 BC while Zoroaster appeared 1900 BC, as Harappa declined and Sarasvati dried up. The Egyptian New Kingdom of Amhose is dated 1550 BC, some 200 years after the rise of Kassaites (1750 BC); Mittanis flourished 1400 BC. Greece enters history only with Pythagoras in 600 BC and Hellenistic Greece was founded 400 BC. Thus, only the Australian native culture is perhaps as old as the Vedic civilization.

It is more difficult to establish the origin of language; we do not know whether Homo erectus could speak or if that capability first appeared in Homo sapiens. The first humans to show evidence of spirituality are the Neanderthals who buried their dead, often apparently with food or tools. However, evidence for more sophisticated beliefs, such as the early Cro-Magnon cave paintings (probably with magical or religious significance) and Venus of Willendorf, did not appear until some 32,000 years ago. A genetic tree of forty two populations from around the world closely matches their linguistic affiliations and here again the oldest differences occur between African group and the rest of the world. The most ancient characteristics of languages worldwide are rooted in surviving African languages that sprang from some four mother tongues spoken by only 125,000 people who may have inhabited Africa a hundred thousand years ago. They had multiplied to 3-4 million by the late Stone Age 2000 years ago, speaking some 37