Ramayan : Scientific Truths 1

Ref : Article by By Blair A. Moffett


The reference to the "monkey" and "bear" people in the Ramayana simply reflected a straightforward reading of the English translation of the Ramayan of Valmiki made by R. T. H. Griffith, Principal of Benares College, in 1874. The two leading generals of the "monkeys" or Vanar -- Hanuman and Sugriva -- are named there and both play prominent roles in Rama's war against Ravana, the Vanar legions themselves figuring more prominently than do the "bear" legions in alliance with Rama. In fact, in the epic no "bear" is singled out by name, and the "bear" legions appear only relatively anonymously and in second place to the "monkeys." In addition, Rama asks his friend Hanuman to find Sita, his wife, who had disappeared. The loyal Hanuman, at great risk to his own life, and after many adventures testing his courage and intelligence, at last finds Sita who has been kidnapped by Ravana through a trick and taken to his stronghold on the island of Lanka, headquarters of the Rakshasa host.




Inasmuch as the "bears" are depicted as having the same distinctively human qualities as assigned to the "monkeys" in the epic, I think we are justified in concluding that they, too, were some sort of hominid and not a mere animal species such as the bears today. It would have been helpful if the epic had better delineated the "bears," for then we could more accurately analyze if and where they might figure among early hominids! By getting and reading a good translation of this marvelous Indian record of prehistory -- as I think it is -- one can decide for oneself how he or she would characterize the "bear" people.



Turning now to the query: neanderthaloid versus Homo sapiens fossilis, it is true that formerly anthropologists regarded the two types as quite distinct sorts of early men, and the former as hardly a man. This all came about because of a description of neanderthaloids based on the only skeleton then found (in La Chapelle-aux-Saints by the Abbe Bouyssonie), prepared by M. Boule of the Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris in 1908. That report is now acknowledged by many anthropologists to have done much to disseminate misleading ideas about the whole neanderthaloid question. As recently as 1957 it was still being cited as a major source of information about the nature of the neanderthal man. But in that year the La Chapelle skeleton was re-examined by two anatomists, from Johns Hopkins University and St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College of London, who found that it was very atypical, being that of an old male who had suffered extensively from arthritis of the jaws, spine and lower limbs (which had led M. Boule to ascribe to neanderthaloids; a shuffling, ape-like gait with head lowered), and moreover that reconstruction of the skull had been defective. After that expert re-examination, and in the light of some 60-odd fossil skeletal remains of neanderthaloids since found (some 10 of them after 1950), the picture began to change in several major respects.

What Wikipedia says about Neanderthal

The Neanderthal (short for Neanderthal Man, in English pronounced /niːˈændərtɑːl/, /niːˈændərθɔːl/) or /neɪˈændərtɑːl/; also spelled Neandertal) is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies (or race) of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis).




The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago. Proto-Neanderthal traits are occasionally grouped to another phenetic 'species', Homo heidelbergensis, or a migrant form, Homo rhodesiensis. By 130,000 years ago, complete Neanderthal characteristics had appeared. These characteristics then disappeared in Asia by 50,000 years ago and in Europe by 30,000 years ago.Current (as of 2010) genetic evidence suggests interbreeding took place with Homo sapiens between roughly 80,000 to 50,000 years ago in the Middle East, resulting in non-ethnic sub-Saharan Africans (e.g. Caucasians) having between 1% and 4% more Neanderthal DNA than ethnic sub-Saharan Africans.

Classification




First reconstruction of Neanderthal manFor some time, scientists have debated whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens.[not in citation given. Some morphological studies support that Homo neanderthalensis is a separate species and not a subspecies.Others, for example University of Cambridge Professor Paul Mellars, say "no evidence has been found of cultural interaction" and evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted as evidence Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens.



Neanderthals evolved from early Homo along a path similar to Homo sapiens, both deriving from a chimp-like ancestor between five and 10 million years ago. Like H.sap., Neanderthals are related to Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo ergaster; the exact descent remains uncertain. The last common ancestor between anatomically modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals appears to be Homo rhodesiensis, named after an archaic Homo sapiens fossil, Broken hill 1 (Kabwe 1) discovered in the territory of Rhodesia in 1921.



Homo rhodesiensis arose in Africa an estimated 0.7 to 1 million years ago. The earliest estimates for Homo rhodesiensis reaching Europe are approximately 800 thousand years ago when a type of human referred to as Homo antecessor or Homo cepranensis already inhabited the region. These two human types may be forerunners to European Homo heidelbergensis, however stone tools dating from 1.2 to 1.56 million years ago of an unknown creator have been discovered in Southwestern Europe. The evidence at the Sima de los Huesos (in the Atapuerca cave system on the Iberian Peninsula) suggest that Homo heidelbergensis was already in Europe by 600,000 years ago.



Molecular phylogenetic analysis suggests that Homo rhodesiensis and Homo heidelbergensis continued to intermix until 350,000 years ago, after which they were separate species and sometime within the last 200,000 years Homo heidelbergensis evolved into Homo neanderthalensis, the classic Neanderthal man. It appears that the original Neanderthal population was in fact more distantly related to today's human than is Homo heidelbergensis. However, recent evidence of successful interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans has made that issue moot, at least insofar as some Neanderthal populations were concerned.





The youngest Neanderthal finds include Hyaena Den (UK), considered older than 30,000 years ago, while the Vindija (Croatia) Neanderthals have been re-dated to between 32,000 and 33,000 years ago. No definite specimens younger than 30,000 years ago have been found; however, evidence of fire by Neanderthals at Gibraltar indicate that they may have survived there until 24,000 years ago. Cro-Magnon or early modern human skeletal remains with 'Neanderthal traits' were found in Lagar Velho (Portugal), dated to 24,500 years ago and controversially interpreted as indications of extensively admixed populations.[

Distance Between Sun and Earth in Rig Veda

It is amazing how much Western science has taught us. Today, for example, kids in grammar school learn that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth and that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per hours. Yoga may teach us about our Higher Self, but it can't supply this kind of information about physics or astronomy.Or can it?Professor Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University recently called my attention to a remarkable statement by Sayana, a fourteenth century Indian scholar. In his commentary on a hymn in the Rig Veda, the oldest and perhaps most mystical text ever composed in India, Sayana has this to say: "With deep respect, I bow to the sun, who travels 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha."A yojana is about nine American miles; a nimesha is 16/75 of a second. Mathematically challenged readers, get out your calculators!2,202 yojanas x 9 miles x 75 - 8 nimeshas = 185,794 m.p.s.Basically, Sayana is saying that sunlight travels at 186,000 miles per second! How could a Vedic scholar who died in 1387 A.D. have known the correct figure for the speed of light? If this was just a wild guess it's the most amazing coincidence in the history of science!The yoga tradition is full of such coincidences. Take for instance the mala many yoga students wear around their neck. Since these rosaries are used to keep track of the number of mantras a person is repeating, students often ask why they have 108 beads instead of 100. Part of the reason is that the mala represent the ecliptic, the path of the sun and moon across the sky. Yogis divide the ecliptic into 27 equal sections called nakshatras, and each of these into four equal sectors called padas, or "steps," marking the 108 steps that the sun and moon take through heaven.Each is associated with a particular blessing force, with which you align yourself as you turn the beads.Traditionally, yoga students stop at the 109th "guru bead," flip the mala around in their hand, and continue reciting their mantra as they move backward through the beads. The guru bead represents the summer and winter solstices, when the sun appears to stop in its course and reverse directions. In the yoga tradition we learn that we're deeply interconnected with all of nature. Using a mala is a symbolic way of connecting ourselves with the cosmic cycles governing our universe.But Professor Kak points out other coincidences: The distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 108 times the sun's diameter. The diameter of the sun is about 108 times the earth's diameter. And the distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times the moon's diameter.Could this be the reason the ancient sages considered 108 such a sacred number? If the microcosm (us) mirrors the macrocosm (the solar system), then maybe you could say there are 108 steps between our ordinary human awareness and the divine light at the center of our being. Each time we chant another mantra as our mala beads slip through our fingers, we are taking another step toward our own inner sun.As we read through ancient Indian texts, we find so much the sages of antiquity could not possibly have known-but did. While our European and Middle Eastern ancestors claimed that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago, the yogis have always maintained that our present cosmos is billions of years old, and that it's just one of many such universes which have arisen and dissolved in the vastness of eternity.In fact the Puranas, encyclopedias of yogic lore thousands of years old, describe the birth of our solar system out of a "milk ocean," the Milky Way. Through the will of the Creator, they tell us, a vortex shaped like a lotus arose from the navel of eternity. It was called Hiranya Garbha, the shining womb. It gradually coalesced into our world, but will perish some day billions of years hence when the sun expands to many times it present size, swallowing all life on earth. In the end, the Puranas say, the ashes of the earth will be blown into space by the cosmic wind. Today we known this is a scientifically accurate, if poetic, description of the fate of our planet.The Surya Siddhanta is the oldest surviving astronomical text in the Indian tradition. Some Western scholars date it to perhaps the fifth or sixth centuries A.D., though the text itself claims to represent a tradition much, much older. It explains that the earth is shaped like a ball, and states that at the very opposite side of the planet from India is a great city where the sun is rising at the same time it sets in India. In this city, the Surya Siddhanta claims, lives a race of siddhas, or advanced spiritual adepts. If you trace the globe of the earth around to the exact opposite side of India, you'll find Mexico. Is it possible that the ancient Indians were well aware of the great sages/astronomers of Central America many centuries before Columbus discovered America?Knowing the unknowableTo us today it seems impossible that the speed of light or the fate of our solar system could be determined without advanced astronomical instruments. How could the writers of old Sanskrit texts have known the unknowable? In searching for an explanation we first need to understand that these ancient scientists were not just intellectuals, they were practicing yogis. The very first lines of the Surya Siddhanta, for of the Golden Age a great astronomer named Maya desired to learn the secrets of the heavens, so he first performed rigorous yogic practices. Then the answers to his questions appeared in his mind in an intuitive flash.Does this sound unlikely? Yoga Sutra 3:26-28 states that through, samyama (concentration, meditation, and unbroken mental absorption) on the sun, moon, and pole star, we can gain knowledge of the planets and stars. Sutra 3:33 clarifies, saying: "Through keenly developed intuition, everything can be known." Highly developed intuition is called pratibha in yoga. It is accessible only to those who have completely stilled their mind, focusing their attention on one object with laser-like intensity. Those who have limited their mind are no longer limited to the fragments of knowledge supplied by the five senses. All knowledge becomes accessible to them."There are [those] who would say that consciousness, acting on itself, can find universal knowledge," Professor Kak admits. "In fact this is the traditional Indian view."Perhaps the ancient sages didn't need advanced astronomical instruments. After all, they had yoga.Source:

Ram Sethu : Flight View