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Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#11

Post by 000000000000001 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #2

The fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the…

Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years.

I suppose it is in our nature to beam in the artificial yet comforting light of the (false) understanding that we once were at the foremost of scientific thought, thus helping us in ignoring or god forbid, forgetting, the follies of our past or pathetic state of our current affairs.

If even after the industrial revolution and the information age, both of which have made our (humans everywhere in general) lives far easier and comfortable and have thus given us an opportunity to carefully think about the state of the world and ascertain, without any bias, our position in it and to plan for our future, some of us still fall for the trap laid down by scheming politicians and (unholy) religious gurus, we truly should not be very proud, either of our past or of our present.

disclaimer: I am an Indian

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#12

Post by empath75 »

000000000000001 wrote: post #11
kumarvvr wrote: post #2

The fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the…

Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years. I suppose it is in our nature to beam i…

It’s also totally off topic because not only were these tools not made by Indians they weren’t even made by humans.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#13

Post by nnain »

Ah, when I read "very sophisticated" I was hoping to see something more than images of few stones.

To clarify: for a few days in my pre-adolescent years in India, I had gotten into a quirky habit of picking chipped-stones lying around (which I imagined could be from pre-historic ages). Finding some really interesting shapes wasn't all that difficult.

I'm genuinely curious about how archeologists/anthropologists come up with such definitive conclusions.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#15

Post by vikascoder »

kumarvvr wrote: post #2

The fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the…

I was not expecting to find this reverse engineered piece of logic from Facebooks stream of nonsense to appear on HN.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#17

Post by vikascoder »

shortoncash wrote: post #9
xen2xen1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anyone who's watched Ancient Aliens knows! Slight /s. Only slight.

I'm not saying people need to take Ancient Aliens at face value, but the show is great when it comes to forcing you to think about how the ancient world really might have been. I often think the narrative we get in public school history is really just the compromised, politically acceptable version of history. Shows like Ancient Aliens at least get us to ask some questions.

Exactly like how Homeopathy forces us to talk about real medicine? Or UFOs forces us to talk about Rocket design? Take Ancient Aliens at face value? There are other avenues to get your thinking fix from: real books and real research. That's hard to do for an average couch potato addict I think.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#18

Post by vikascoder »

000000000000001 wrote: post #11
kumarvvr wrote: post #2

The fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the…

Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years. I suppose it is in our nature to beam i…

Sadly this shows literacy has nothing to do with critical thinking and where the most literate of us should yield a higher standard on consuming fake whatsapp forwards, this shows that it is not always the case. In Ancient times we also invented flying ( pushpak viman) and there is a Shiva temple buried under the Taj Mahal called Tejo Mahalaya? Somewhere in India if we dig deep, we will find fossilized versions of a prehistoric TV set complete with Netflix? Why did they not invent a device to erase all corruption and build some good infrastructure is what boggles my mind.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#19

Post by pritishc »

000000000000001 wrote: post #11
kumarvvr wrote: post #2

The fourth verse of the Rigvedic hymn 1:50 (50th hymn in book 1 of rigveda) is as follows: तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो जयोतिष्क्र्दसि सूर्य | विश्वमा भासिरोचनम | taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam || This means “Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya (Sun), maker of the light, illuminating all the radiant realm.” Exlpaining this verse in his Rig Veda commentary, Sayana, who was a minister in the…

Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science ( math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400 years. I suppose it is in our nature to beam i…

FWIW, I found this after digging into the comments on the Quora link - https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020v3.pdf. It explains the context of Puranic cosmology.

I, too, am an Indian, and a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. However, it is admittedly enjoyable for me to read about Indian history and ancient science.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#20

Post by aninteger »

nova22033 wrote: post #14

I was expecting an article on make or ant.

Or how about Turbo C++? It seems there are still technical schools in India that are still teaching using very old (but not sophisticated) tools. It's frustrating too see modern C++ tutorials using 1980/1990s compilers.
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