Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India • Hacker News Board

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#51

Post by bloak » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

pacala wrote: post #26

gilleain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38482/was-the-s...

Accepted answer: > This looks very much as if the units may have been converted to obtain the desired result. Indeed the different conversion factors but similar result in your second link increase the likelihood that there may cognitive bias involved > For example, your distance conversions lead to 1 yojan being 29.2608 kilometres. Compare this with Wikipedia's 12–15 km and your second link's 9.09 miles (about 14.5…

True, but an ancient text giving the speed of light even within an order of magnitude is ... interesting. Though it's not clear that the author was really talking about the speed of light and not the speed of the sun. The 2202 is intriguing. To me, unfamiliar with Indian mythology and numerology, it looks like the result of a measurement or a calculation rather than a "magic" number. Is it possible that they calculated the speed of the sun on the assumption that it orbits the earth every day at a distance estimated using Aristarchus's method? With the correct distance to the sun that would give a result of about 1e7 m/s, but they could have had an incorrect distance. In the 3rd century BC Aristarchus himself was out by a factor of about 100, but in the wrong direction, unfortunately for my theory.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#52

Post by jdtang13 » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

d13 wrote: post #45

Hiking in the hills outside of Bangalore I found some absolutely ancient stone dwellings completely covered in thick shrub. The villagers down below told me that they "belonged to an ancient race of dwarves." And a few km away, I stumbled across an obviously very old cave painting in a style I've never seen before anywhere in the world. Not soul in sight and miles from the road. My guess is that there are huge archae…

Lol, wish I could see this ancient race of dwarves

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#53

Post by jdtang13 » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #49

d13 wrote: post #45

Hiking in the hills outside of Bangalore I found some absolutely ancient stone dwellings completely covered in thick shrub. The villagers down below told me that they "belonged to an ancient race of dwarves." And a few km away, I stumbled across an obviously very old cave painting in a style I've never seen before anywhere in the world. Not soul in sight and miles from the road. My guess is that there are huge archae…

"Dwarves"? Is that just the closest word you have for the rendering, or is that really a thing in their local mythology? I thought they were strictly a Germanic/Norse staple. I've never seen them mentioned in Hinduism.

Looks like Hinduism has a precedent for dwarves, and it's not a trivial mention either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vamana

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#54

Post by abc_lisper » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

d13 wrote: post #45

Hiking in the hills outside of Bangalore I found some absolutely ancient stone dwellings completely covered in thick shrub. The villagers down below told me that they "belonged to an ancient race of dwarves." And a few km away, I stumbled across an obviously very old cave painting in a style I've never seen before anywhere in the world. Not soul in sight and miles from the road. My guess is that there are huge archae…

That is fascinating. Any pics?

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#55

Post by sologoub » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #50

d13 wrote: post #45

Hiking in the hills outside of Bangalore I found some absolutely ancient stone dwellings completely covered in thick shrub. The villagers down below told me that they "belonged to an ancient race of dwarves." And a few km away, I stumbled across an obviously very old cave painting in a style I've never seen before anywhere in the world. Not soul in sight and miles from the road. My guess is that there are huge archae…

Well that would match up, apparently the Elven city was in Guatemala ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261 )

Why Elven?

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#56

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

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…

Those statements do not come directly from the rig Veda but instead 13th century commentary on the rig veda

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#57

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

sologoub wrote: post #55

ChuckMcM wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that would match up, apparently the Elven city was in Guatemala ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261 )

Why Elven?

The implication is that the Elves lived in cities in the forests (perhaps like Guatemalan rain forests), Depending on if you are more of Tolkien fan or a Pratchett fan, Dwarves are more mountains/rocky types.

And of course there are neither Dwarves nor Elves (in the fantasy fiction sense) around today.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#58

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

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.

How do you think that ancient indians figured out the speed of light, recorded it for posterity, but forgot how to actually calculate it?

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#59

Post by gumby » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

nnain wrote: post #13

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…

The WaPo article only makes a glancing reference to the fact that they look like Levallois tools, which require a more complex manufacture than simple knapping (including imagining the internal structure).

Here's a bit more discussion: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16955858/stone-tools-atti...

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#60

Post by bhasi » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #5

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…

All well and good, except the Rig Vedic people no longer exist today, nor do their civilisation or thought. Only we do. We need to move forward not look back in nostalgia. It is the same as modern Westerners looking back on ancient Greeks and Romans. There's not a whole lot of good all of this is going to do to the present and future except in so far as there are valuable lessons to be learned. WE must not make the m…

Personally speaking, I believe it is unethical and disingenuous to lay claim to achievements that are not one's own, especially those that are (supposedly) part of one's ancestry/heritage, a sentiment I first heard from the great George Carlin [1].

> It is the same as modern Westerners looking back on ancient Greeks and Romans.

I'd have to disagree with you somewhat there. Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it. While it is important to live in the present, it is equally important to remember that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. There is a lot of value in casting glances at the past from time to time.

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/228332-pride-should-be-rese...