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Ancient Planes and Other Claims Spark Controversy at Indian Science Congress
An anonymous reader writes A paper presented at the 102nd Indian Science Congress on Sunday claims that Indians had mastered aviation thousands of years before the Wright brothers. India's science and technology minister Mr. Harsh Vardhan who was present at the conference claimed that ancient Indian mathematicians discovered the Pythagorean theorem but that the Greeks got the credit. These startling claims come just a few days after prime minister Narendra Modi had called Lord Ganesha who is part elephant and part human, a product of ancient India's knowledge of plastic surgery.
...and the best part is they have Nukes!
Elephant in the room...
The greeks got the credit, but lost them some years ago due to economic difficulties. The common wisdom now is that the Pythagorean theorem have been discovered by an anonymous hedge fund.
... but I guess a paper entitled "Indians Invented Nothing" might not be selected for presentation.
Master Yoda? Is that you?
Well, documentation is legendary in Indian code.
The inventions were obviously self documenting
It's also proven that ancient people mastered the art of wireless communication. The lack of wire traces is definite proof.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
It's "Yeticorns", you insensitive clod! You should know they invented gene-splicing thousands of years before anyone else.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
...they're going to dig for copper cabling that's thousands of years old,
I have some Verizon cables in my neighborhood that seem like they might qualify.
The British royal family. They all live in the same family house together - Indian. All work in the family business - Indian. All have arranged marriages - Indian. They all have sons; daughters no good - Indian. Children live with their parents until they are married - Indian!
Except Prince Charles. He's African.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
here is an english translation of the papers: http://www.bibliotecapleyades....
random moderators: BEFORE considering hitting "-1" please read the full text below.
if you look up the papers they apparently had mercury-based plasma ion drives (which i hear NASA and the JPL have been researching for some time) as well as highly destructuve beam weapons (which i hope *nobody* in modern times has been researching). the papers are thousands of years old, and have been well-known for a considerable amount of time, mostly for the metallurgy as the papers go through absolutely every single detail required, from sourcing the materials to creating the crucibles and kilns, to making the garments needed to deal with altitude. there's a story on the internet that someone in india, during victorian times, actually recreated one of these machines, directly from the instructions. when the british heard about it they had it destroyed.
doing a quick google search.... yes, this is the vedic "vimanas" being presented at this conference: it's actually nothing "new", it's just that peoples' reactions are... well, if one wants to put it charitably, it's just surrounded with an amazing amount of incredulity and disbelief, but if we are honest the better way to put it is that it is absolute pure arrogance to think that our current level of technology is the first and only peak of technological capability on the planet: it's just that we are far more connected now than we were before, so word of new discoveries tends to get around.
that "incredulity" you can counteract by simply reviewing the documents for yourself. i recommend focussing on the sections covering the science that *has* been re-discovered since the techniques were lost, for example the mining and metallurgy sections. once you have at least verified that these sections correspond precisely with modern techniques, is it so hard a stretch of one's mind to consider that the other sections and instructions might be correct as well?
Until you have read him in the original Hindi.