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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!
Of making dense posts in the Internet and in technical forums. I have left too many technical forums because there is no patience for the multitude of posts "I don't know how to this simple task, poor of me, do my job for me"
lord ganesha proof of plastic surgery?? rarely do i found abject ignorance so funny. but this is gold!!
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.
And the ancient planes also had the ability to fly between planets too. Don't think that these claims will stand up to review.
Ancient peoples were just as smart as us, but you need time to build the necessary tech. base in order to make advanced equipment so that you can discover advanced scientific theories and engineering disciplines.
Indian politics has a long history of using pseudo science to sway the gullible. Many years ago, we had a veteran politician getting farmers to agitate against dams claiming that the dams removed the electricity from the water, so when it reached the fields it did not have any electricity left. The lack of electricity was affecting the quality of the crops.
The creationist museum here in the US where I currently stay is the US version of the same thing. The use of "common sense" and "the written word of God" to counter empirical, evidence driven hard science.
The problem as I see it is that in the name of defending religion, we are required to unquestioningly suspend all argument and reason when reading religious texts. It is a very short step to suspend all argument and reason when listening to the people who hold themselves as defenders of these texts.
... but I guess a paper entitled "Indians Invented Nothing" might not be selected for presentation.
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)
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.
Indeed, a lot of weird things exist in India.
- Regions with really high radioactive background but with no compelling natural explanation. Ruins of ancient castles where the stone walls have thoroughly melted as if glass, at temperatures most likely higher than termite or oxy-acetylene
- Rather detailed descriptions of tactical nuclear warfare in the vedas, including fallout and decontamination activity.
- Descriptions of giant arrow throwers, which protect aginst vimanas or flying war chariots, but are so complex no less than 4 people in close cooperation can operate them.
(Those passages bear eerie similarity to the SA-2 missiles that downed B-52s over Hanoi: they were so complex at least 4-5 people were needed to guide them. This was NOT because of the low level of automation-computerization available to the soviets, as it has been proven over and over that higher automated systems, e.g. BUK, TOR can be jammed deterministically by advanced enough pods. In contrast, man in the loop systems, like the SA-3 remain efficient after over 40 years in service and earthed an F-16, F-117 in 1999 and a jewish AGM-142 flying bomb a few weeks ago.)
- There is a long-running rumor among the jews (the gem trading race) that those fabulous giant diamonds found nowhere else but India are artificial, rather than of natural origin. Many millenia ago, there was some advanced civilization in the Indus valley, who could make fist sized diamonds. We are decades, if not centuries from that level of sophistication.
- Hinduism is the only major religion that never felt the need to exterminate the faith of her neighbours or the neighbours themselves. India is spiritually more advanced, maybe because they have already have their many major wars many millenia ago, thus having learnt what we learned only in WWI and WW2. (May I mention stories about the legendary King Ashoka and the secret anti-war society of the Nine Unknown Men, he founded?)
- If you watch the recent prequel of Alien movie, the extraterrestrial "engineer" is seen reading ancient sanskrit there (tale of the horse and lamb or something like that). I think there is a deep-running understanding in the graeco-roman heritage that white people culture and the large majority of european languages can from northern India, the so-called aryans.
Until you have read him in the original Hindi.
To some degree, I can accept "lost technology." A claim that the Indians had some metallurgical technique that was lost and rediscovered by Europeans? I can buy that. I'd still require proof, but I can accept that this might happen. Primitive glider-type airplanes developed by Indians thousands of years ago? This is getting more far fetched and requires more proof, but perhaps someone there made one glider that worked for one flight. Advanced planes with the capability for space-flight to other planets? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. If you want to prove this, you'll need a lot more than "it's written down in some text somewhere." (If written text counts as proof then a thousand years from now there will be proof that Americans had galaxy-wide space-flight capability in the 20th Century thanks to some sci-fi stories.)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Indians a thousand years ago having modern or even futuristic technology that was lost without a trace save for writing in one book (which might be open to interpretation) is *NOT* extraordinary proof.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.