Geological Situation 1.7mn yrs back!

Did we really need bridge between India and Srilanka?

Lets find out.

We have studied that a long time back existed a single landmass, a super-continent from which came the continents of today. Right?

Well, this is a partial truth. There did exist this single, super-continent called Pangea with a single ocean that we call Tethys. But they existed very briefly, when placed on the geological time scale of earth.

We will not go into minute details rather address the major events of earth's geological history.

Pangea existed between 500Ma-180Ma (1 Megannum(Ma)= 1 million years). Before Pangea existed Laurasia and East and West Gondwana Land. After Pangea, started the formation of the various continental plates which over the last 180 million years has given the current shape of Earth.

So when did Earth start looking like what it is today? Probably and atleast 10mn years back. Scientists have tried to reconstruct the formation of these lands and have arrived at the conclusion on the basis of many complex sources that Indian Subcontinental plate touched the Eurasian Plate approximately 10Ma and this led to the orogenic belt of Tibetan Plateau and Himalay Mountain Range.



Srilanka was a trailing island much smaller than its current form. The image above gives a fair idea of a continued separation of the Srilankan Island from the Indian Plate.

A comment from Malacalogist while studying the Deccan Traps says, "The land area of what is now Sri Lanka was much smaller at 65 Ma and it was further from the continental landmass at the time that it could have acted as a biotic refuge from the Deccan Trap lava flows." (Malacologist is the Official Journal of Malacalogical Society of London and this comment was published in their Bulletin no.45. I have published this without any permission for reproduction. However, if the society has any specific policy regarding reporoduction of information already in public domain, I will be happy to follow their policy)

In all, the point we are driven at after going through this current understanding of paleo-geographics is that there indeed was a need to build a bridge between Southern India and Northern Sri Lanka. It also, however indicates that this need may have arisen because they may not have developed large navigable sea vessels to transport such a large army across a waterbody.



Above image shows the state of tectonic plate movements across the globe in the Neogene Period (The current period which cover 23mn years back-till date).




Current state of the Ram Setu.



An enlarged portion of the Ram Setu.


In the next post we will understand the Human Natural History aspect of Ramayan.

Questions arising from Ramayan

Whenever we sit down to analyse a document like Ramayan and compare the folklores and available scientific information, many interesting questions arise. Some questions take us through the chapters that we had forgotten to read in school and college. Some lead us to a realization that till different disciplines of education are not combined we donot get a holistic picture of the subject under investigation.

Some of these important questions that came to my mind as well that of other friends and associates are:

1. Was there are need for a bridge between India and Srilanka, when we have been taught in our Geography classes that many years ago existed a single supercontinent called Pangea?
2. Man came from an ape. Various stages of such development led to the current form of Homo Sapiens. So how was it that a Man was not only interacting with Ape like beings but also collabrating on missions of sensitive nature?
3. How did they ever think of an aeroplane (Pushpak Viman) so many years back? They even had a word for this mechanical device!
4. When script came into existence only a few thousand years ago(5000yrs back approx.) and paper came into being in only 104A.D. would someone seriously be interested in taking up a humongously tedious task of writing down a piece of fiction?
5. Is it really true that most humans in the history or in the pre-historical era acted in a frivolous manner as it is assumed to be in today's time. Hadn't certain faculties of our mind developed enough to do some serious and truthful work? Does an imaginative mind indicate an underdeveloped mental faculty for being intelligent and serious?
6. Is our current understanding of science and history the absolute understanding or have we been experiencing evolution in both even within the last 100 years?
7. Are historians very sure of the story they build up on the basis of archaelogical findings and other sources or do they give us the "most probable" story that can be consistently built from such sources?

There are many more questions but in this blog I will focus on these questions post-by-post. In future I will also try to involve the experts on various systems by bringing in their comments on the inferences we have drawn here. This will help us maintain the reliability and credibility of our new understanding of Ramayan.

I hope the following posts will help us look at Ramayan slightly differently from our traditionally held view.

Ramayan - The Time Scale and NASA discovery

My first interest in the subject started when in 2002-2003 there were news reports about NASA's declaration about Ram-Setu. NASA had then declared that Adam's Bridge (The name used by NASA for Ram-Setu) was not a natural bridge. It is made by men using sand-shoals and dates back to almost 1.7 mn years back.

There were two striking comments in this declaration.
1. It dates back to 1.7 mn years ago
2. It is man-made

Both are baffling statements. Sadly, NASA has deleted all its comments on this subject from the public domain. But the news caught attention of most of the world and today this fact is flashed across the internet.

However, it caused me to hunt down the Yug System, the time scale used in most of the ancient Indian texts. Lord Ram had been declared to have lived in the Treta Yug.

It is an interesting system for understanding the prevalent nature of society. It is primarily described in Divine Years. Each Divine year = 360 Human Years. On this basis, the calculation for the Yug-System goes as follows.

1. Satyug - Extends for 4800 Divine years. Therefore, a total period of 17,28,000 Human years
2. Tretayug - Extends for 3600 Divine years. Therefore, a total period of 12,96,000 Human years
3. Dwaparyug - Extends for 2400 Divine years. Therefore, a total period of 8,64,000 Human years
4. Kaliyug - Extends for 1200 Divine years. Therefore, a total period of 4,32,000 Human years

The Yug system then enters a more complicated section describing the age of a creation or life on a single planet and like that of the Single Universe itself by giving calculation of Mahayug, Manvantar, Kalp etc.

According to the the Hindu system, the Kaliyug started during the reign of King Parikshit and coincided with the death of Lord Krishn. The planetary position and other celestial details that have been described at the time of Lord Krishn leaving his body indicates a date of 17/18th of February, 3102 B.C.

Since, Kaliyug extends for 4,32,000 years, we have spent only 5111 years into this period of human life. It also means that prior to February 17/18, 3102 B.C. existed the Dwaparyug which extended back 8,64,000 years. That means 8,67,102B.C. or 8,69,111 years ago.

Prior to 8,67,102 B.C. existed Tretayug (the Age in which Lord Ram is declared to have been born or, in other words, the age that has been described in Ramayan). Since Tretayug extends for 12,96,000 years, it means that between 21,63,102 B.C. (2.165 mn years back) and 8,67,102 B.C. existed Tretayug.

This interesting figure says to us that the age described of the Adam's Bridge (as declared by NASA)falls in Tretayug. The period of Lord Ram or the period described in the story of Ramayan.

Now let us check the accuracy of Yug system.

According to the system, the life on this planet will end in 8.64bn years from the time of its creation. According to popular scientific belief, Earth was created 4.6mn years ago. That means on the time scale of Yug-System, only 4.04bn years remain.

When will earth die? We don't know. What we do know is the expected life of Sun. This has been calculated on the basis of the Sun spots and life of a star as described by Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar back in 1930 and recognised widely on the basis of following research and understanding in 1983, through the Nobel Prize. Sun is expected to die in 5.5bn years from now. Being a medium sized star, the Sun will start expanding in size bringing it considerably closer to Earth and then it will contract, owing to its own gravity within, sucking along all the planets of Solar system. This means that life on earth would have ended much earlier than the death of Sun itself. Considering, we are talking about astronomical figure, it may not be out of place to say that the time of 4.04bn years described in the Yug-system for life on earth is quite in place.

This system can be discussed separately, but the meaning it carries and the coincidence of the age of Adam's Bridge (Ram-Setu, for Indians) and Period described in Ramayan is very striking. It also appears to be fairly accurate on the mathematical and scientific scales of two different methods of describing time.

And the possibility of an advanced man-made engineering marvel in that age creates a lot fo curiosity in one's mind.

In the next post, I will discuss the view held by some people on the need for a bridge between India and Srilanka during that age. And therefore, a man-made bridge dating back to 1.7mn years.

Understanding Ramayan Logically

In the recent times there has been a lot of talk about the reality of Lord Ram. Most of it started because the UPA government decided to destroy the Ram-Setu, which the Hindus have revered for ages as the bridge built by Nal and Neel, the members of Sugreev's army, as has been described in Ramayan. The government's view has been that it will save money on transit of ships through that region as the ships, currently, need to take a longer route of going round Sri Lanka.

The Hindu society, in general, has rejected this idea on the grounds of their religous belief and sentiments. The Environmental community and Indian Navy have rejected this proposal on the basis of the harm it is expected to do to the fragile marine ecology and biodiversity.

The UPA government has gone to the extent of questioning the historical existence of Lord Ram. The opponents have placed a simple logic that most people cannot actually prove the existence of their ancestors even as early as 18th century, then why are we trying to prove the existence of Lord Ram who may have existed anywhere betwwen 1.7 mn to 7000 years back.

Between all this what misses the point is the larger lesson and, therefore, the centrality of Ramayan, Lord Ram and his deeds. A story that has inspired generations of Humans across India and southeast Asia over so many millenia to live a life of truthfulness and imbibing good habits.

Sometimes such softer, subtle issues are of a much larger importance than a mere commercial interest, however, large it may appear.

I am not a professional on this subject, however, this has been my area of interest since 2002-2003. Certain peculiar things about Ramayan have caught my imagination for a long time and I have not found any serious contentions from my friends and others with whom I have shared my views. Ofcourse, I have pursued this subject only in an off and on sense but have tried to amalgamate various aspects of scientific disciplines to come to my on conclusions. From understanding science fiction to scientific and engineering inventions and natural history of man, all subjects have been studied in bits and pieces and relationship has been established with various facets of Ramayan.

I am, therefore, taking this opportunity to share these views and attempt a presentation of a time that really seems to have existed. People may be fictional, their deeds are inspirational, but the places, objects and the natural history, all seem to be pointing towards a great Indian Civilization from a pre-historic time. How far back does it go is an extremely difficult question to answer, but people have attempted to do the same in the past and I will surely discuss that too.

I look forward to people sharing there views on this interesting subject and even bring some new facts and perspectives to unravel the mystery of this time.