The Alien World

Our world is full of ancient mysteries. From Mayan or Aztec or Mesopotamia or Egypt or India, thing & events have remained unexplained, and will remain so for generations to come. Of all these ancient civilizations, India’s Indus-Saraswati civilization is most urban of all, at the same time being categorized as one of the oldest.

Archeologist dates back Indus-Saraswati civilization to around 3500 BC. Discovered on sites at Harappa & Mohenjo-daro are baked bricks buildings providing an impressive vista of urban architecture, drains and wells, seals. The use of inscribed seals, along with various forms of writing on a wide range of artifacts (which is still no deciphered), & use of weights & measures appears to be directly associated with the need to communicate social or ritual status and for economic control. Truly, an urban civilization. 5000 year ago it was at its prime.

But then I read about the the discovery of lost city of Dwaraka . In earlry 80s, the Marine Archaeology Unit of the National Institute of Oceanography started offshore exploration and excavation of the legendary city of Dwaraka in the coastal waters of Dwaraka in Gujarat under Dr S. R. Rao. Since then, they were able to discover may artifacts, stone anchors, etc. at the site.

Unlike Atlantis, Dwaraka is for real.  Legend has it that Dwaraka was built by Vishwakarma by reclaiming land from the sea, on request of Sri Krishna. After his death,  36 years after the Mahabharata War (3138 BC), the city was taken back by the sea triggering the start of Kali Yuga.

According to Graham Hancock

The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history. Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 meters (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city – which is five miles long and two miles wide – is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.

Last ice age was roughly 20,000 years ago. The last ice age did not mean the entire planet was frozen. During that period the ice caps were much larger with a very large percentage of Earths water frozen on land over most of the northern hemisphere. The world’s sea level was about 130 m (426.51 ft.) lower than today, which meant the coast lines were extended much further out then they are now. Check below the Google map’s satellite image. The light blue color near the costal lines represents the shallow sea shores.  20,000 years ago whole of this would have been land. Map of India would not have been much different then what it is today, only a little fatter.

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So this takes back the known date of Urban Indian civilization by few more thousand years, probably to 10000 years. I have always been fascinated by stories of Ramayana & Mahabharata. Believe they are true… Who knows that ancient Indian civilization my be even much older. I remember somewhere reading that Vedas were first written in 23000 BC!!

PS: Another legend it that Dwaraka was claimed by the sea six times. The present Dwaraka is the seventh. (Wikipedia)

This is pure work of fiction based on scientific discovery and mythology…

Hominids walking on the face of earth has been established to more than 3.5 million years ago. In 1978, Mary Leakey & team found footprints frozen in ash some 25 miles southwest of Olduvai Gorge. These footprints were formed by a fleeing family through the rainy aftermath of eruption of Sadiman volcano.

It took almost tens of thousands of years to become humans from hominids and start making stone tools & fire. During those thousands of years something happened that forced the evolution. I wonder what it was! Was it some external influence?

In mostly all religions there are mythological characters who have imparted knowledge that has helped us to become what we are today. It is also true that there were many similarities in these mythological characters across religions. Who were these and where did they came from?

Possibly they were friendly neighbours from a nearby planet who were more advanced then the new life on earth. They choose hominids for passing there knowledge which led to the evolution of mankind.

“…when I tried to classify your species, I realized that you are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctly develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but humans do not. You move to an area and multiply & multiply until every natural resource is consumed and only way you can survive is to spread to another area.

A virus. Human beings are a decease to this planet, a plague & we are the cure…”

Well I dont like the cure, but part of what Agent Smith said in The Matrix is true. As far as the cure is concenrned, it is within ourselves. Only thing i we have to realize it.

For a long time the conservationists have given importance to only legendary animals – like Tiger, Panda, etc. and have missed out on animals and birds which are closely related to humans. Vultures are one such example.

Recently I was reading an article which states that total number of vultures have been reduced to such an extent that they are now endangered species and even few of them have already been extinct.

Till recently, extinction of vultures was considered to be the result of loss of their natural habitat and pollution. A recent study conducted on the extinction of Vulture has bought out a new dimension the problem. Population of vultures has been drastically reduced, partly due to poisoning by the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac which is often given to human & cattle. In human and cattle it is given for pain relief, whereas in Vultures it causes renal failure.

Everyone knows that vultures are scavengers surviving on dead animal carcasses, especially cattle. Apart from this vultures also have a very important role in some religions like Zoroastrian (Parsis) & Hinduism.

Vulture is an important part in Hinduism. ‘Jatayu’ – the vulture king tried to save Sita in Ramayana from abduction by Ravana.

It has been traditional for dead Parsis to be taken to eaten by vultures, because earth, fire & water are all considered to sacred elements, which should not be defiled by the dead. Extinction of vultures has been resulting in serious problems at both the fronts. Their extinction means that the dead bodies will be left to rot and decompose slowly. If I am  correct then in Mumbai Parsis take the corpse to the ‘Tower of Silence” where the city vultures eat it. After the slow extinction of Vultures from the city the bodies are taking a long time to decompose.  Parsis in Mumbai have installed solar panels to speed up the decomposition process of corpse, which is met only with partial success.

Apart form this there are other side effects as well. According to a recent article in “American Scientific India” magazine, extinction of Vultures mean that the food it abundant for stray dogs thus giving rise in there population, which in turn result in the rise be rabies cases.It is just one of many examples of side effects that may happen with the extinction of one species.

I always feel that there is nothing more dangerous than the man himself in this world because of what he is capable of doing and because of the destruction he can bring. In one of my blog previous entry (http://alienworld.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/humans-are-aliens-on-this-animal-planet/) I had proposed a hypothesis that man came on earth from Mars, after consuming all the resources on that planet.

I spent my childhood in towns which were nearer to nature, so had an opportunity to look and appreciate wildlife from close. We used to spend hours in jungle just roaming around and getting amazed by the work of nature. As a child I also remember that there so many sparrows visiting our home daily. As the time passed, there number kept on decreasing. And now, I do not even see one. Last week I read in a news paper that 4 Gir Lions were found dead. This has happened second time in 6 months. We keep on hearing such news quite often.

There are many reasons for the extinction, including some non-human caused. Human activities that have caused massive extinction of species are killing, degradation of natural habitat. There are other factors as well which are directly or indirectly relations to human actions.

I was watching Discovery channel last Sunday on ‘Greatest Discoveries’. The program was about mammoths and why they extinct. Till now my impression was that their extinction was attributed to change in weather (post ice age). The program raises a new theory that they might have extricated because of excessive killing. No guess for who were killing them! They were killed for their meat and fur.

We were every bit of savage then and we are every bit of savage now. For every great and magnificent animal you see going extinct, you will find that the reason is only one – Humans.

I was reading a survey (NATIONAL SURVEY REVEALS BIODIVERSITY CRISIS – SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS BELIEVE WE ARE IN MIDST OF FASTEST MASS EXTINCTION IN EARTH’S HISTORY: http://www.well.com/~davidu/amnh.html) and believe me that you will be shocked and terrified on finding the effects of losses of species on us. According to this survey nearly 70 percent of biologists believe that we are currently in the early stages of a human-caused mass extinction, known as the Holocene extinction event. Have a look on the problems we are and will face:
• Seriously impairing the ability of the environment to recover from natural and human-induced disasters.
• Destroying the natural systems that purify the world’s air and water.
• Reducing the potential for the discovery of new medicines.
• Increasing flooding, drought, and other environmental disasters.
• Contributing substantially to the degradation of the world’s economies, thereby weakening the social and political stability of nations across the globe.
• Damaging agriculture, fisheries, and food production.
• Decreasing the ability to control infectious diseases.

It is time for us to wake up before it is too late.

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event
The Holocene extinction event is a name customarily given to the widespread, ongoing mass extinction of species during the modern Holocene epoch. The large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods; a sizeable fraction of these extinctions are occurring in the rainforests. Because the rate of this extinction event appears to be much more rapid than the “Big Five” mass extinctions, it is also known as the Sixth Extinction. Since 1500 AD, 784 extinctions have been documented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. However, since most extinction are likely to go undocumented, scientists estimate that during the last century, between 20,000 and two million species have become extinct, but the precise total cannot be determined more accurately within the limits of present knowledge. Up to 140,000 species per year (based on Species-area theory) may be the present rate of extinction based upon upper bound estimating.