
Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India - cpncrunch
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/02/01/very-old-very-sophisticated-tools-found-in-india-the-question-is-who-made-them/?utm_term=.2a5d5e0f88de
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nnain
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 up with
such definitive conclusions.

~~~
pingu
There's something called a Conchoidal fracture,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture)
... the presence of which is technically diagnostic of material that's been
artificially manipulated.

~~~
givinguflac
Link didn't work for me, this did:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture)

~~~
pingu
Thanks for the heads up, i fixed the formatting.

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d13
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 archaeological discoveries waiting to be found in
India for anyone who takes the trouble to look for them.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
"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.

~~~
jdtang13
Looks like Hinduism has a precedent for dwarves, and it's not a trivial
mention either:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vamana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vamana)

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cobbzilla
A minor question/quibble with the article: it states "The first hominins to
leave Africa — whoever they were — carried with them oval- and pear-shaped
hand axes used to pound and scrape food — a technology called Acheulean"

I thought that Oldowan[1] technology was older than Acheulean, and had spread
across both Africa and Eurasia before the appearance of Acheulean tech.

Regardless, the Levallois technique is considered to be much newer than
Acheulean tech, so it's still an interesting find.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan)

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gcb0
"spans 385,000 to 172,000 years ago (plus or minus about 50,000 years on
either end)"

do journalists now get paid by word?

~~~
Steuard
This sounds like a perfectly natural description of the estimated date range
to me. Is there some significantly more efficient way of phrasing it that I'm
overlooking? (Without resorting to scientific ± notation, at least?)

~~~
gkilmain
I'd be okay if we removed 'on either end'.

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JoeAltmaier
Did that find seem awfully pat? A neat layering of all know tool types found
in one site. Its what you'd find if somebody was constructing a myth.

Is this actually atypical? What other sites worldwide compare with this
complete history in one plot?

~~~
perl4ever
I know that there are ancient sites with an incredible number of layers due to
a very long history of habitation. I was just reading about Mount Megiddo
which is a so-called mountain _because_ of the accumulated layers (something
like 26) of ruins. Human history is long enough that it has happened more than
once that a site was appealing for thousands of years, but then it was
abandoned thousands of years before the present, perhaps due to climate or
technological change.

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mpreiss111
Good

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nova22033
I was expecting an article on make or ant.

~~~
aninteger
Or how about Turbo C++? It seems there are still technical schools in India
that are still teaching using very old (but not sophisticated) tools. It's
frustrating too see modern C++ tutorials using 1980/1990s compilers.

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kumarvvr
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 court of Bukka of the great Vijayanagar Empire of Karnataka in South
India (in early 14th century), says:

tatha ca smaryate yojananam. sahasre dve dve sate dve ca yojane ekena
nimishardhena kramaman.

This means “It is remembered here that Sun (light) traverses 2,202 yojanas in
half a nimisha.”

Note: Nimisharda = half of a nimisha In the vedas Yojana is a unit of distance
and Nimisha is a unit of time.

Unit of Vedic Time: Nimisha

The Moksha Dharma Parva of Shanti Parva in Mahabharata describes Nimisha as
follows: 15 Nimisha = 1 Kastha 30 Kashta = 1 Kala 30.3 Kala = 1 Muhurta 30
Muhurtas = 1 Diva-Ratri (Day-Night) We know Day-Night is 24 hours So we get 24
hours = 30 x 30.3 x 30 x 15 nimisha in other words 409050 nimisha We know 1
hour = 60 x 60 = 3600 seconds So 24 hours = 24 x 3600 seconds = 409,050
nimisha 409,050 nimisha = 86,400 seconds 1 nimisha = 0.2112 seconds (This is a
recursive decimal. The wink of an eye is equal to 0.2112 seconds.) 1/2 nimisha
= 0.1056 seconds

Unit of Vedic Distance: Yojana

Yojana is defined in Chapter 6 of Book 1 of the ancient vedic text “Vishnu
Purana” as follows:

10 ParamAnus = 1 Parasúkshma 10 Parasúkshmas = 1 Trasarenu 10 Trasarenus = 1
Mahírajas (particle of dust) 10 Mahírajas= 1 Bálágra (hair’s point) 10 Bálágra
= 1 Likhsha 10 Likhsha= 1 Yuka 10 Yukas = 1 Yavodara (heart of barley) 10
Yavodaras = 1 Yava (barley grain of middle size) 10 Yava = 1 Angula (1.89 cm
or approx 3/4 inch) 6 fingers = 1 Pada (the breadth of it) 2 Padas = 1 Vitasti
(span) 2 Vitasti = 1 Hasta (cubit) 4 Hastas = a Dhanu, a Danda, or pauruSa (a
man’s height), or 2 Nárikás = 6 feet 2,000 Dhanus = 1 Gavyuti (distance to
which a cow’s call or lowing can be heard) = 12,000 feet 4 Gavyutis = 1 Yojana
= 9.09 miles

Calculation of the Speed of Light from the Rig Veda:

So now we can calculate what is the value of the speed of light in modern
units based on the value given as 2202 yojanas in 1/2 nimisha

= 2,202 x 9.09 miles per 0.1056 seconds = 20,016.18 miles per 0.1056 seconds =
189,547 miles per second

As per the Rig Veda the speed of light is 189,547 miles per second. As per
modern science the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second!

from..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%B8mer%27s_determinat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%B8mer%27s_determination_of_the_speed_of_light)

~~~
000000000000001
Isn't it an irony, that the parent posts this long comment, supposedly to
glorify the ancient texts of the East, attempting to assert an innate
superiority of the scientific thought achieved in the past by their culture
and yet s/he uses a device invented more or less in the West using science (
math, physics, chem) developed by western minds in no more than last 300-400
years.

I suppose it is in our nature to beam in the artificial yet comforting light
of the (false) understanding that we once were at the foremost of scientific
thought, thus helping us in ignoring or god forbid, forgetting, the follies of
our past or pathetic state of our current affairs.

If even after the industrial revolution and the information age, both of which
have made our (humans everywhere in general) lives far easier and comfortable
and have thus given us an opportunity to carefully think about the state of
the world and ascertain, without any bias, our position in it and to plan for
our future, some of us still fall for the trap laid down by scheming
politicians and (unholy) religious gurus, we truly should not be very proud,
either of our past or of our present.

disclaimer: I am an Indian

~~~
pritishc
FWIW, I found this after digging into the comments on the Quora link -
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020v3.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020v3.pdf).
It explains the context of Puranic cosmology.

I, too, am an Indian, and a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. However,
it is admittedly enjoyable for me to read about Indian history and ancient
science.

~~~
000000000000001
>> However, it is admittedly enjoyable for me to read about Indian history and
ancient science.

I am with you on this one.

I have read Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagwad Gita ( one of my favorite works
) along with many foreign as well Indian vernacular works. I merely seek to
use the teachings/lessons taught in our ancient scriptures so that I can live
a wholesome life and find ways for the betterment of my family and my society.
It hurts me that some of my well educated fellow countrymen quote these texts
to spread pseudo science and sometimes even hatred for others.

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gregkerzhner
Old sophisticated tools in India? We talking about Xcode 6?

~~~
keville
Maybe older: were the tools _Carbon_ dated?

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Pigo
A PS4 ad crashed my browser on this page. I wasn't able to figure out what
exactly went wrong, just curious if anyone else had problems when trying to
view it.

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ahamedirshad123
This is in Tamil Nadu. As usual, Central Government will stop excavation like
they did in Keeladi, because the site was from Sangam Era.

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TwoFactor
Why would the Central Government want to stop excavation because its from the
Sangam Era?

~~~
dingo_bat
They won't. Like USA, we have our own gaggle of extreme conspiracy theorists
who are always paranoid that the Central Government is a dictator that wants
to reduce states to powerless puppets.

~~~
narag
But what's with the Sangam Era that (some people thinks) the gov is trying to
cover?

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rrrazdan
If I had to guess the conspiracy is that Central government does not want to
excavate sites that prove that Sangam culture was greater and earlier than the
Northern Indian culture.

~~~
lappet
I have never heard of this, but knowing the mistrust for the Centre in the
Southern states I can believe how it is accepted.

~~~
ahamedirshad123
It's simple. Remains from Keezhadi tell that Tamil ancestors had no religion.
If it is true, they need to start finding the origin of Sanskrit.

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ultrasounder
Thanks for this! Almost dropped my phone in to the potty laughing out loud.
Xcode 9 is that bad huh??

