Ancient World Review

The Kali Yuga

The Hindus believe that we're living in the Kali Yuga, an apocalyptic Dark Age ruled by the demon Kali, the source of all evil and destruction. The Kali Yuga, also known as the "Age of Vice," is a period of warfare, chaos, social decline and spiritual decadence brought about by Man's separation from the gods. Kali himself is frequently pictured as a deranged figure dancing on corpses and wearing human heads as jewelry. I don't believe in demons, but this bloodthirsty lunatic with ten arms is the perfect symbol of human history.

Most writers use the term Kali Yuga to mean "end times" or the "last days," but technically this isn't accurate. The Hindus see Time as a cycle of four ages or Yugas known as the Yuga Cycle. The other three periods are called the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga, and they all go spinning around like a cosmic ferris wheel. So the Kali Yuga isn't the end of the world. It's just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

The Yuga Cycle describes a fall from grace--a loss of enlightenment. The first age, the Satya Yuga, is a golden age of supreme goodness when the gods rule and the average human lifespan is thousands of years long, but, like the Garden of Eden, it's all downhill from there. The other Yugas follow in order, the gods withdraw, the situation deteriorates and bottoms out with the Kali Yuga, then the whole thing starts all over again. Time is a circle--an infinite, recurring progression of Yugas in which the gods advance and retreat like the tides or the phases of the moon.

Now, this is good stuff and very ancient, but is it an accurate description of Reality? That probably sounds like a strange question to ask. The Yuga Cycle is a symbolic, mythical cosmology based on the Hindu concepts of samsara, karmic cycles, rebirth, reincarnation and cyclic change. Taking it literally misses the point, but is it possible that Time is actually circular? Does the Yuga Cycle or at least its concept of Time have some basis in fact? Personally, I think the idea of circular Time is more interesting than the linear Christian view of history as moving in a straight line from Creation to Apocalypse, but I don't see any evidence that the universe actually runs in cycles like this.

Time is a one-way thing. The future changes into the present which changes into the past in an infinite stream of Becoming. There are cycles in nature, but they're more like recurring patterns with thousands of variations and they never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. The fossil evidence shows a gradual evolution from the simple to the complex punctuated by catastrophes, mass extinctions and sudden bursts of new life forms like the Cambrian Explosion. If there are cycles in nature, they are cycles of chaos in the mathematical sense. The gods of this world are fractals and strange attractors.

Human history repeats itself, but only in the sense that high cultures are subject to universal laws of growth and decay as described by Oswald Spengler. Personally, I think there's a good argument that civilization in general has deteriorated over the last two thousand years, but I'm more inclined to blame it on the Second Law of Thermodynamics than the Yuga Cycle. Entropy and chaos are the natural state of things and organized systems tend to deteriorate over time. It takes energy and intelligence to keep a civilization going and both are in short supply.

The Yuga Cycle is appealing because it explains the decay and turmoil we see around us and because it suggests that things will change for the better as the cycle turns once again. Unfortunately, these cycles are so long that they don't really have any meaning for the human race in general, never mind individuals. The Kali Yuga is supposed to have started around 3000 BC and they say it will last for 432,000 years, almost half a million years. Considering the fact that only 5000 years or so have passed since the Kali Yuga started, we've got a long way to go.

Note: Many cultures have legends about a mythical Golden Age and a subsequent fall from grace. For instance, "Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value." (Wikipedia)

Forgotten Tribe Doesn't Know How To Make Fire?

Video from 2016.

"The Sentinelese, also known as the Sentineli and the North Sentinel Islanders, are an indigenous people who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal in India and are considered one of the world's last uncontacted peoples." Source: Wikipedia.

"... The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers. They likely use bows and arrows to hunt terrestrial wildlife and more rudimentary methods to catch local seafood, such as mud crabs and molluscan shells. Some of their practices have not evolved beyond those of the Stone Age; they are not known to engage in agriculture. It is unclear whether they have any knowledge of making fire though investigations have shown they use fire [started by lightning strikes, etc]."

Despite their description as an "uncontacted people," the Sentinelese have been contacted, in one way or another, eleven times since their fires were first observed by an East India Company ship which passed the island in 1771. In 2018, for example, an American missionary traveled illegally to the island in a stupid attempt to convert the savages, who ended up killing him.

It's hard to believe that the Sentinelese don't know how to make fire. According to Survival International, "[t]hey are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 55,000 years." If they have really been around for that long and never learned how to make fire they must be in an state of near-total mental stasis or arrested development.

The Ajanta Caves In India

"The first Buddhist cave monuments at Ajanta date from the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. During the Gupta period (5th and 6th centuries A.D.), many more richly decorated caves were added to the original group. The paintings and sculptures of Ajanta, considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, have had a considerable artistic influence." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.

Climate Change Likely Caused Migration, Demise Of Ancient Indus Valley Civilization

"More than 4,000 years ago, the Harappa culture thrived in the Indus River Valley of what is now modern Pakistan and northwestern India, where they built sophisticated cities, invented sewage systems that predated ancient Rome's, and engaged in long-distance trade with settlements in Mesopotamia. Yet by 1800 BCE, this advanced culture had abandoned their cities, moving instead to smaller villages in the Himalayan foothills. A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found evidence that climate change likely drove the Harappans to resettle far away from the floodplains of the Indus." Source: Science Daily.

Note: The climate change in this case  (~2500 BC) involved "a shift in temperatures and weather patterns over the Indus valley [which] caused summer monsoon rains to gradually dry up, making agriculture difficult or impossible near Harappan cities."

The Discovery Of Port Muzirus In India

There was a big market in Rome for luxury goods from India and the East, but overland trade and travel to India was obstructed by the Arabs until Augustus came along.  According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD 3rd ed. revised), "the Arab obstruction was removed by the great appetite of Rome for eastern luxuries in the prosperous days of Augustus, and by the discovery of open-sea routes from Aden to India. In the 1st cent. BC, or soon after, observation of the monsoon encouraged mid-ocean routes leading to various points on the western coast [of India] where settlements were subsequently established."

Roman trade with India was extensive. "In Augustus' day 120 ships sailed to India every year, and under his early successors the drain on Roman money to pay for Indian imports caused occasional anxiety..." (OCD) "...The principle imports to Rome were perfumes, spices (especially pepper), gems, ivory, pearls, Indian textiles, and Chinese silk."

The main trade was apparently with the Pandya kingdoms on the west coast of India. Evidence for this trade is still being uncovered today. For example, in 2015, The Hindu reported that "an excavation in Keezhadi, Sivaganga district, has thrown up a wealth of information on the flourishing Pandya trade with the west." The excavation can be viewed in this June 2016 video (no English version available).

The whole area of Roman contacts with India is difficult to research because of the language barrier. The next video's a good example. The slides are fantastic, but the speaker's hard to understand and the closed-captions are a joke.

Related: The Leek-Green Sea.

The Voyage around the Erythraean Sea

"The Periplus Maris Erythraei (or ‘Voyage around the Erythraean Sea’ [the modern Red Sea]) is an anonymous work from around the middle of the first century CE written by a Greek speaking Egyptian merchant." (Source: Washington University) The document describes "the maritime trade-routes following the north-south axis from Egypt down the coast of East Africa as far as modern day Tanzania" and "the routes of the east-west axis running from Egypt, around the Arabian Peninsula and past the Persian Gulf on the west coast of India." The complete translation of this fascinating resource on the ancient sea trade can be found here. A detailed map of the Erythraean Sea in the 1st Century can be found here.

The Rock-cut Caves Of Ellora & Ajanta

The Ellora archaeological complex in Maharashtra, India, is a complex of rock-carved Buddhist, Jain and Hindu temples, some with open-air courts, thought to have been constructed between the 5th and 10th centuries AD by the Hindu/Buddhist Rashtrakuta dynasty and the Jainist Yadav communities.

The Ajanta caves, also located in Maharashtra, are made up of "about 30 rock-cut, Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE," according to Wikipedia. "The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as 'the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly paintings which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales."

The astronomical alignments and fantastic architecture of these cave temples have attracted the attention of the ancient-aliens crowd. (See next video.) Despite the evidence found all over the world, these researchers have never been able to accept the idea that ancient people were a lot more advanced than commonly believed. Confronted with a Stonehenge or a Hindu temple carved out of solid rock, they automatically assume that alien technology must have been involved. Still, if you can filter out the ET stuff, some of these documentaries are well worth watching.

Related:

Ellora Caves - Heritage of India: A Virtual Tour
Sacred Destinations - The Ellora Caves
Sacred Destinations - The Ajanta Caves

The 1st Century BC Greek Navigator Hippalus

"Hippalus (Ancient Greek: ππαλος) was a Greek navigator and merchant who probably lived in the 1st century BC. He is sometimes conjectured to have been the captain of the Greek explorer Eudoxus of Cyzicus' ship." Source: Wikipedia.

"The writer of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea credited Hippalus with discovering the direct route from the Red Sea to India over the Indian Ocean by plotting the scheme of the sea and the correct location of the trade ports along the Indian coast."

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Hippalus was "the merchant discoverer, in the Augustan or Tiberian age (1), of new ways of navigating the Arabian Sea; specifically the possibility of using the (very violent: his ships must have been substantial) SW monsoon to make deep-sea voyages from the south coast of Arabia to the NW coast of India, and the SE monsoon (a gentler wind) for the journey back to the mouth of the Red Sea..."

(1) Augustus ruled from around 27 BC - 14 AD, Tiberius from 14 - 37 AD.

The Romans had extensive trade, both by land and water, with India and the East as well as parts of eastern Africa along the coast of the Red Sea. Roman trading stations have been discovered on the coasts of India. For example:

"On the south-east or Coromandel Coast of India, about two miles (3.2km) south of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, there is a tract on the east known locally as Arikamedu, near the village of Virampattanam. After 1937 it was gradually revealed as an Indo-Roman trading station." Source: Ancient Origins.

"It appeared that the port began to rise about the end of the last century BCE, and reached its apogee in about 50 CE and later. The Roman remains included, for example, amphorae (wine-jars), Roman glass, Roman lamps, gems, etc. Moreover, the archaeological site revealed that the port city was used as a small ship-building or ship-repairing yard."

The Sun Temple At Konarak

"On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, bathed in the rays of the rising sun, the [13th cent. Hindu] temple at Konarak [aka Konark] is a monumental representation of the sun god Surya's chariot; its 24 wheels are decorated with symbolic designs and it is led by a team of six horses. Built in the 13th century, it is one of India's most famous Brahman sanctuaries." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.

According to Myoksha, a provider of pilgrimage tours and temple guides in India, "Konark Temple was referred to as 'Black Pagoda' by European travelers sailing the shores of the Arabian sea. It was so called maybe because of its dark colour due to continuous plastering and subsequent blackening of the surface over many centuries as mentioned by S.P Gupta in his book 'Temples in India'. It may also be that some European scholars believed that the exceptionally frank eroticism [next video] of many of the Konark sculptures has given it the name 'Black Pagoda'."

"The Sun Temple at Konarak was built in about 1250 AD by the East Ganga king Narasimhadeva, It is thought he built the temple to commemorate military successes against Muslim invaders." Source: Sacred Destinations.

"According to local legend, the temple has a great aura of power that comes from two very powerful magnets said to have been built into the tower - magnets that allowed the king's throne to hover in mid-air."

This magnetic aura could also be the reason for the name "Black Pagoda:"

"European mariners sailing off the coast used the temple's tower for navigation, but dubbed it the Black Pagoda for the frequent shipwrecks that occurred along the coast. They attributed the disasters to the legendary magnets' effect on the tidal pattern." (Sacred Destinations)

This is a magnificent temple, but King Narasimhadeva should be especially remembered for the fact that he "defeated the Muslim forces of Bengal who were constantly posing a threat to the Eastern Ganga dynasty's rule over Odisha [ancient Utkala], and because he was "one the few rulers in India who took the offensive against the Islamic expansion over India..." (Wikipedia)

Narasimhadeva should receive the same respect that we give to Charles Martel in the West.

New Genetic Study Confirms Aryan Migration Theory?

Video from 2012.

"A new paper authored by 92 scientists from around the globe that was posted online this weekend could settle some major questions about the subcontinent’s history and what that means for various theories of Indian civilisation. The paper, titled 'The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia' [PDF] which still has to go through peer review [emphasis added], uses genetics to examine the ancestry of ancient inhabitants of the subcontinent." Source: Scroll.in. 

Note: There are several different variations of the Aryan or Indo-Aryan Migration Theory, but the basic idea is that the Aryans -- "the Indic people of the Vedic period [~1500 - 600 BC] in India" [Wikipedia] -- originally migrated into northern India from Central Asia around 1500 BC. According to the theory that I'm most familiar with, the Aryans wrote the Vedas and introduced Sanskrit and the caste system to India.

"Aryan" is a word the Indic people of the time used to refer to themselves. Some experts call them "Indo-Aryans" or "Indo-Iranians" or "proto-Indo-Europeans," depending on where the experts think they originated. Technically, "Aryan" is both a linguistic and an ethnic term:

"Indo-Aryan migration models discuss scenarios around the theory of an origin from outside South Asia of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ascribed ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of North India. Proponents of Indo-Aryan origin outside of South Asia generally consider migrations into the region and Anatolia (ancient Mitanni) from Central Asia to have started around 1500 BCE, as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period, which led to a language shift in northern South Asia." Source: Wikipedia.

There are two other general theories, both of which seem to have been discredited. According to the Aryan Invasion Theory, proposed by the British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, the Aryans invaded India and conquered the Indus Valley Civilization, but this was apparently refuted by new archaeological evidence. The other model, the Indigenous Aryans or Out of India Theory, which argues that the Indo-Aryans originated in India and then migrated into South Asia, has apparently been rejected for linguistic reasons.

That leaves the migration theory. Complicated by modern identity politics and the history of British colonialism in India, the theory has always been highly controversial, but this new study argues that "some sort of migration did indeed take place into India and that the Indus Valley civilisation is key to all South Asian populations." If I understand it right, that means that the migrants were related in some ways to the "Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers or Ancient Ancestral South Indians" already living in the Indus Valley.