jhon_inglish

@Inglishjhon

An armchair sociologist and a tech enthusiast ( coding and designing) #openforcollaboration

Mumbai

Joined April 2023

112 Following

7 Followers

1.5K Posts

Inglishjhon retweeted

Nick Collins

@nickcollins1953

21 days ago

Mesopotamia was never the cradle of civilisation. India was. I spent forty years in international shipping, not academia. When I began researching the history of maritime trade, I had no orthodoxy to defend. I followed the evidence, and it kept arriving in the same place: the Indian subcontinent. Nineteenth century archaeologists dug in Mesopotamia because the climate preserved artefacts, the biblical sources pointed them there, and the Ottomans allowed the excavations. That is the entire basis for the myth of Mesopotamia as "the cradle of civilisation." Nobody applied the same rigour to India. Mohenjo-daro was not discovered until 1922. By then the narrative had already hardened. What was actually there was the largest civilisation of the ancient world. Three hundred cities. Fifty thousand people in each, by 2600 BC. Two thirds of them stood on the banks of the Sarasvati, the central and greatest of the seven rivers described in the Rig Veda, flowing down from the Himalayas before the river vanished entirely by 1900 BC. The Vedic kings claimed territory stretching "sea to sea," from Afghanistan to Maharashtra, some 1.5 million square miles, against Egypt's 13,000. A dock at Lothal built to handle thirty ships of sixty tons, unmatched in Europe for four thousand years. When it was first excavated, it was recorded as a bathing pool. When the scale became impossible to dismiss, the theory was not corrected. It was replaced with a story of pale-skinned nomads from the steppe who supposedly arrived around 1500 BC and brought civilisation with them. There is no evidence. The chronology doesn't work. The Vedas describe no invasion. In 2019 a Harvard-led genetic study revived the claim, and the press reported it as confirmation. It was not. The same study found the builders of these cities were indigenous. The Sarasvati river that the Rig Veda described had already dried up before these newcomers arrived. What the study also found is that a small group of men, arriving after the Sarasvati had already dried up, interbred with the existing population and left a genetic signature. That is all. So, where they chose to dig was mostly an accident of climate and access. The Aryan invasion theory was constructed because an Indian civilisation that owed nothing to Caucasians was a fact the late nineteenth century could not accommodate. Link to full Substack essay with sources in the comments below.

nickcollins1953's tweet photo. Mesopotamia was never the cradle of civilisation. India was.

I spent forty years in international shipping, not academia. When I began researching the history of maritime trade, I had no orthodoxy to defend. I followed the evidence, and it kept arriving in the same place: the Indian subcontinent.

Nineteenth century archaeologists dug in Mesopotamia because the climate preserved artefacts, the biblical sources pointed them there, and the Ottomans allowed the excavations. That is the entire basis for the myth of Mesopotamia as "the cradle of civilisation."

Nobody applied the same rigour to India. Mohenjo-daro was not discovered until 1922. By then the narrative had already hardened.

What was actually there was the largest civilisation of the ancient world. Three hundred cities. Fifty thousand people in each, by 2600 BC. Two thirds of them stood on the banks of the Sarasvati, the central and greatest of the seven rivers described in the Rig Veda, flowing down from the Himalayas before the river vanished entirely by 1900 BC. The Vedic kings claimed territory stretching "sea to sea," from Afghanistan to Maharashtra, some 1.5 million square miles, against Egypt's 13,000. A dock at Lothal built to handle thirty ships of sixty tons, unmatched in Europe for four thousand years. When it was first excavated, it was recorded as a bathing pool.

When the scale became impossible to dismiss, the theory was not corrected. It was replaced with a story of pale-skinned nomads from the steppe who supposedly arrived around 1500 BC and brought civilisation with them. There is no evidence. The chronology doesn't work. The Vedas describe no invasion.

In 2019 a Harvard-led genetic study revived the claim, and the press reported it as confirmation. It was not. The same study found the builders of these cities were indigenous. The Sarasvati river that the Rig Veda described had already dried up before these newcomers arrived. What the study also found is that a small group of men, arriving after the Sarasvati had already dried up, interbred with the existing population and left a genetic signature. That is all.

So, where they chose to dig was mostly an accident of climate and access. The Aryan invasion theory was constructed because an Indian civilisation that owed nothing to Caucasians was a fact the late nineteenth century could not accommodate.

Link to full Substack essay with sources in the comments below.

198

12K

526K

Inglishjhon retweeted

Kunal Gandhi

@kunalvg

21 days ago

Some observations from the last two days on political discourse in India: > Everyone in India wants democracy until it suits them. Most people have very low tolerance for the democratic process. > Folks get agitated in the face of opposing views. Sane conversations are rare. > Emotional outbursts convert fast into a call for violence. Many don't get that the state will always have a monopoly on violence, no matter which government. > Many don't get that India is a mobocracy. The voting blocks don't exist in a vacuum. They can make or break governments. > The mob's power, rooted in their electrol representation, dictates how the state responds. This is the very reason police were mute spectators when the Indian flag was tossed on the Red Fort. This is the reason police can be very unreasonable to individuals. > India is a paradox. You may want education reform. But if the solution is merit-based admission, many will oppose it. You want merit to dictate who runs government and bureaucracy, but the system we inherit doesn't allow that. > And this paradox is present in every aspect of our lives here. Look around, and you will find many examples. > You want progress? It can only happen when you demand a system overhaul. You will be surprised to know how few takers there will be for that. You will also realize how many fault lines exist in this nation. > If you want democratic answers and to be treated as citizens under democratic protection, you will also have to follow the rules of the land. However flawed it is. > People don't understand the difference between democracy, dictatorship, and incompetence of a government. > It is pretty easy to manipulate a large section of society. Every political party knows it. But adversaries of India know this better. It is unfortunate that in the fog of protest, all nuances are lost. > Too many folks romanticize revolution without having an iota of understanding of its implications for a country like India. > Folks are too innocent to consider all factors and facets of a protest cycle. But ultimately, I don't blame them because every government has let down this country. Mix it with the system we have in place, and it all points to pretty scary possibilities for the future.

493

111

195

23K

jhon_inglish

@Inglishjhon

Last Seen Users on Sotwe

Trends for you

Most Popular Users