Perfection

[Guest guest]

Dear Wendy

 

Regarding you concept of time, i found a very interesent web site runned by

Cremo. I have been interested in vedic time cos my son is studying geology.

Please have a look.

 

natabara

 

PURANIC TIME AND THE ARCHEOLOGICAL RECORD

 

An address presented at World Archeological Congress 3, December 11, 1994, New

Delhi, India* by Michael A. Cremo (Drutakarma Dasa)

 

--

 

1-800-800-3284 [The World Archeological Congress is an international

organization that meets every four years in a different city of the world. Nine

hundred archeologists and scientists from related disciplines attended the New

Delhi meeting, jointly sponsored by the World Archeological Congress and the

Archeological Survey of India, with support from the Indian government.]

 

The concept of time used by modern historical scientists, including

archeologists, strikingly resembles the traditional Judeo-Christian concept. And

it strikingly differs from that of the ancient Greeks and Indians.

 

This observation is, of course, an extreme generalization. In any culture, the

common people may use various concepts of time, linear and cyclical. And among

the great thinkers of any period, there may be many competing views of both

cyclical and linear time. That was certainly true of the ancient Greeks. It can

nevertheless be safely said that the cosmological concepts of several of the

most prominent Greek thinkers involved a cyclic or episodic time similar to that

found in the Puranic literature of India.

 

For example, we find in Hesiod's Works and Days a series of ages (gold, silver,

bronze, heroic, and iron) similar to the Indian yugas. In both systems the

quality of human life gets progressively worse with each passing age. In On

Nature Empedocles speaks of cosmic time cycles. In Plato's dialogues there are

descriptions of revolving time and recurring catastrophes that destroy or nearly

destroy human civilization. Aristotle said in many places in his works that the

arts and sciences had been discovered many times in the past. In the teachings

of Plato, Pythagoras, and Empedocles on transmigration of souls, the cyclical

pattern is extended to individual psychophysical existence.

 

"One who prays to Me and takes shelter from Me becomes My ward, and I protect

him always from all sorts of calamities."

 

Nrisingha Purana

 

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Learn more about Srila Prabhupada

 

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When Judeo-Christian civilization arose in Europe, another kind of time became

prominent--time going forward in a straight line. Broadly speaking, this concept

of time involves a unique act of cosmic creation, a unique appearance of human

beings, and a unique history of salvation, culminating in a unique denouement in

the form of a last judgment. The drama occurs only once. Individually, the life

of a human being mirrors this process; so, with some exceptions, orthodox

Christian theologians rejected transmigration of the soul.

 

Modern historical sciences share the basic Judeo-Christian assumptions about

time. The universe we inhabit is a unique occurrence. Humans have arisen once on

this planet. The history of our ancestors followed a unique though unpredestined

evolutionary pathway. The future pathway of our species is also unique. Although

this pathway is officially unpredictable, the myths of science project a

possible overcoming of death by biomedical science and mastery over the entire

universe by evolving, space-traveling humans. One group, the Santa Fe Institute,

sponsor of several conferences on "artificial life", predicts the transfer of

human intelligence into machines and computers displaying the complex symptoms

of living things. "Artificial life" thus becomes the ultimate transfiguring

salvation of our species. Finally, the collapse of the Big Bang universe will

bring everything to a close.

 

One is tempted to propose that the modern account of human evolution is a

Judeo-Christian heresy that covertly retains fundamental structures of

Judeo-Christian cosmology, eschatology, and salvation history while overtly

dispensing with the scriptural account of divine intervention in the origin of

species, including our own. This would be similar to the way Buddhism, while

dispensing with the Hindu scriptures and concepts of God, retained basic Hindu

cosmological assumptions such as cyclical time, transmigration, and karma.

 

Another feature the modern human evolutionary account has in common with the

earlier Christian account is that humans appear after the other forms of life.

In Genesis, God creates the plants, animals, and birds before human beings. For

strict literalists, the time interval is short--humans are created on the last

of six of our present solar days. Others have taken the Genesis days as ages.

For example, around the time of Darwin, European scientists with strong

Christian leanings proposed that God had gradually brought into existence

various species throughout the ages of geological time until the perfected earth

was ready to receive human beings. In modern evolutionary accounts, anatomically

modern humans retain their position as the most recent major species to occur on

this planet, having evolved from previous hominids within the past 100,000 or so

years. And despite the attempts of prominent evolutionary theorists and

spokespersons to counteract the tendency, even among evolution scientists, to

express the appearance of humans as in any way predestined, the idea that humans

are the crowning glory of the evolutionary process still has a strong hold on

the minds of the public and the scientists. Although anatomically modern humans

are given an age of about 100,000 years, modern archeologists and

anthropologists, in common with Judeo-Christian accounts, give civilization an

age of a few thousand years and, again in common with Judeo-Christian accounts,

place its earliest occurrence in the Middle East.

 

I do not categorically assert a direct causal link between earlier

Judeo-Christian ideas and those of the modern historical sciences. To

demonstrate that would call for much more careful documentation than has yet

been provided. But the many common features of the time concepts of the two

systems of knowledge suggest that these causal links do exist and that to trace

connections in detail would be fruitful.

 

I do propose, however, that the tacitly accepted and hence critically unexamined

time concepts of the modern human sciences, whether or not causally linked with

Judeo-Christian concepts, pose a significant unrecognized influence on

interpretation of the archeological and anthropological record. To demonstrate

how this might be true, I shall introduce my own experience in evaluating that

record from the standpoint of the concepts of cyclical time and the accounts of

human origins found in the Puranas and Itihasas of India.

 

My path of learning has led me to take the Vaisnava tradition of India as my

primary guide to life and the study of the visible universe and what may lie

beyond. For the past century or so, bringing concepts from religious texts

directly into the scientific study of nature has been considered quite

unreasonable. Indeed, many introductory texts in anthropology and archeology

make a clear distinction between "scientific" and "religious" ways of knowing,

relegating the latter to the status of unsupported belief, with little or no

utility in the objective study of nature. Some texts even go so far as to boast

that this view has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, as if the

state were the best and final arbiter of intellectual controversy.

 

But I propose that total hostility to religious views of nature in science is

unreasonable, especially for the modern historical sciences. Despite pretensions

to objectivity, scientists unconsciously retain or incorporate into their

workings many Judeo-Christian cosmological concepts, especially concerning time,

and implicitly employ them in their day-to-day work of observation and theory

building. In this sense, modern evolutionists share some intellectual territory

with their fundamentalist Christian antagonists.

 

But there are other ways to comprehend historical processes in nature. One can

graphically sense this if one performs the mental experiment of looking at the

world from a radically different perspective of time--the Puranic time concept

of India. I am not alone in suggesting this. Gene Sager, a professor of

philosophy and religious studies at Palomar College in California, wrote in an

unpublished review of my book Forbidden Archeology: "As a scholar in the field

of comparative religion, I have sometimes challenged scientists by offering a

cyclical or spiral model for studying human history, based on the Vedic concept

of the kalpa. Few Western scientists are open to the possibility of sorting out

the data in terms of such a model. I am not proposing that the Vedic model is

true. . . . However, the question remains, does the relatively short, linear

model prove to be adequate? I believe Forbidden Archeology offers a well

researched challenge. If we are to meet this challenge, we need to practice

open-mindedness and proceed in a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary fashion." The

World Archeological Congress provides a suitable forum for such cross-cultural,

interdisciplinary dialogue.

 

The Puranic concept of time involves cycles of yugas. Each yuga cycle is

composed of four yugas. The first, Satya-yuga, lasts 1,728,000 years. The

second, Treta-yuga, lasts 1,296,000 years. The third, Dvapara-yuga, lasts

864,000 years. And the fourth, Kali-yuga, lasts 432,000 years. This gives a

total of 4.32 million years for the entire yuga cycle. One thousand of such

cycles--4.32 billion years--make up one day of Brahma, the demigod who governs

the universe. A day of Brahma is called a kalpa. Each of Brahma's nights lasts

as long as his day. Life is manifest on earth only during the day of Brahma.

With the onset of Brahma's night, the entire universe is devastated and plunged

into darkness. When another day of Brahma begins, life again becomes manifest.

 

Each day of Brahma is divided into 14 manvantara periods, each lasting 71 yuga

cycles. Preceding the first and following each manvantara period is a juncture

(sandhya) the length of a Satya-yuga (1,728,000) years. Typically, each

manvantara period ends with a partial devastation.

 

According to Puranic accounts, we are now in the twenty-eighth yuga cycle of the

seventh manvantara period of the present day of Brahma. This would give the

inhabited earth an age of 2.3 billion years. Interestingly enough, the oldest

undisputed organisms recognized by paleontologists--algae fossils such as those

from the Gunflint formation in Canada--are just about that old.

 

Altogether, 453 yuga cycles have elapsed since this day of Brahma began. Each

yuga cycle involves a progression from a golden age of peace and spiritual

progress to a final age of violence and spiritual degradation. At the end of

each Kali-yuga, the earth is practically depopulated.

 

During the yuga cycles, human species coexist with other humanlike species. For

example, in the Bhagavata Purana (9.10.20) we find the divine avatara Ramacandra

conquering Ravana's kingdom, La>ka, with the aid of intelligent forest-dwelling

monkey-men who, using trees and stones, fought Ravana's well-equipped soldiers.

This occurred in the Treta-yuga, about one million years ago.

 

Given the cycle of yugas, the periodic devastations at the end of each

manvantara, and the coexistence of civilized human beings and creatures in some

ways resembling the human ancestors of modern evolutionary accounts, what

predictions might the Puranic account give regarding the archeological record?

Before answering this question, we must also consider the general imperfection

of the fossil record. Hominid fossils in particular are extremely rare.

Furthermore, only a small fraction of the sedimentary layers deposited during

the earth's history have survived erosion and other destructive geological

processes.

 

Taking all this into account, I propose that the Puranic view of time and

history would predict a sparse but bewildering mixture of hominid fossils, some

anatomically modern and some not, going back tens and even hundreds of millions

of years and occurring at locations all over the world. It would also predict a

more numerous but similarly bewildering mixture of stone tools and other

artifacts, some showing a high level of technical ability and others not. And,

given the biases of most workers in the fields of archeology and anthropology

over the past 150 years, we might also predict that they would edit this

bewildering mixture of fossils and artifacts to conform with a linear,

progressive view of human origins. In fact, when Richard Thompson and I

carefully investigated published archeological reports, we found that the

evidence supports these predictions. We reported our investigations in our book

Forbidden Archeology [see BTG, May/June 1993].

 

First of all, there is considerable amount of physical evidence for extreme

human antiquity, but here we shall only mention a few examples. The evidence

falls into several categories.

 

The first is animal bones that show signs of human work on them. In some cases

the signs of work take the form of cut marks made by stone tools. Numerous bones

bearing such marks were found by European scientists in formations up to 20

million years old. In some cases the work is more advanced. For example, in

1881, British geologist Henry Stopes reported a shell with a human face carved

upon it. The shell was found in deposits over 2 million years old.

 

A second category is stone tools and other artifacts. Stone tools have been

found at various locations around in the world, in formations up to 50 million

years old. More advanced objects have also been reported by scientists. For

example, in 1844 Sir David Brewster described a nail found in sandstone in

England. The sandstone was from the Devonian period, making it at least 360

million years old. Objects taken from coal deposits over 300 million years old

include a gold chain, an iron pot, and an artistically carved stone.

 

A third category is human skeletal remains. Numerous human skeletons have been

found in deposits millions of years old, including a complete human skeleton

from an Illinois coal deposit over 300 million years old. Human footprints of

the same age have also been reported from the state of Kentucky in the United

States.

 

In negotiating a fashionable consensus that anatomically modern humans evolved

from less advanced hominids in the Late Pleistocene era, about 100,000 years

ago, scientists gradually rendered unfashionable the considerable body of

compelling contradictory evidence summarized in our book. That evidence thus

became unworthy of discussion in knowing circles. Richard Thompson and I have

concluded that scientists muted that evidence by applying a double

standard--favored evidence was exempted from the severely skeptical scrutiny to

which unfavored evidence was subjected. One example from the many that could be

cited to demonstrate the role of linear progressive preconceptions in the

editing of the archeological record is the case of the auriferous gravel finds

in California. During the days of the California Gold Rush, starting in the

1850s, miners discovered many anatomically modern human bones and advanced stone

implements in mine shafts sunk deep into deposits of gold-bearing gravels capped

by thick lava flows. According to modern geological reports, the gravels beneath

the lava were from 9 to 55 million years old. The mine shaft discoveries were

reported to the world of science by J. D. Whitney, state geologist of

California, in a monograph published by the Peabody Museum of Natural History at

Harvard University. From the evidence he compiled, Whitney came to a

nonprogressivist view of human origins--the fossil evidence he reported showed

that the humans of the distant past were like those of the present.

 

To this, W. H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution replied: "Perhaps if

Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is

understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions

formulated, notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was

confronted."

 

This attitude is still prominent today. Stein and Rowe, in their college

textbook, assert, "Scientific statements are never considered absolute." But

they also make this absolute statement: "Some people have assumed that humans

have always been the way they are today. Anthropologists are convinced that

human beings . . . have changed over time in response to changing conditions. So

one aim of the anthropologist is to find evidence for evolution and to generate

theories about it." Apparently, an anthropologist, by definition, can have no

other view or purpose. One of the things Holmes found especially hard to accept

was the similarity of the purportedly very ancient stone implements to those of

the modern Native Americans. He wondered how anyone could take seriously the

idea that "the implements of a Tertiary race should have been left in the bed of

a Tertiary torrent to be brought out as good as new, after the lapse of vast

periods of time, into the camp of a modern community using identical forms?"

 

The similarity could be explained in several ways, but one possible explanation

is that in the course of cyclical time humans with particular cultural

attributes repeatedly appeared in the same geographical region. The suggestion

that such a thing could happen is bound to seem absurd to those who see humans

as the recent result of a long and unique series of evolutionary changes in the

hominid line--so absurd as to prevent them from considering any evidence as

potentially supporting a cyclical interpretation of human history.

 

It is noteworthy, however, that when confronted with the evidence catalogued in

my book, a fairly open-minded modern archeologist tried to explain the evidence

by bringing up, in a somewhat doubting manner, the possibility of a cyclical

interpretation of human history. George F. Carter, noted for his controversial

views on early man in North America, wrote to me on January 26, 1994: "If your

table on p. 391 were correct, then the minimum age for the artifacts at Table

Mountain would be 9 million [years old]. Would you think then of a different

creation--[one that] disappeared--and then a new start? Would it simply

replicate the archeology of California 9 million years later? Or the inverse.

Would the Californians 9 million years later replicate the materials under Table

Mountain?"

 

That is exactly what I would propose--that in the course of cyclic time humans

with a culture resembling that of modern Native Americans did in fact appear in

California millions of years ago, perhaps several times.

 

"I find great difficulty with that line of reasoning," confessed Carter. But

that difficulty, which encumbers the minds of most archeologists and

anthropologists, may be the result of a rarely recognized and even more rarely

questioned commitment to a culturally acquired sense that time is linear and

progressive.

 

It would be worthwhile, therefore, to inspect the archeological record through

other time lenses, such as the Puranic lens. Many people will take my proposal

as a perfect example of what can happen when someone brings subjective religious

ideas into the objective study of nature. Jonathan Marks reacted in typical

fashion in his review of Forbidden Archeology: "Generally, attempts to reconcile

the natural world to religious views end up compromising the natural world."

 

But until modern anthropology conducts a conscious examination of the effects of

its own covert, and arguably religiously derived, assumptions about time and

progress, it should put aside its pretensions to universal objectivity and not

be so quick to accuse others of bending facts to fit religious dogma.

 

Michael Cremo (Drutakarma Dasa) is an associate editor of Back to Godhead and a

research associate in history and philosophy of science for the Bhaktivedanta

Institute. He can be reached at drutakarma.acbsp.

 

* An abridged version of that speech follows. *[Footnote:] *See, for example,

Philip L. Stein and Bruce M. Rowe, Physical Anthropology, Fifth Edition (New

York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 37.