An Indian scholar apparently claims that the Vedic Age commenced in India about 9000 years ago; and that the Saraswati-Indus Valley civilisation collapsed in the period 2000 to 1500 BC through natural causes, with consequential chaos and migration. He also asserts that there is no mention of Aryans in the Indian records. At the time of its collapse, it seems (according to a Western scholar) that the Indus Valley civilisation “was already one thousand years old, thriving, and advanced in technology and trade”.
Whilst adherents of ancient civilisations tend to have a competitive perspective about the longevity of their cultural heritage, the contribution by the Indus Valley culture to the civilisation in India may have been substantial. According to another scholar, traces of the mysticism which lies at the core of Indian civilisation were evident in “an iconography of yogic practice” in the Indus Valley culture. Whilst it would take a little time for modern Indian scholars to sort out their pre-history, it is a fact that an Indus Valley civilisation existed, and then disappeared. Could the alleged references in the Mahabharatha to aerial warfare and devastation of a nuclear type have come from that Indus Valley civilisation? Where else could they have come from? Could there have been an even earlier civilisation in that region?
What did happen to the Indus Valley civilisation? A Jewish scholar, who seems to have set out to verify the early writings of his people, claimed (in mid-twentieth century) that a major catastrophe, triggered by an extra-terrestrial agent, brought to a sudden end “the entire ancient East”, at the same time (about 1500 BC) that the Indus Valley civilisation disappeared. The scholar (I. Velikovsky) claimed that the cause of the destruction of the Indus Valley civilisation is not known. Yet, he says that “… the facts brought forth by (archaeologist) R.E. Mortimer Wheeler strongly suggest to various scholars” (including one H.K. Trevaskis) that it was a natural, and not a man-made, catastrophe.
Is this credible? Sir Arthur Evans, an expert on ancient Crete, is quoted by Velikovsky as reporting that a great catastrophe destroyed the culture of Middle Minoan Two; and that this was “… synchronical with the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt and the Exodus” (of the Jewish people from Egypt). This would have been about 1500 BC. It is now accepted that the volcanic eruption of Thera (Santorini), four times more powerful than Krakatoa’s explosion in the nineteenth century, occurred about 1500 BC; and that the Cretan civilisation was destroyed by it.
Velikovsky also quotes Claude F.A. Schaeffer as concluding that, at the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, “an enormous cataclysm took place that ruined Egypt, and devastated by earthquake and holocaust, every populated place in Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, the Caucasus and Persia”. Schaeffer’s findings were based upon excavations all over the ancient East, “where populations were decimated or annihilated, the earth shook, the sea irrupted, and the climate changed”.
Schaeffer is claimed to have discerned six separate major upheavals by nature. All of these catastrophes “simultaneously overwhelmed” the entire known East, including Egypt, on each occasion. Some of these catastrophes “closed great ages in the history of ancient civilisations”. This is a very significant claim. The major ancient catastrophe studied by Schaeffer took place about 2400 BC, bringing destruction from Troy (in Asia Minor — now Turkey) to the Nile. (Troy had been rebuilt and destroyed many times).
However, Velikovsky goes further and says that “there were global catastrophes in prehuman times, in prehistoric times, and in historical times”, implying (on the basis of the last two that he had examined) that they were all extra-terrestrial in origin.
(Could not the warriors of the West have waited for the next cosmic catastrophe to achieve boundary and regime changes in the Middle East?
The above paragraphs are extracts from “Which way to the Cosmos?” from my book “Hidden Footprints of Unity.”)
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 