Echoes of a Forgotten world

 Who does not like a delicious conspiracy theory? The British author and journalist Graham Hancock in his books Fingerprints of the Gods and Magicians of the Gods, as well as the Netflix documentary series Ancient Apocalypse proposes an advanced global civilisation that existed during the last ice age. This society possessed sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, architecture, agriculture, navigation and spiritual practices, and well, they talked to plants lol. Hancock argues that this civilisation was seafaring and capable of long-distance ocean voyages. Now this civilisation has not been identified. The Indian archaeoastronomer Nilesh Nilkanth Oak claims that Sugriva, one of the vanar kings created a detailed world atlas 14,000 years ago. The theory is that Sugriva dispatched search parties that explored the entire world. The geographical descriptions align with Ice-Age landmasses, coastlines, and features such as lower sea levels. Both the Piri Reis map and Sugriva's Atlas feature places such as Antarctica far predating modern cartography. These claims are outlined in the book The Historic Rama: Indian Civilisation at the End of Pleistocene. 

Now these numbers are relatively tame, and not that dramatic. It is just that our recorded history has a short horizon, but our archaeological excavations have revealed that Homo Eructus had the capability for sea faring, a complex language, and demonstrated tool as well as fire use over 1.5 million years ago. So 15,000 years ago is not at all a surprising timeframe for such activities by humans. The problem here is agriculture and domestication, we know for a fact that these occurred 12,000 years ago at best, limiting the possible time frame for a more advanced civilisation. This civilisation may have existed in more harmony and balance with the natural world than humans today, who may one they revert to such a state with sufficient technological progress. 

The Piri Reis map may even explicitly depict a Vanar! 

Graham Hancock's advanced civilisation lasted between 115,000-11,700 years ago, ending due to comet impacts that ushered in the Younger Dryas between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago. These events caused floods and sea-level rise around the world. The survivors of this disaster imparted knowledge to nascent cultures in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Southeast Asia and South America. In the Valmiki Ramayana, the vanars are a race of people that resemble monkeys or apes in appearance. Their king, Sugriva dispatches four search parties to scour the Earth for Rama's abducted wife Sita. His instructions themselves form a comprehensive atlas detailing rivers, mountains and oceans. There are over 600 stellar references in the text, which has been used by Oak to date the Ramayan. 

Oak dates the events of the Ramayan to around 12,209 BCE, right in the middle of the Younger Dryas impact. Sugriva's description align with a world with lower sea levels, exposed land bridges, and ice-free coastlines. He references seven continents as well as Antarctica, which are supported by the world as described in the Brahma Purana. The vanars had the capability for rapid transportation and flight, which can be interpreted as possessing high technologies. In 1513, the Ottoman General Piri Reis compiled a fragmentary world map drawn from over 20 sources, including maps from the Library of Alexandria. These source maps are now lost. It depicts Atlantic coasts with eerie accuracy, including the contours of South America, the Carribean and Queen Maud Land without the ice sheet in Antarctica. Hancock cites this map as proof of Ice Age Explorers, arguing that the advanced tech needed to explore these longitudes were not available in the 16th century, let alone antiquity. In the Valmiki Ramayan, Sugriva describes the Udaya Mountain as the easternmost point where the Sun rises, with a prominent landmark. This is a golden pylon resembling a palm three with three branches, etched on a golden rock peak, with a golden base. This feature is described as an easterly compass, a directional marker established by celestial beings called deva-nirmana. The description matches a feature known as the Candelabra of the Andes. This is a geoglyph found on the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay in Peru. 

Skeptics claim that in the Piri Reis map, Antarctica is likely to be a distorted Patagonia, with inaccuracies stemming from Portuguese voyages. The depictions of the ice-free southern lands align with geological data. Antarctica was last navigable around 4,000 BC, but Hancock pushes the dating back to the last Ice Age, implying lost sources from a drowned civilisation. My question here is that if they were so advanced, why did they drown so easily while the primitive peoples of the world survived? In any case, Sugriva's vanars are dated to around the same time, and were a society capable of seafaring, studying astronomy, and creating world maps. Both Sugriva and the Piri Reis map depict an unglaciated Antarctica, including lost mountains and seas. Sugriva's teams are dispatched eastwards to the Americas, west towards Europe, north to the Arctic regions and south to Antarctica. There are descriptions of land bridges lost to rising seas. The transatlantic details on the Piri Reis map are also difficult to explain, with the longitudes showing spherical projections far ahead of 1513 science.

Now, Oak's dates of the Ramayana based on the 600 astronomical references align with Hancock's proposed timeline for the destruction of an advanced Ice Age civilisation around 12,800 years ago. One way to reconcile the question of survival is that there was a widespread global cataclysm, but the civilisation survived! Ramayana's narratives do include cosmic events and widespread destruction, associated with the serpent Ananta, that can easily be interpreted as a comet that caused the cataclysm. The potential influence of Ramyana on ancient sites such as Angkor Wat, also align with Oak's timeline. Oak's dating of Sugriva's Atlas at the end of the Pleistocene is consistent with Hancock's hypothesis of a seafaring society that mapped a world with lower sea levels. Oak relies on bathymetric and sea-level reconstructions by the geologist Glenn Milne to validate Sugriva's descriptions matching Ice Age configurations such as exposed land bridges and unglaciated coastlines. These maps were published in Hancock's book Underworld. Long story short, Oak's Vanars may be the lost ancient civilisation of Hancock. 

Endling

In the late 21st century, 87 years after the cascade, a small group of survivors cling to existence in a high-altitude refugium, a network of reinforced concrete bunkers and shallow caves carved into a rocky hillside in what was once northern Scandinavia. This is now a cold, windswept plateau with patchy permafrost and stunted vegetation. There are fewer than 80,000 humans left in the world, scattered in similar isolated pockets around 60°N where the deposition from the fallout was lighter, and some sunlight manages to penetrate the thinned atmospheric haze. 

Mara, 34 years old, was born five years after the last engineered pathogen had subsided. They are one of the group's four primary foragers and water processors. Their day begins at first light around 04:30 local time, in the perpetual gray dimness. 

They wake in the communal sleeping chamber on a pallet of salvaged foam and layered hides from the few hardy reindeer that still migrate through the area. The air is cold, and smells of damp stone, wood smoke and unwashed bodies. A low cough echoes from someone in the corner. Chronic respiratory issues are common because of radiation exposure and persistent particulates. Mara checks a Geiger counter clipped to their belt, the background radiation levels are between 0.8–1.2 μSv/h, which is elevated, but within the long-term tolerance threshold of the group. It is safe to venture into the surface. 

The first order of the day is water. Mara joints two others at the melt station. They chip blocks of surface ice, carefully selected from areas tested for low radionuclide contamination, and feed them to a solar-assisted wood-fired smelter. The photovoltaic panels were scavenged from prior to the cascade, and have weak output. The process takes hours. The water has to be filtered through multiple layers of charcoal and ceramic. The daily ration per person is between two and three litres, which is strictly allocated. Occasional hot particles from distant fallout zones still blow in on winds. 

By mid-morning, Mara heads out with a partner for foraging. They wear layered clothing reinforced with duct tape over seams, respirators, and carry dosimeters. The landscape is barren, dead conifer stumps, lichen covered rock, sparse dwarf birch and willow. They target known patches where edible mosses, crowberries and cloudberries persist. Yields are down from even a decade ago due to soil acidification and shortened growing seasons. Mushrooms are gathered cautiously, some species bioaccumulate cesium and strontium. Today's haul is four kg of mixed plant matter and one small hare caught in a snare. Meat is rare. The primary source of protein is grubs and ants, boiled into a paste or from occasional fish. 

Back at the settlement, the group processes the haul by early afternoon. Plants are washed, boiled and portioned. The hare is skinned, gutted and roasted over a small fire in the central chamber to minimise smoke detection. AI-directed drones are rare now, but legends persist of autonomous systems still patrolling old grids. Conversation is sparse, and focused on updates on the sick. One elder has worsening cataracts and skin lesions, which are likely stochastic effects of cumulative exposure. 

In mid-afternoon, some repair the wind-traps for ventilation, while Mara sharpens bone knives. The group's nominal leader, a 58-year-old former engineer reviews the inventory. There are stored grains from before the cascade that are now threatened by mould. The output of the solar panels are dropping. The decisions are pragmatic, reduce adult rations by 10 per cent for two weeks, priorities children under 15, and send another scouting party south for rumored seed caches. 

The communal meal in the evening is lit by LED strips powered by a hand-cranked generator and a small battery bank. Food is a thin stew of boiled greens, insect protein and shreds of hare. The calories are just enough to prevent rapid starvation, but not for growth or full recovery from injury. Stories are told of violent, desperate bands. 

At the fall of night, Mara takes first watch, scanning the horizon using a periscope rigged from salvaged optics. Occasional aroura flicker through the haze. There is no movement, today. This is the life of most humans, procurement, processing, rationing and vigilance. Mara simply endures, one day at a time. 

About Today

 Finished work early today. Being clean allows you to start your day fresh and power through it quickly. Yesterday, finished reading Dinosaurs of India almost exactly as my metro ride ended. The last portion of the book looks like FAQ or SEO questions that stupid people ask on Google, and had a lot of repetitions of the content previously in the book. Started reading Telescopes of India, that goes into exquisite detail on all the techniques. 

Apparently, as a little kid, Meghnad Saha was kicked out of school because he could not afford shoes and it would be considered as disrespectful to a visiting politician. He went on to found the entire field of astrophysics by carefully examining the light from the Sun. 

While reading the book something strange happened. It was not exactly blurring or a lack of focus, but something just zoinked in my brain and I could not continue reading, and my eyes began to feel uncomfortable. I had to stop reading and clean my specs. Felt like some kind of ocular migraine. That was weird. 

Towards the end of the month, friends start asking for money. Someone wanted 500 someone wanted 400, i had kept a low balance screenshot to send to them, showing 79 bucks in one account. 

What else... there is this nice orange juice guy close to office that I drink from. They are all kids. Oh yeah, few days ago was drinking orange juice when this kid came begging for money for food. I said im also not eating. He tried to grab my orange juice, so I lifted it up. He took revenge by peeing close to where I was standing lol. 

The team is on slack now, made a new channel, even though TV9 used to have one that I still use. The whole team is headed to Club 126 now, there is a mela there and a whole bunch of food trucks. Gonna be fun. 

-- We had momos which I have never eaten and never will. I ordered fries. The food truck had chained two multiplugs upside down into a power source, that was connected from all the holes. 

Finished work three hours before my time. So now, just sitting around doing nothing, because we have to spend nine hours in office or the salary gets cut. This is inhuman, so I need to think of things I can do in spare time. Will probably sit and play games now or read the book. 

KTHXBAI. 

Dream Diary book binding edition

 So I was in Bengaluru, at my Grandmother's house. For some context, they have a lot of books, some of them hand-bound into volumes, such as Phantom and Mandrake comics. The Asterix Comics entire series are there, and these have been covered with transparent material. Me and my two cousin sisters, and my grandmother did all these covers, as part of craft. Mine are a bit wonky. 

So in the dream, I was in that house, reading a low quality book, that just came apart as I was reading it. It was a fairly fat book, and part of a series, something like the Oxford Quick Reference series, but the books were even smaller. Some were thin, some where fat, not of uniform size. Anyway, so this book kind of falls apart, some of the gatherings (this is the clump of pages sewn together, also known as a signature) had been inverted, and one had come apart and was reinserted into the wrong position. 

I then got into an argument with my aunt and cousin as we all tried to put it back together. It was a bit argumentative, but it was like catching up at the same time. My grandmother was silent and not saying much, just working on fixing the book. I let them figure it out while they were blaming me, while I carefully covered the rest of the books in the series in nice brown and grey craft paper on the inside, and black covers on the outside, with gold letters in Times New Roman. 

This is the second time in two days that I have seen lettering in Times New Roman in my dreams. While I wasn't kicked to lucidity this time, I did sort-of realise everything was fake, and it pushed me towards wakefulness. It is one thing to be lucid and continue to dream, controlling your actions in the dream world. It is another thing to 'wrap up' a dream while you slowly wake up and the dream dissolves, where you transition from dreaming to kind of directing or wishing lol. Anyway, when I was done, I was awake, and had decided consciously (not lucid) that my completed, wrapped books looked like this! 

PS, apparently this is a rare book, and I have a copy back home lol. My grandfather was a homeopath. Now, if you are an uninformed atheist you are gonna say there is no way this works, and it is a placebo, but the thing is My grandfather and most practicing homeopaths do not dissolve the active ingredient seven times, they just give the second or third solution lol. My grandfather's treatment for cold was mercury, and they worked lightning fast! I think my grandfather had cured the common cold, and he brought up two daughters and a son like that! 

About Today

 Today was a good day. Been clean since Saturday, so expected to sleep well. Just ended up sleeping less. Apparently the third eye deep within the brain, known as the pineal complex, that helps regulate sleep and the production of melatonin actually started off as a set of dorsal eyes on the earliest known vertebrate, that lived 518 million years ago. Cannot even say half a billion years here, because god alone knows if the four-eyed creature survived 18 million years. 

During the Cretaceous period, about 90 million years ago, India was actually bisected into two, with the Narmada and Godavari valleys containing seaways. Most of the nesting sites of the dinosaurs in India are along these seaways. This is also the reason why marine fossils are so common in central India. The last days of the dinosaurs must have been pretty sad, because the large Titanosaurids preferred to nest on the warm ground of fresh volcanic flows. We have discovered remains and eggs in layers sandwiched between volcanic flows. It is almost as if the dinosaurs were attracted to their doom. Kind of sad. Was reading the book 'Dinosaurs of India' by Ashok Sahni in the Metro. 

Have also decided to reduce Uber usage and travel more on the Metro, and only drink on the weekends. It is a nice walk across a park to the Nehru Enclave metro station from my home. Wish there was an underground walkway between Nehru Place and Nehru Enclave. When I first came here, I used to waste a lot of time switching over at Kalkaji Mandir, till a colleague told me of the easier option. 

There was a boo boo at the Rasa cafe today, which is where we have lunch. It is the de-facto office canteen, but is operated by the owners of the building. The food is actually great, particularly good for Delhi. Mostly North Indian food is unpalatable to me, and I get a lot of nightmares about looking for and eating home-cooked food. I miss my dad's cooking also, which is getting increasingly erratic and unpredictable. He likes to experiment, so every day there will be a fresh take on a dosa or pakoda, and at times it is sad to see him struggling to get it right. Like ambodes were fragmenting. I also used to wake up to different kinds of music blasting on the speakers early in the morning because he is hard of hearing. One day it was Snoop Dogg lol. Miss that. 

Might be visiting Mumbai for an event in Feb, but it is mostly going to be in and out. 

Oh right, the boo boo at Rasa was that the dosa was too dayum salty. One of my colleagues could not consume one dosa, so asked for it to be replaced, and could not eat the replacement too. I had to explain to him that the batter is going to be the same. All over north India, the south Indian food is crap because the items are slow moving, and we often get old stuff. There is no gatti chutney available even in the fanciest five star hotels, and all of them have the consistency of cat diarrhea. So we went to a neighbouring office complex and consumed pav bhaji... which the idiots found it fit to sprinkle paneer on. Delhi people put paneer in everything, including poha, watermelon salad, veg patties and mix vegetable. I do not want your fake ass paneer dude! Butter paneer is not a curry, it is a glorified starter. 

Hmmm... let me see if there is anything else. Oh yeah every time I see Pawar's face I can only imagine him peeing in a dam. This is why you need to be careful about what you say as a public figure. His face is all over the media today. That is it, I guess, will head down to the shuttle now that will take me to Okhla Burb Sanctuary. Oh yeah, yesterday I actually overshot and forgot to get down at my station because of how long I had not travelled in the metro! 

Made a couple of new friends in the Wolvesville game, Jasper and BranzyCraft. I made and forgot so many friends over the years in videogames, that I need to write them down to remember them now. This wolf simulation game is going to the dogs. The Sandbox mode practically trolls the players, and it is sad because most people are doing something else while playing the game, watching a series, eating, working, playing another videogame, and at times even sleeping. It is sad because the villages lose simply because half the lobby is not paying attention. The setups and stacks also suck right now, which is why I am going back to Quick mode, but still prefer Sandbox on principle. The guild master is MIA for a few months now and is not responding to pings on Discord. 

Today, after a long time, I finally got to wrap up work early, and got some time to pack in a blog post before leaving for the day. Need to get back to posting on Starbullet.in... have not updated that site in too long, been nearly three months. I renewed the domain name for a year, so I better use it. I wish there was an app to track all your digital subscriptions across platforms. A colleague of mine has started watching and enjoying Castelvania, I asked him to watch Voltron too. Oh PS, I wrote a stinker on Space Gen Chandrayaan, it is shit! Feel sorry for the lead actor, he gave a sincere performance, but the direction and story was so bad. Indian creators have to stop scamming their audiences and treating them like addlepated nincompoops. 

KTHXBAI. 

Dream Diary O BC edition

 So I got lucid early today morning because of a very strange reason. I was listening to Joe Rogan podcasts with Graham Hancock over the weekend, queuing up all 11 episodes in which he appeared, and also have been playing Anno 117 quite a bit, so it is not surprising that I was roaming around the excavations of a town on the fringes of a volcano... and came across a Roman Mural, that is pretty close to what is depicted here, only there was a single star chart of the eclipse on top... 

Now what made me lucid was seeing the O BC on the mural (not Year O as shown here), it was actually 0BC, and the font was Times New Roman too! Anyway, I knew there was no 0BC, or year 0, and that the years went directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, so I knew I was dreaming! Now what I am wondering here is if my brain already knew that why did it conjure that in the mural, and if my brain wants to kick me into lucidity because I enjoy it. 

Weird. 

Anyway, drizzled a bit in Delhi today, cab fares shot up, people got distressed about commuting back home. It was cold and I enjoyed that, but in my four+ years here, never seen it rain continuously for more than four hours... so I would not say that I have ever seen rain in Delhi. These Delhi people do not know what rain looks like. Also reading a book called Dinosaurs of India. More tomorrow. KTHXBAI. 

Being Judgemental

 You need to be an asshole. It is just cool. You need to be very judgemental, that is funny, even if people disagree with you. Almost every single epic thing is dumb. Take paragliders or skydivers for example. Such idiots. Bungee jumpers are uncommitted. There is absolutely no need to do all these things, just take a walk, that is adventure enough and actually an extreme sport in India. 

Let us take another example. Space travel. Going to space is dumb, there is literally nothing humans can do in space that robots cannot. If you really want to 3D print organs or produce the cure for cancer at scale, then you probably need a robotic factory to do it, and not a bunch of orbital blue collar workers. Nobody needs to go to space. Period. If you want to explore space, physics, the past, time, then we need to send instruments out there, and we should prioritise and focus on this to achieve our science goals! 

Im going to keep judging a different popular thing in every paragraph. Musicians. People who sit around and jam and make noise. They feel some kind of energy in collaborating and feeding off each other. Vampires are like that. This is a force fit, an orchestra where everyone is compromising and no one is really exploring their instincts. When you jam, you remain in the same place instead of going somewhere, or doing anything. Convinces you that the hivemind is a cacophonous place, and that it is better to cultivate your brainwaves in isolation. 

Let us see. Cars, vehicles, these are dumb, nobody needs personal transport. The true cost of having these abominations is not being paid by anybody. The environmental cost is tremendous, and even electric vehicles do not justify this. We are deferring the cost, and accelerating towards doomsday. Anyone who drives a personal vehicle should not. 

Book readers, omg such pretentious jerks. Walking around with inflated heads. 

Lol I will try harder next time, maybe not.