Re: Fringe Archaeology or Hidden Truth?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"StarLord\")</div>
Harte
Then how do you view Vimanas? That information in Sanscrit is very ancient. Or do you consider them a Hoax?[/b]
Starlord,
I guess from some of my previous posts, it might seem like I disbelieve even the existence of any ancient civilizations. Let me say here that I find the Vimanas to be a very interesting collection of mythological stories.
As you know, there have been many attempts to show that aliens visited Earth in ancient times, not the least of which is the torturing of the Bible scriptures to wring UFO's and reptilian overlords out of Genesis and other O.T. books. In the Vimanas we have no need for such machinations. The Vimanas describe flying machines piloted by gods and humans, huge aerial battles fought using these machines, descriptions of what could only be called advanced weaponry and creatures of such horrific countenance that they must be described as either aliens or demons.
The Vimanas are no hoax, they are actual ancient sanskrit writings that were translated long ago without much disagreement on what they say, at least in terms of whether they were correctly translated. As such I find them extremely interesting. But there exist many writings discovered that come from ancient civilizations and many contain stories of the gods of ancient men and their exploits. Why not ask about Odin, Zeus or Ba'al? Because the Vimanas have been recently brought into the limelight of the pseudohistory movement by the book "Forbidden Archaeology" by Michael Cremo.
Cremo, like all the other pseudohistorians, takes a few odd discoveries, adds a liberal dose of speculation and a healthy amount of re-arrangement (and even misrepresentation) of the facts in order to show that the Hindus are right, Man has been on Earth for millions of years. Does this argument sound familiar? Substitute Evangelical for Hindu. I can't provide any link right now, but I am certain that I read somewhere that Cremo and his co-author (I forget the name) were financed in their research by some Hindu organization that tries to advance that religion and it's take on reality. As for this argument about Cremo et al., I do have some links that I think lead to this conclusion if you want them, but I realize that this is not the crux of your posted question.
So, in short, no I do not think the Vimanas are a hoax. I do think they are part of the mythology of Hinduism. The Vimanas, Plato's "Dialogues", Genesis, Homer, Norse Epics, Fairy tales, all contain fantastic ideas and places about which there exists absolutely no evidence, other than the stories themselves of course.
Cremo, VanDaniken, Sitchen, Hancock, Velikovski, and the rest of the pseudohistorians could be right. But absolutely not one shred of evidence exists that would indicate so. I truly wish that such evidence would be uncovered and presented in my lifetime, though I doubt that it will. I once was almost convinced by the pseudohistorians myself. Enough so to make me look into these things. I guess I looked too deep. It is now one of my fondest desires that my current thinking on ancient civilizations be shown to be wrong, but as I said, I doubt it will happen.
Harte
