"..India can live without nuclear weapons. That's our dream, and it should be the dream of the U.S. also.." - Abdul Kalam
February 2008 - international leaders met to inaugurate the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository for plant life designed to withstand nuclear war so survivors could restart civilization with healthy seeds. Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten, who was the chief of the construction program of the vault, told the Associated Press "I expect the vault to last as long as the 4,500-year-old pyramids of Egypt.."
However, for a certain part of the public, ancient civilizations like Egypt are just one key to a nuclear war that already happened-thousands of years ago.
Some believe that in the distant past either extraterrestrials or a lost civilization (maybe like Atlantis) detonated nuclear weapons, producing terrible devastation all around. This disaster was recorded in the Bible, Hindu scriptures, and world mythologies. Sodom and Gomorrah(famous cities mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) felt the sting of nuclear weapons when “the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens” (Genesis 19:24-25).
Mahabharata is also said to describe a “single projectile charged with all the power of the universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as ten thousand suns rose in all its splendour.” To believers, these sound like eyewitness accounts of nuclear bombs being dropped from above. To sceptics, these sound like imaginative interpretations of the equivalent of prehistoric science fiction.
Scientists or Historian do not unanimously endorse the idea of prehistoric atomic bombs, and nearly all experts believe the evidence cited to support the idea is misinterpreted at best and fraudulent at worst. For example, believers hold that deposits of 28-million-year-old glass found buried in the deserts of Libya are the result of ancient atomic bombs that melted the sands of ancient Libya. In fact, according to geologist Evelyn Mervine, the glass (while still not completely understood) is likely the result of either a meteorite impact or volcanic action.
What strikes me, though, is not the evidence for ancient atom bombs but rather why people come to embrace a belief in the existence of nuclear devastation in the remote past.
But there are no actual statistics which can tell us just how many people today believe that the ancient world experienced nuclear war. We do know that surveys conducted by anthropology professor Kenneth L. Feder found that in the 1990s anywhere from a quarter to a third of college students believed Atlantis existed, and a third or more believed “aliens from other worlds visited the earth in the prehistoric past.” By the end of the year 2003, belief in ancient astronauts had fallen to less than 10%, but more than a third still believed in Atlantis, today often seen as a hotbed of advanced (and atomic) technology.
The Atlantis theory or the ancient astronaut theory, may or may not be true for the specific case of ancient atom bombs. But it seems that contemporary anxieties are being directed backward into the past. Until the first nuclear blast in 1945, no human civilization had possessed the power to completely destroy civilization, but imagining such a civilization in the deep past serves two powerful purposes.
First, it provides a morality tale for the modern world. A great civilization (not sure human or non-human) once had the power to destroy the world. They misused the power and destroyed themselves. We must therefore avoid their fate. Second, it provides a comforting ray of hope. Although early human civilization had been destroyed, we are still here today. So,Humanity can and will survive nuclear war, and the species will go on!!
The story of ancient atomic bombs, therefore, is a morality tale with a promise for redemption. It symbolizes that we will survive even when the technology we create threatens to destroy us. For this reason, the modern myth of ancient atom bombs continues to ricochet around the internet, cable television, and “alternative history” publishers and likely will for years to come.
Food for thought...
GOODNIGHT AND STAY SAFE.
--Judhajit
February 2008 - international leaders met to inaugurate the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository for plant life designed to withstand nuclear war so survivors could restart civilization with healthy seeds. Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten, who was the chief of the construction program of the vault, told the Associated Press "I expect the vault to last as long as the 4,500-year-old pyramids of Egypt.."
However, for a certain part of the public, ancient civilizations like Egypt are just one key to a nuclear war that already happened-thousands of years ago.
Some believe that in the distant past either extraterrestrials or a lost civilization (maybe like Atlantis) detonated nuclear weapons, producing terrible devastation all around. This disaster was recorded in the Bible, Hindu scriptures, and world mythologies. Sodom and Gomorrah(famous cities mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) felt the sting of nuclear weapons when “the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens” (Genesis 19:24-25).
Mahabharata is also said to describe a “single projectile charged with all the power of the universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as ten thousand suns rose in all its splendour.” To believers, these sound like eyewitness accounts of nuclear bombs being dropped from above. To sceptics, these sound like imaginative interpretations of the equivalent of prehistoric science fiction.
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| Depictions of war in Veda Vyasa's Mahabharat |
Scientists or Historian do not unanimously endorse the idea of prehistoric atomic bombs, and nearly all experts believe the evidence cited to support the idea is misinterpreted at best and fraudulent at worst. For example, believers hold that deposits of 28-million-year-old glass found buried in the deserts of Libya are the result of ancient atomic bombs that melted the sands of ancient Libya. In fact, according to geologist Evelyn Mervine, the glass (while still not completely understood) is likely the result of either a meteorite impact or volcanic action.
What strikes me, though, is not the evidence for ancient atom bombs but rather why people come to embrace a belief in the existence of nuclear devastation in the remote past.
But there are no actual statistics which can tell us just how many people today believe that the ancient world experienced nuclear war. We do know that surveys conducted by anthropology professor Kenneth L. Feder found that in the 1990s anywhere from a quarter to a third of college students believed Atlantis existed, and a third or more believed “aliens from other worlds visited the earth in the prehistoric past.” By the end of the year 2003, belief in ancient astronauts had fallen to less than 10%, but more than a third still believed in Atlantis, today often seen as a hotbed of advanced (and atomic) technology.
The Atlantis theory or the ancient astronaut theory, may or may not be true for the specific case of ancient atom bombs. But it seems that contemporary anxieties are being directed backward into the past. Until the first nuclear blast in 1945, no human civilization had possessed the power to completely destroy civilization, but imagining such a civilization in the deep past serves two powerful purposes.
First, it provides a morality tale for the modern world. A great civilization (not sure human or non-human) once had the power to destroy the world. They misused the power and destroyed themselves. We must therefore avoid their fate. Second, it provides a comforting ray of hope. Although early human civilization had been destroyed, we are still here today. So,Humanity can and will survive nuclear war, and the species will go on!!
The story of ancient atomic bombs, therefore, is a morality tale with a promise for redemption. It symbolizes that we will survive even when the technology we create threatens to destroy us. For this reason, the modern myth of ancient atom bombs continues to ricochet around the internet, cable television, and “alternative history” publishers and likely will for years to come.
Food for thought...
GOODNIGHT AND STAY SAFE.
--Judhajit
Well written and pretty informative! Keep up the good work!
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