There's a weird effect with these things - myths from other cultures seem fascinating and indicate Atlantis-like civilizations. Similar myths from you own culture are obviously just boring metaphors and scary stories to make children behave.
For example the Tower of Babel could be interpreted as aliens destroying a space program (possibly space elevator) with mind-control technology. But with the cultural baggage of the christian civilization we interpret it very differently.
The story about Jericho could be about nuclear weapons or orbital bombardment.
The story about Lazarus could be some advanced medicine.
There's a lot of this stuff in any culture - but they seem more awesome when you weren't indoctrinated about the "correct" interpretations since you were a child.
> they seem more awesome when you weren't indoctrinated about the "correct" interpretations since you were a child
This isn't totally true in India. I've had relatives seriously contemplate ancient Indian civilizations with heavier-than-air flight, nuclear weapons and even orbital capabilities. (A similar thing happened in industrializing Britain and Prussia, so maybe it's just a natural thing in a culture undergoing rapid industrialization.)
> For example the Tower of Babel could be interpreted as...
But there is no need for interpretation or misinterpretation of some of these texts because the text directly mentions the transportation e.g. in Raamaayan, the then king of Lanka(present day Shri Lanka), Raavan, flew from Lanka on his "vaayu yaan"(i.e. aeroplane) to Panchavati(in present day Nashik in the western state of Maharashtra in India) to kidnap Sitaa, wife of Raam.
> flew from Lanka on his "vaayu yaan"(i.e. aeroplane)
That id est contains a large interpretive leap. Is every culture's flying chariot also a heavier-than-air flying machine? And every chariot carrying the Moon a lunar lander?
> Is every culture's flying chariot also a heavier-than-air flying machine?
Who said it was a chariot? I think you are linking some "flying chariot" from other text to "vaayu yaan" from some different text. "vaayu" means "air" and "yaan" means "vehicle". This is far more specific that "flying chariot".
> And every chariot carrying the Moon a lunar lander?
Just curious, isn't carrying a Moon very different from landing on the Moon? Equating "carrying a Moon" to "landing on Moon" does not even mean same thing, so that can be thought as extrapolation. But the more specifics of "using vaayu yaan" to travel on earth from Lanka(which exists today) to Panchavati(which also exists today) does not need the extrapolation as was required in the previous sentence.
Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots. We use the translation "chariot" because, at the time, the only vehicles we know of in the relevant culture were chariots.
> Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots.
No, that is not true. Your own sentence use the word "most". In Indian there is a distinction between vehicle("yaan") and chariot("rath").
> We use the translation "chariot" because, at the time, the only vehicles we know of in the relevant culture were chariots.
How do you know? If the ancient text itself makes a distinction between "vaayu yaan" and "rath" then that indicates there were more than one modes of transportation.
> Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots
>> No, that is not true. Your own sentence use the word "most".
This is a non sequitur. The claim was "flying vehicle" is a valid translation for what is commonly translated as "flying chariot" in most cultures, i.e. non-Indian cultures. (It's certainly so for Ancient Egyptian myths, for which, unlike Ramayana, we have contemporaneous sources.)
I'm actually struggling to think of a culture which (a) had, at the very least, chariots or something like them and (b) couldn't have some part of its ancient mythology properly translated as "flying vehicle." Maybe Sumerian?
>> In Indian there is a distinction between vehicle("yaan") and chariot("rath").
That might just mean the authors were smarter than their contemporaries, and realized that an air-traveling vehicle probably wouldn't look like a chariot.
Which does speak to their scientific knowledge, even absent an actual vehicle existing, given that their peers couldn't reason past "this thing we have on land, but in the air."
I’m imagining a similar debate in antiquity as I witness today whenever I suggest a helicopter does all the things people say they want from a flying car.
One problem with this line of logic is that we don't have any written text 1000s of years old, so we don't know if the words were changed in later renditions or if the story itself has been modified for changing times.
"Air vehicle" meaning "aeroplane" is an interpretation. I could interpret it as sailing ship for example. Or a ballon. Possibly something like a chinese lampion which were already known 2000 years ago so it's not a big stretch.
In air? Then how is it better than the general characterisation as "Air vehicle"?
> Or a ballon.
Yeah, could be. And flying a balloon from Sri Lanka to Nashik(while crossing ocean) and back again would have been an achievement in itself during that period.
Why "in" air? Could just mean it's a regular sailing ship - after all they are powered by "air" so they are "air vehicles". Or it could be made out of air. In which case you could claim Indians had inflatable ships thousands of years ago :)
> And flying a balloon from Sri Lanka to Nashik(while crossing ocean) and back again would have been an achievement in itself during that period.
Of course, my point was that there are many possible interpretations and when you say no interpretation is needed you're just showing your cultural baggage.
There's a legend about Pan Twardowski. In it a nobleman makes a deal with the devil and forces him to do various impossible feats to avoid going to hell. One of these feats was "making a whip rope out of sand". Optical fiber is basically a rope made out of sand :) After that the nobleman escaped from the devil and landed on the moon (where he lives to this day).
It's pretty obvious to me that it's just a legend, but if I wanted to interpret it literally then Poles were on the moon in 16th century and had optical internet :)
Vaayu yaan means air travel not aeroplane. Your slight of hand here and overall comment history suggests you're parroting some right wing propaganda. Tell me something, why do people like you always find things that exist now in the past but not things that will exist? If airplanes and testtube babies are mentioned, why aren't there any mentions of things that modern society will invent in a few years, decades or centuries? I'll give you a hint: you don't have them because you can't retrofit those. Once someone invents them, then you can find vaguely related sentences in a large corpus of Indian origin and claim _there was something there_.
You interpret "vaayu yaan" as aeroplane, but what is the basis to assume it is something so specific? You just as easily assume they meant something like the flying carpets of Arabian myths.
Debunked as bad science fairly quickly, but, Sodom & Gomorrah being destroyed by a meteor aeroburst is less in the realm of science fiction but a good example of how a natural catastrophe can be retold as folklore and integrated into religious text. IIRC the flood is another one of those that is retold in a wide number of texts/cultures and had scientific evidence behind it? Last one I'm not sure about now.
As an aside, for those interested : this sort of "paleo-contact" ideas were proposed by Erich von Däniken. Aztec lines are space-ports, the flaming angel from the bible is a landing space craft, etc.
Someone even made a sci-fi cartoon about it, that 8-year-old me enjoyed =) It can't be that hard to find a PDF somewhere.
For example the Tower of Babel could be interpreted as aliens destroying a space program (possibly space elevator) with mind-control technology. But with the cultural baggage of the christian civilization we interpret it very differently.
The story about Jericho could be about nuclear weapons or orbital bombardment.
The story about Lazarus could be some advanced medicine.
There's a lot of this stuff in any culture - but they seem more awesome when you weren't indoctrinated about the "correct" interpretations since you were a child.