Western archeologists have a curious notion that although human beings have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, civilization itself is a recent invention of only six thousand years ago. It is believed and taught that the cradle of civilization began in the fertile crescent of the Mesopotamian valley and from there spread to Egypt, India and beyond. But there seems to be reason to believe that as one becomes free from cultural and religious bias one may discover that important accomplishments of mankind may be traceable to far beyond that time barrier.

The problems in tracing origins back through time are many. First is the fact that great periods of time have a tendency to erase traces of cultures. When all traces decay then the culture is effectively obliterated. Whatever is left undestroyed by time becomes subjected to the cultural and personal opinions of archeologists. Such opinions may destroy and obliterate knowledge of the culture much more effectively than time ever could. Another problem is in the epistemology or method of knowledge used by countries foreign to the country or culture being studied. In the west we have a tradition of trying to understand life by studying corpses or trying to know health by studying disease. Archeology becomes an exercise of the imagination when trying to reconstruct a living culture based on remains of pot shards, bones and bricks.

Prior to the nineteenth century, it was piously believed in western civilization that the earth was created in seven days at around five thousand years ago. The Biblical version of creation was challenged by the dual developments of Darwinism and the discovery of dinosaur fossils. Even though the gradual acceptance of these new ideas forced a revision of geological time scales, a corresponding revision within archeological studies lagged. Part of this may have been due to another emerging ideology of the nineteenth century called progressivism. Progressivism is the idea that human beings are in a progressive march towards a goal of better living and greater knowledge. This seductive ideology had its roots in earlier centuries but had its greatest impact in the second half of the nineteenth century where it influenced the thinking of such great men as Darwin and Marx. Although it is easy to accept and defend this way of thinking as logical and sound, it does have some devious implications. In a simplistic way it implies that we as a species are infinitely more cleaver than our ancestors. Since it is possible to measure our advancement in linear terms, there must be a point beyond which in the past human beings were infinitely stupid and not clever. Such human beings were incapable of civilization and they must have lived just prior to six thousand years ago.

These ethnocentric blinders that some western thinkers unconsciously wear before venturing into the past have resulted in the tunnel vision view of history as we know it today. The western tradition of writing history may be traced to the Judeo-christian scriptures wherein one group of people with shared beliefs write about the happenings of that group and the people outside that group. The six-thousand year barrier seems to be a common trait to that tradition. Other cultures, the Hindus for example, regard the earth in terms of billions of years old and civilization in terms of hundreds of thousands of years. The Hindus do not think of time in linear terms with abeginning and an end. Rather, they think in terms of great cycles of thousands and millions of years. The archeological method of digging, study and dating ofartifacts may be ill-suited to understanding different cultures that don't share similar attitudes towards time scales.

Hindu scriptures were routinely disparaged by early British indologists as exaggerated stories an myths. Biblical stories on the other hand where accepted by the same indologists as being somewhere between salient fact and articles of faith. German indologists Max Mueller proposed the theory about Aryan invaders colonizing India from the north. This implies that the Indians are so inferior that it is unlikely, if not impossible, for them to civilize themselves without outside help. Native versions of the Indian origins found within living tradition and culture were totally ignored and thought to be unreliable. The British occupation of India produced scholars who's pious duty was to discredit the Hindu tradition and culture. Dates of events given in Hindu scripture based thousands of years ago were redated by the English to have occurred after the birth of Christ for no other reason than one could never rely on the version of a Hindu; the speculations of an English nobleman being wholly preferable. It remains ironic, however, that even if the dates given by the English be accepted at face value, the Hindu accomplishments in art, architecture, science, mathematics, literature, medicine and philosophy were made at a time when the English and all of Europe were still living a neolithic lifestyle.

To diminish this embarrassing fact, the European scholars have held up ancient Greece as their cultural champion even to the point of making ridiculous claims that the Hindus borrowed all the salient features of science and civilization from them. In no uncertain terms we are lead to believe that the Hindus were incapable of any high scientific reasoning on their own and therefore depended upon help from outside sources for further development. Contrary to this point of view, it can be shown that not only did the Hindus develop a mature culture independent from western influences, the western cultures borrowed from the Hindus more often than otherwise.

One thing to point out is that each major culture of the ancient world had calendars that were unique in themselves. Calendars are dependent upon the accurate observation of heavenly phenomenon. In this endeavor the ancients were not lacking. The five major time schemes of the ancient world are of the Mayan, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian and Chinese cultures. The Jewish calendar is based upon an earlier Babylonian system and has nothing uniquely original. The Greeks had no calendar that possessed characteristics different enough to place them in a separate and distinct category for they also followed the Mesopotamian standard. The Romans, who borrowed heavily from the Greeks, found it necessary to borrow from the Egyptians in order to improve accuracy. This demonstrates that the Romans considered the Greek chronography incomplete and lacking.

Hindu astronomy, their method of observation and the resulting calendrics differs considerably from the Greeks. Now the question arises that if the Hindus borrowed from the Greeks why didn't the Hindus also modify their calendar with the Greek calendar? Remember that ancient astronomy and calendrics were inseparable. Another point: It is a usual occurrence that a borrowed concept takes along a borrowed technique. The methods of observation usually accompanies the knowledge of the things observed. Why is it that the Hindus have a totally unique system of measurement and observation indigenous to their astronomical lore? The champions of western culture would have us overlook these details.

It seems highly evident that the co-existing Indian and Mesopotamian cultures exchanged ideas long before the Greeks learned how to civilize themselves. Any similarity between Greek and Hindu sciences is either co-incidental or due to Greek plagiarism of Indian and Mesopotamian concepts. Yet the bias regarding Greek primacy in all things ancient persists in western educational institutions today. Cultural bias is as destructive of fact as is the passage of time erasing artifacts. What is often passed off as profound knowledge and discovery is nothing more than the reinforcement of bias.

The main concern that would indicate the existence of civilization long before six thousand years ago is that of time measurement or calendrics, the study of which reveals much of what is missing from the digging and dating of bones. The calendar is a vital point of focus for any organized culture or society. Religious, economic and agricultural activities revolve around the calendar. To construct accurate tables of heavenly cycles, a culture must observe the sky for many centuries or at least borrow tables from another culture that has spent centuries studying the heavens. The amount of accuracy derived from observing the heavens over a long period of time suggests that the roots of civilization and some of its earliest accomplishments are much older than six thousand years. Specifically the Indian and Mesopotamian cultures.