Order of the Madras High Court dated 07/06/2021 in the matter of Suo Motu Vs Archaeological Survey of India & Others regarding safeguarding of archaeological monuments in Tamil Nadu. The Madras High Court, June 7, 2021 in a slew of measures directed the concerned authorities to establish Mamallapuram World Heritage …
IT WAS a fund raising meeting organised by Indians in Houston, Texas. The master of ceremonies was announcing that the Reddys and the Kammas have contributed. Will the Brahmins follow suit now? Thousands of kilometres from home -- and still the Indians needed caste support to motivate people to donate …
ENVIRONMENTALISTS who wish to revert to a non-polluted era may have to revise their glorious vision of an idyllic past before the industrial revolution. A recent analysis of lake sediments in Sweden reveals that lead pollution was a problem even 2,000 years ago (Nature, Vol 368, No 6469). Ingemar Renberg …
A FIERCE battle, albeit verbal, has broken out in the US between scientists and native Indians. The bone of contention is the remains of ancient Indians dating back to 800 BC, that lie in the Hall of Records, Annapolis, Maryland. The Indians want the bones of their ancestors back, so …
Ya apo divya uta va sravanti khanitrima uta va yah svayamjah samudrartha yah suchayah pavakasta apo deviriha mamavantu Apah Suktam, Rigveda, VII. 59.2 "May the waters that are in the sky, or those that flow (on the earth), those (whose channels) have been dug,* or those that have sprung up …
AN ARGENTINE scientist may finally have found a hirsute way to solve a long-standing anthropological poser. Carmen Reigadas of the Instituto de Ciencias Antropologicas in Buenos Aires has come up with a new approach to determining exactly when South Americans turned away from hunting camelids such as guanacos and vicunas …
WHAT SETS the BBC apart from other TV networks is the kind of subjects it chooses for its documentaries and the quality research it puts into bringing alive subjects that are considered unexciting by most commercial networks. Two very different kinds of series on computers -- Computing for the Terrified …
THE AKKADIAN empire flourished on the banks of Euphrates in Iraq, from 2300 BC to 2200 BC. Though the reason for its sudden collapse has long puzzled archaeologists, Harvey Weiss and his colleagues at Yale University in USA now say it literally dried up and withered away. The archaeologists base …
THE ASIAN muskox was believed to be one of the species that became extinct about 10,000 years along with mammoths and other large mammals, when the Ice age or Pleistocene came to an end. But now, the discovery of a few skulls of the muskox and plaques depicting the animal …
THIS SLIM monograph explains Mahajan's preference for the term "human sciences" rather than "social sciences". Within the framework of social sciences, there are different disciplines, each analysing a particular dimension of the collective human enterprise. Human science stresses the similarities among different categories of human action and hence provides the …
When did life on earth begin? The question continues to stoke the curiosity of scientists, stimulating the search for fossils that provide the only source of direct evidence of when a particular organism existed or how it evolved. Now, J William Schopf of the University of California, Los Angeles, says …
ECONOMIC historians writing on India have usually focussed on two crucial sectors -- agriculture and industry -- and left out of their purview forestry, which provides crucial inputs to both these and is of some importance in its own right. History of Forestry in India, edited by Ajay Rawat who …
A FOUR-tonne stela -- an upright slab usually used as a gravestone -- discovered accidentally by fisherfolk at the small fishing settlement of La Mojarra near Vera Cruz, Mexico, has enabled archaeologists to crack a complex pictorial script widely used in Central America 2,000 years ago. Part of the engravings …
SINCE US President Harry S Truman proclaimed the dawning of the Age of Development in his inaugural speech on January 20, 1949, the accepted measure of a modern society"s civilisation is the standard it has achieved in science and technology. So it is that from Kashmir to Kerala, the toothbrush …
THE TWO years covered in this volume, the latest in the series, were the most momentous in the life of Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). After studies in Edinburgh and Cambridge, Darwin was heading for an ecclesiastical career in the Church of England when he was invited to participate in a …
HOWEVER imperfect a TV series on the history of science and technology in the subcontinent, it should have a life beyond its one-time telecast. When Bharat ki Chaap (Identity of India) finally made its debut on Doordarshan in 1989, after about four years of preparatory work, the demand for video …
THIS BOOK by two of India's most eminent environmental historians makes a first attempt at constructing an alternative, ecological view of Indian history. Coming on the heels of Clive Ponting's A Green History of the World, this is a very welcome first step. The book is divided into three sections: …
HISTORY is generally seen as a record of kings, queens and warriors. But it could as well be a record of changing human-nature interactions over time. All human societies have exploited their environment for their survival and economic growth. Sometimes this exploitation has been destructive -- for instance, the Mesopotamian …
TODAY, the world seems to be divided into two groups: those who believe in the restrained use of natural resources as they are finite and those who hold that human technological intervention can stretch these resources indefinitely. Ponting, a British civil servant and historian, places himself firmly in the first …
Pushkar, near Ajmer, Rajasthan, lies in the dry zone to the east of the Indian desert. In the vicinity there is evidence for three arid phases, during the latter part of the Pleistocene, each represented by a major sand sheet and fossil desert dunes. The earliest contains lenses of detritus …
An innovative programme has given the hearing impaired greater access to the historical and cultural wealth of Havana. A sign language interpreter would accompany tourists to Old Havana, the historic part of the Cuban capital, if the group included hearing impaired. The programme, Cultura entre las Manos, was started in …
