Current history scholarship does not view ancient Indian/Bharatiya civilization (e.g. Ayodhya of Lord Rama) as historical; Raj Vedam talk in 2018 making case for ancient Indian civilization with cultural memory going back 24000 years

Last updated on 7th Jan. 2022 with my Facebook post comment dated 21st Sept. 2021

Over the past few days, I have watched parts of a video on history of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Entire History of the Akkadians // Ancient Mesopotamia Documentary,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-mAWItV2q0 , 1 hr. 28 mins, published by History Time on 8th Sept. 2021. So far I have watched around an hour of the video.

Not unexpectedly, the video claims that the Sumerians (of Ancient Mesopotamia) were the first people to create cities.

From 08:34 in the video (taken from the transcript): "in the span of barely a millennium the sumerians had established mankind's first real urban centers with towering walls and religious sanctuaries known as ziggurats ...". There are one or two (or perhaps slightly more) minor references to Indus Valley Civilization in the video but not in the context of any ancient Indian civilizations prior to Sumerian civilization.

I think this is how current day history views this matter. A relevant extract from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history#Rise_of_civilization is given below (the extract is a small one followed by a big list of references):

The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization.[a] Early civilizations arose first in Lower Mesopotamia (3000 BCE),[42][43][44] followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000 BCE),[11][45] the Harappan civilization in the Indus River Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500 BCE),[46][47] and Chinese civilization along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (2200 BCE).[12][13]

[References:]

a: The very word "civilization" comes from the Latin civilis, meaning "civil," related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city" or "city-state").[41]

11. Bard 2000 [Bard, Kathryn A. (2000). "The Emergence of the Egyptian State (c.3200–2686 BC)". In Shaw, Ian (ed.). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 57–82. ISBN 978-0-19-280458-7.], pp. 64–65.

12. Lee 2002 [Lee, Yun Kuen (2002). "Building the Chronology of Early Chinese History" (PDF). Asian Perspectives. 41 (1): 15–42. doi:10.1353/asi.2002.0006. hdl:10125/17161. ISSN 1535-8283. S2CID 67818363. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2020. Retrieved 5 September 2019.], pp. 15–42.

13. Teeple 2006 [Teeple, John B. (2006). Timelines of World History. New York: DK Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7566-1703-5.], pp. 14–20.]

42. Stearns & Langer 2001 [Stearns, Peter N.; Langer, William L., eds. (2001). The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged (Sixth ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-0-395-65237-4.], p. 21.

43. Hart-Davis 2012 [Hart-Davis, Adam, ed. (2012). History: The Definitive Visual Guide. New York: DK Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7566-7609-4.], pp. 54–55.

44. Roberts & Westad 2013 [Roberts, J. M.; Westad, Odd Arne (2013). The Penguin History of the World (Sixth ed.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-84614-443-1.], p. 53.

45. Roberts & Westad 2013.

46. Chakrabarti 2004 [Chakrabarti, Dilip K. (2004). "Introduction". In Chkrabarti, Dilip K. (ed.). Indus Civilization Sites in India: New Discoveries. Mumbai: Marg Publications. pp. 7–22. ISBN 978-81-85026-63-3.], pp. 10–13.

47. Allchin & Allchin 1997 [Allchin, Bridget; Allchin, Raymond (1997). Origins of a Civilization: The Prehistory and Early Archaeology of South Asia. New Delhi: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-87713-3.], pp. 153–168.

--- end Human History wiki extract ---

So Lower Mesopotamia is credited to have the first human civilization (and cities) in 3000 BCE by, presumably, scholars of history with the associated books being provided in the references above.

The Harappan civilization mentioned in above wiki extract is another name for Indus Valley Civilization and is dated as 2500 BCE in the extract. 

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) wiki page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation , gives us an earlier date as the starting period of IVC. The related extract is given below:

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation,[1] was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.[2][a]

[References:]

1. For example, in the titles of the works used to reference this article by Habib (2015), Marshall (ed., 1931 and 1996), Parpola (2015), Possehl (2002), and Sullivan (1964)

2. Wright 2009, p. 1.

a. Wright: "Mesopotamia and Egypt ... co-existed with the Indus civilization during its florescence between 2600 and 1900 BC."[2]

--- end IVC wiki extract ---

But even the Indus Valley Civilization is not viewed by mainstream historians to be related to what historians term as Vedic Age.

An extract from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_period

The Vedic period, or Vedic age (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (ca. 1300-900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, between the end of the Urban Indus Valley Civilisation and a second urbanisation which began in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600 BCE.

--- end extract from Vedic period wiki ---

So current history scholars date Vedas to 1300-900 BCE!

Now people like me think that these history scholars have got it terribly wrong. I believe in my beloved and revered Gurudev Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba's assertions in 1978 that Lord Rama and Lord Krishna were real people and that Rama lived around 20,000 years ago and Krishna lived over 5000 years ago. [Readers may want to view my related post: Sathya Sai Baba on historicity of Rama and Krishna, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2015/01/sathya-sai-on-historicity-of-rama-and.html .]

I believe that Ayodhya and Mithila, which are cities mentioned in Ramayana, are references to real cities. So I think these cities which I view as ancient Bharatiya cities and part of ancient Bhartiya civilization which I think is also called Vedic civilization, are much older than Sumerian cities of 3000 BCE. As per Sathya Sai Baba's assertion in 1978 that Lord Rama lived 20,000 years ago, ancient Bharatiya civilization and cities of Ayodhya and Mithila were existing around 18022 BCE.

I searched for info. on this topic and came across this interesting video: Indian civilization: The Untold Story | Raj Vedam | #SangamTalks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGyjvyXEKdc , 1 hr. 37 mins, published on 28th Feb. 2018. Note that this video is about ancient Indian civilization in general and does not delve in particular into Ramayana and cities mentioned in it like Ayodhya and Mithila.

Here is some info. from the video description: "In this talk Dr. Raj Vedam critiques present-day narratives, examines the evidence from a variety of scientific disciplines, and presents a unique, strong and compelling case for an untold prehistory of India." ... "Dr. Raj Vedam, MSEE, PhDEE, works at the confluence of applied mathematics, engineering, algorithms, and computer science. Using tools of Archeo-Genetics, archeo- astronomy and archaeology, and evidence of knowledge transfers from ancient India, the speaker has put forward a strong thesis with verifiable facts, on the antiquity of the Indian Civilisation, and the many discoveries made my (by?) the ancients."

I watched the whole video, in parts, from yesterday and finished the video viewing today. Interestingly, today on Facebook, I saw a post by Raj Vedam on this video crossing 1 million views: https://www.facebook.com/raj.vedam.1/posts/10226360621386381 ! Quite a coincidence, I think.

In the concluding remarks of his talk (see video at 1:36:49), Vedam says that he has "established evidence" that:

* Aryan Invasion/Migration into India did not happen (in other words, the Aryan Invasion Theory is false)

* Indian (Bharatiya) civilization has "cultural memory" of past 24,000 years.

 (and a couple of more such conclusions which are not relevant to this post)

Vedam says that he has examined evidence from the fields of Genetics, Astronomy, Archeology, Literary (sources) and "Knowledge-Transfers".

I do not have the background to verify the above conclusions made by Vedam. So I don't know whether these conclusions are valid. I don't know how these claims would be viewed by mainstream historian-scholars. However, I do find his arguments to be very interesting. I thank Raj Vedam for this talk and all the research and other work he has done in this area.

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On my FB post: https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/3218900788326476 associated with this post, I put up the following comment on 21st Sept. 2021:

I got a private response to contents of above post I had sent somebody with a 6 minute video by Raj Vedam on 27 wives of the moon. Here's a youtube video version of that: The 27 Nakshatra Model Simplified to Story as 27 wives of moon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpviXzrQo3s , 6 min. 12 secs.

I found it to be a nice one about ancient wisdom being encoded in such Sanathana Dharma stories.

[I thank Wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]