Tag: Notes from Bradford

The African origin of modern humans is the most widely accepted model in scientific (genetic) and paleoanthropological circles (Lahr and Foley 1994). The modern apes are not our ancestors. They share the same ancestor as human beings. That’s why they cannot evolve into human beings.

The hypothesis that humans had a single origin was noted by Darwin as far back as 1871.
Darwin described in his treatises: The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man that the Ape-like creatures at the head of human line of descent began to split 5 million years ago from those at the head of chimpanzees (chimps) line of descent.

The concept was speculative until recently – the 1980’s when it was corroborated by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) supported by anthropology of fossil findings.

Genetic and fossil evidence show that the archaic humans (hominids or Homo ergaster) evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago. Subsequently they dispersed to Eurasia and other continents within the last 100,000 years (Stringer and Andrews 1988).

The date of the successful “Out of Africa” model of migration has been considered to be relatively recent, about 60,000 years ago. Once out of Africa, the Homo sapiens migrated into Eurasia and replaced all populations, which descended from Neanderthals in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia.

The routes followed by these African migrants remain poorly understood. The widely accepted route was from northeast Africa they crossed the Red Sea to Levant (present Israel, Jordan and Lebanon), and travelled until they reached India where they split into two groups: each going separate ways. This finds support in the archaeological and fossil records (Lahr and Foley 1994).

Takahata et al (1995), using 15 DNA sequence, estimated and confirmed that the divergence of humans and chimps from a common ancestor occurred 4.7 million years ago.

One group expanded along the coastlines of southern Asia until they reached the ‘foundered continent’ of Sahul (now Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, all connected then as a land mass) some 46 thousand years ago. Another group travelled along the land route, northeast from India and later reached Europe.

A more recent view is that Austroasiatic speaking people such as Khasi in the northeast and Mundari in Chota-nagpur plateau (Jharkhand, Ranchi) were another wave of human migration from Africa to India and then to Indonesia and Australia (Nei and Ota 1991; Chu et al 1998; Sue et al 1999; Majumdar 2001).

The anthropological hypothesis is that these are prehistoric people, from the finding of skull and some fossil remains near Panchmare village in Gujarat, which were similar to the specimens found in northeast Africa (Kennedy 2000). The palaeoanthropological evidence
show that these Austroasiatic people inhabited India in the Palaeolithic period, about 60,000 years ago. This is supported by DNA markers.

Studies by Nicole Maca-Meyer et al (2001) concluded that “The first detectable expansion occurred around 59,000- 69,000 years ago from Africa, independently colonizing Western Asia and India, and following this southern route, swiftly reaching East Asia.

Khasi people (1 million) speak Khasi-Khymer – a subfamily of the Austroasiatic language, the others being Mundari, spoken by Munda tribal people of India and Nepal (17,000), and Mon-Khmer, spoken in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos (8 million).

The hypothesis that Homo sapiens including the Khasi people, originated in Africa, from which they expanded eastwards between 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, and 10,000 to 30,000 years later, the humans in western Asia spread to many areas including Europe and India, as well as back to northern parts of Africa, is based on genetic studies.

In genealogy, Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are the two most important parts of human genome in tracing our ancestral origin as they escape shuffling of genetic material between generations. Y is the one that makes a person male and it passes unchanged from father to son through generations.

Mitochondrial DNA also passes unchanged through generations. Vincent Cabera and colleagues from the University of La Laguna in Spain analysed the complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of 42 people in 2003.

Mitochondrial DNA is a very useful molecule for comparing different human populations because people inherit it entirely from their mother and the differences between mtDNA from different individuals accumulate over time as a result of mutations. Comparisons of mtDNA sequences from individuals representing different human lineages traced back 60,000 years.

Mitochondria live in the main body of the cell, outside the nucleus that holds the chromosomes. They generate chemical energy and heat. They are former bacteria that were enslaved a long time ago by animal cells.

According to American bacteriologist Lynn Margulis, Mitochondria were originally parasites, which attacked the larger bacteria, burrowing through the prey’s cell wall. Once safely inside they seal up the cell wall and eat the cell from within.

Over the generations, the mitochondrial ancestors evolved from the parasites that kill to less virulent parasites that kept their host alive to exploit it longer. Later still, the host cells began to benefit from the metabolic activities of the proto-mitochondria. Each came to benefit from each other.

When the sperm fuses with the egg all the sperm’s mitochondria are destroyed, leaving the fertilized egg containing only the mother’s mitochondria. All men in the world today carry the same Y chromosome, and both men and women carry the same maternal mitochondria.

The most ancient human mitochondrial lineages are L1, L2 and L3 specific for Africa. L3’s daughter lineages (northeast African) are M and N that left Africa to colonize temperate zones.

Lineage M is of particular interest in tracking the exodus of humans from Africa to India including Meghalaya and Manipur in the northeast. It can be used to infer information about the history of human migrations. The majority of people in Asia have been shown to carry mtDNA of a type known as haplogroup M, which has several subgroups.

Sue et al (2000) found that the Austro-Asiatic speaking tribals possess the highest frequencies of the ancient East Asian mtDNA HGM and exhibit the highest HVS1 nucleotide diversity, while high frequencies of Y-HGK are found among the Tibeto-Burman populations, mainly confined to northeast India and also among the Hans Chinese.

Their findings (Su et al 2000) indicate that the Tibeto-Burman speakers entered India from the northeastern corridor. The Dravidian tribals were possibly widespread throughout India before the arrival of the Indo-European speaking people, but retreated to southern India to avoid dominance.

Based on a study of Y- chromosomal haplotypes, Su et al (2002) have contended that after the proto-Tibetanburman people left their homeland in the Yellow River, the Baric branch moved southward and peopled the northeastern Indian region after crossing the Himalayas.

Analabha Basu et al (Ethnic India – a genomic view, 2003, Kolkata) studied the Austroasiatic speaking tribals, the Tibetoburman speaking tribals (Meitei excluded) and Dravidian speaking tribals of India. In their opinion, the Austroasiatic speaking tribals may be the earliest inhabitants of India whereas Tibetoburman speaking tribals are later immigrants from Tibet and Myanmar. The two groups can be differentiated on the basis of Y- chromosomal haplotypes.

A study by Sunghamitra et al (A prehistory of Indian Y- chromosome, 2005, Kolkata) found that the dyadic Y- chromosome composition of Tibetoburman speakers of India can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austroasiatic languages.

A recent study (2007) by Indian scientists, Kumar et al from Hyderabad in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology, North Eastern Hill University at Shillong, studied the Y- chromosome of the Khasi population and found evidence suggesting a common paternal heritage of Austroasiatic populations of India with those of the Southeast Asia.

Another study (2007) by Reddy et al from Hyderabad again in collaboration with the North East University at Shillong and Genome Institute of Singapore studied mtDNA and Y- chromosomes, SNP and STR data of the eight groups of the Austroasiatic from Northeast India and compared with those of other relevant Asian populations.

Their findings suggest that the Austroasiatic Khasi tribes represent a genetic continuity between the populations of South and Southeast Asia, thereby advocating that Northeast India could have been a major corridor for the movement of populations from India to East/Southeast Asia.

They found a distinct origin of the Khasi tribe in the predominantly though ethnically dissimilar Tibetoburman populations of Northeast India (Meitei excluded). The Khasi have Indian specific mtDNA.

The above views are consistent with my hypothesis that Austroasiatic speaking Khasi and non-Tibeto-Burman speaking Meitei are ethnically different from the Tibeto-Burman speaking tribals in Northeast India.

While Khasi language is definitely proven to be Austroasiatic, the Meitei language remains unclassified (previously ‘lumped’ erroneously as a Tibetoburman).

The Meitei language (spoken by 1.4 million) has some lexical cognates with the Kuki-Chin group (50 or so), but it does not serve as evidence for a special relationship as a Tibeto-Burman language. It only shows their absolute relationship (Matisoff & Van Driem 2001).

Van Driem has proposed the geographical name of Trans-Himalayan rather than Tibeto-Burman in 2004.

Cross-reference: This article is an excerpt from my Book – “The origin of the Meitei of Manipur & Meiteilon is not a Tibeto-Burman language” [2009, Dr I Mohendra Singh, B Sc,
MBBS, MD, MRCGP (London)]  ISBN -81-220-0713-9

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Van Driem (55), and an authority on Tibeto-Burman languages in collaboration with geneticists have led to advances in the reconstruction of Asian ethnolinguistic prehistory.  His theory is that Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatics are the first domesticators of Asian rice and published a theory on the homelands and prehistoric dispersal. He has replaced the unsupported Sino-Tibetan hypothesis with Tibeto-Burman phylogenetic model, for.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/02/how-did-the-khasis-of-meghalaya-come-from-africa/

By Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

On the enduring human question, where we came from, NASA puts it in this way:
“Knowing where we come from means understanding how the great chain of events unleashed after the Big Bang culminated in us and in everything we observe today.”

“It is the story of our cosmic roots, told in terms of all that precedes us: the origin and developments of our galaxies, stars, planets, and the chemical conditions necessary to support life.”

On November 26, Saturday at 15.02 GMT, NASA has launched a 900 kg robot (Curiosity) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to find if life has ever been on this planet, carrying a six-wheeled vehicle. It will take eight and half months to reach Mars.

The robot, the size of a mini car (3 m long) will land on a chosen site around the foot of a three mile high mountain. Its soil is known to contain exposed layers of sediment rich in clays and minerals that must have formed in water.

NASA has been looking for Earth-like planets to test the presence of life forms similar to those living on Earth, with the presence of large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The inability of NASA’s Viking 1 and Viking 2 interplanetary spacecraft in the 1970s, to detect life, based on Carbon dioxide chemistry on Mars in the past, may simply mean that there was no life on Mars or it may simply mean the experiments were not designed correctly.

In September 1965, a team of French astronomers, using a powerful telescope, studied the infrared spectrum of the atmosphere of Mars, and found that it is almost entirely carbon dioxide. The implication was that there was no life on Mars.

Encouraged by the recent discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s, both NASA and ESA (European space agencies) invested in very expensive telescopes. The American version was called the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and the European version, Darwin.

That was followed by attempts to find terrestrial planets ie planets more or less the size of Earth, Venus and Mars, in orbits more or less like those of Earth, Mars and Venus.

The astronomers were confident that within 20 years they would know for sure if there were other life-bearing planets within 50 light years of Earth. After finding life, the quest will continue to find if there is intelligent life out there.

Now, let us see what the scientists think of the beginning of life on earth. There is serious research going on to find the origin of life, distinct from the evolution of life.

Two scientists, Oparin and Haldane postulated that the early Earth were conducive to the formation of organic compounds from inorganic elements. This would have made it possible to form many chemicals common to all forms of life as they exist today. This scientific discipline is called prebiotic chemistry. They are making progress but not quite.

Another alternative theory is called Panspermia. This postulates that the first elements of life may have formed on another planet with more favourable conditions and they have been carried to Earth by a variety of means.

Recently, in October 2011, scientists found that the Cosmic dust (tiny particles of solid material floating around in space between the stars) that permeates the universe contains organic matter that could be created naturally and rapidly by stars.

Further, scientists suggested that these compounds may have been related to the development of life on earth, and said that “if this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life.” The quest goes on.

The sort of life NASA is looking for on Mars is a kind of microbial life though there is no atmosphere to support life today.

Mars is chosen out of all the planets. As the moon has no atmosphere (air) to support life, scientists have turned their search to Mars, because of the proximity and similarity to Earth.
Mars is known as the Red planet because it is covered with rust – the compound of iron-oxide.

As early as the 17th century Mars’ polar icecaps were observed. By the 19th century astronomers knew that Mars has a similar axial tilt similar to earth, which means it experienced seasons as earth does.

However, in 1894 a US astronomer William Campbell showed, by spectroscopic examination that neither water nor oxygen was present in the Martian atmosphere.

Many other observations and studies were made by many scientists to speculate the possibility of life on Mars. This has stimulated H G Wells to write The War of the Worlds in 1897. Some of us have seen the film and read the book.

As liquid water is necessary for known life and metabolism the search on the surface of Mars is primarily for water in any form and anywhere deep down. If water is present on Mars, the chance of its having supported life may have been determinant.

In 1965 Mariner Probe 4 performed the first successful ‘flyby’ of the planet Mars, returning from there first pictures of the Martian surface. The photographs showed the surface of Mars without rivers, oceans or any sign of life, and that it was covered in craters, indicating a lack of plate tectonics and weathering of any kind in the last 4 billion years.

The Viking Orbiters performed in the 1970s found evidence of possible river valleys and erosion and branched streams in many areas in the southern hemisphere.

Encouragingly and satisfyingly, NASA’s Phoenix Lander Spacecraft that touched down on Mars on May 25 2008 (died there later), has found for the first time and returned data from either of the poles that water in a sample of soil collected from the planet’s surface “has been touched and tested for the first time.”

The evidence so far shows that water was once widespread on Mars. This raised the prospect of finding water on Mars. Where there is water there is life. And so NASA launched Curiosity in the hope that the Red planet could have supported life, at least as microbes.

While talking about life on the planets, some scientists used to argue that life can only exist in regions where the temperatures are between 0degreesC and 100degreesC where liquid water can exist ie it is neither cold that water freezes, nor so hot that water boils. This is known as Stellar (or Solar) Habitable Zone (SHZ), which covers the region around a star.

The argument has been disputed by the fact that complex life forms like ourselves and others on Earth cannot survive at temperatures above 50OC. However, recent discoveries (late 1970s) by scientists who study the deep ocean floor have discovered the existence of “hydrothermal vents”.

These are vents that are thousands of meters below the surface of the sea with hot water where no sunlight ever reaches but teeming with life including the eyeless shrimps (Pompeii worms) that live where the water temperature exceeds 80OC. All they need, it seems, a supply of liquid water.

The planet Earth is in the middle of SHZ, while Venus, the next planet, nearer the Sun is too hot for liquid water to exist. Mars, the next planet away from the Sun is too cold. But Mars has possibilities for colonisation by the human race on earth, which is overcrowded with more than six billion people.

Mars has been chosen by NASA, among many other findings, because the recent NASA probes have hints to a warmer past on Mars, one in which water may have flowed and life might have existed. There is now evidence of water that may be frozen at the polar icecaps, the existence of carbon and oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.

To scientists, there are many similarities between the Martian atmosphere that exists today and the atmosphere that existed on Earth billions of years ago, such as the complete absence of oxygen but full of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. It was not until photosynthetic bacteria developed on earth, which produced enough oxygen that allowed the development of animals, which eventually evolved into humans.

Scientists have envisaged that the human race could one day make Mars habitable by altering the current climate and atmosphere to more closely resemble that of the Earth’s. This process is called “terraforming”.

That is the reason why a serious search for life on Mars has begun

PS. The good news is that an article in the Daily Telegraph, December 6 2011, announced that NASA has found a planet (Kepler 22B), very similar to our Earth, and has been identified as a potential future home for mankind. It contains both land and an average temperature of around 72 OF (22 OC). It is however 600 light years from earth (compare with 0.0000007 light years to Mars). It is expected to be in the SHZ.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh (at) onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/02/the-real-search-for-life-on-mars-begins/

By Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

Dr. Irengbam Mohendra Singh

We all think that water was always there on Earth. No, it’s not true. Water was brought to Earth from space before the arrival of living organisms. The planetary scientists have now evidence to conclude that asteroids were the main source of Earth’s water while comets had contributed a mere 10 per cent.

Why do we drink water? The answer is we feel thirsty. We are thirsty because we are dehydrated. Dehydration means we are losing water more than we consume. How do we know we are dehydrated? There is a thirst centre in the hypothalamus of our brain that gives the signal.

Water is literally vital for life because life needs a solvent as a medium in which all the body chemicals dissolve and chemical reactions can take place. There is no liquid better than water.

Water is very important because each molecule of water has a magnetic property ie one end of the molecule behaves like a weak magnetic north pole and the other end as the weak magnetic south pole. Other molecules have the same property.

We know that the opposite poles of magnets attract each other (+ -). This polarity causes the not only the water molecules but molecules of chemicals dissolved in this water to line up in certain ways, determining the shape of the aminoacid molecules that is vital for life.

Aminoacids (20 of them) are the building blocks of proteins used in every cell in our body, making up three fourths of our body.

Another strange property of water is that solid water ie ice floats in water. It is because the solid water is less dense than liquid water. When water freezes its molecules line up to form a very open crystalline structure, in which the molecules are arranged farther apart than they were in liquid water.

In other substances, the molecules are closer together in the solid form and thus it is denser than in the liquid form. During the Ice Age, ice forms a skin on top of top of the ocean at high latitude, keeping the water underneath at warmer temperature.

If the ice sank to the bottom of the sea the top layer of the uncovered water would freeze in its turn. If the process repeated the whole ocean would have been a large solid ball of water.

So, as far as we know life needs the presence of liquid water. In terms of solvent power ammonia is the next best, but it lacks many properties of water and is not essential for life.

Scientists believe that water facilitated the formation of the planet’s first life forms – acting as a medium in which organic compounds could mix with one another (primordial soup) and possibly protecting them from the sun’s radiation.

During the process of evolution from simple one-celled organisms to most complex plants and animals, water has played a critical role in survival technique.

In humans water acts as a solvent and a delivery mechanism, dissolving essential vitamins and nutrients from food and delivering them to cells. Our bodies also use water to flush out toxins through urine and faeces. It regulates body temperature by sweating and aids in our metabolism by the digestive juices secreted internally and by hormones.

Water has also promoted human life in other ways eg by providing fish and aquatic vegetables for food. It has helped in the advancement of civilisation, taking people and animals from one part of the world to the other by boat.

Water can exist as vapour to provide humidity. It can be stored in the atmosphere as clouds and be delivered as rain across the planet to help vegetations grow. The vast oceans serve as home for a variety of marine life.

The beautiful Siroi lily in the mountain ranges of Ukhrul or the colourful lotuses in the Loktak Lake at Moirang, of Manipur would not have grown without water.

While we know that water is vital for life on this Earth, scientists have wondering if life is at all possible without water, but with some other fluid medium on other planets.

What else is there apart from water? Scientists have come up with ammonia and formaldehyde, being the most eligible liquids. But they have problems with them.

Liquid ammonia only exists at extremely cold temperatures, at which organisms would not have energy (heat) for their metabolism. Formaldehyde on the other hand, remains liquid at a larger range of temperature than water and is capable of dissolving many organic materials. But scientists have found no evidence that it can support life. Indeed it is poisonous to the present life forms.

However, new research by George Cody along with Conel Alexander and Larry Nittler from Carnegie Institute for Science, USA, suggests that formaldehyde may have helped in the primitive solar system to create the organic compounds present in the universe that gave rise to life.

Another recent study suggests that an alternative life form might be lurking in our solar system. Researchers studying Titan – a ‘moon’ orbiting Saturn, noticed that hydrogen in the moon’s atmosphere wasn’t found on its surface. One explanation for the missing hydrogen is that life forms are consuming it, just as we consume oxygen.

Water makes up 60 percent of our body and it needs replacement everyday. Nobody survives without water more than a few days but one can without food.

Scientists have been debating on how much water a person needs everyday. Nobody knows how much water one should drink everyday. To some extent, it depends on the age, size, level of physical exercise and the existing climate.

Recent studies have revealed that there is no set requirement of water per day. But the rule of thumb is that you should drink when you are thirsty (dehydrated). If your urine is white or slightly yellow, it’s a good indication that you are hydrated.

However, there have been some calculations since I was a medical student that an average person should drink 1.2 litres of water every day to complement 2 litres of water we get from food. To put it in another way, one should drink 8 glasses of water every day (each glass = 8oz).

Based on the belief that life will exist where there is water, the search for water on other planetary bodies has taken a giant leap forward in recent months. In November 2011, NASA announced that it had found substantial quantities of water on the Moon. Later, in December the Cassini spacecraft obtained data about one of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, that may confirm the presence of sub-surface liquid water on the Moon.

Until recently, scientists were puzzled that water could survive in liquid or vapour form in the ‘disc of materials’ from which the planets formed (theory of gravitational collapse of giant molecular cloud). They have explained that there is plenty of hydrogen in the “clouds” (produced by the Big Bang) from which stars formed. The hydrogen combines with all the available oxygen to convert it to water (H20).

In the stratosphere of Earth the ultraviolet radiations from the sun are constantly converting oxygen molecules (O2) into ozone (03), but other chemical reactions convert the ozone to oxygen as fast as it is formed. There is thus a permanent layer of ozone high over our heads, which filter most of the ultraviolet radiations coming to us.

Likewise, within the “cloud of materials” from which planets started to form, there is a similar shielding effect. This allows complex and more complex molecules to exist from their interactions. They provide a rich source of organic compounds with which planets can be seeded with life.

But the question is how water and complex organic molecules got down to earth after the planet had cooled off sufficiently to stop the water boiling away. Scientists say that they came from small planets, which always contained water, and never got hot enough for the water to vaporise.

When Earth was young, Jupiter is in the right place to have sent to it just enough asteroids rich in water. The earth contains less than 1 per cent water but the debris in the Asteroid belt (the region of the solar system located between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter). contains 10 per cent water.

Findings of the proportion of water in meteorite samples (that have fallen on earth) confirm that Earth acquired its volatile materials from impacts at a late stage of the formation of the planet. The recent discovery of water locked up in the moon rocks also confirms the hypothesis.

Because Earth did form along with a large moon, and it did have oceans of liquid water, life could get started on this planet. But we are still waiting for the scientific evidence of how life first came about on Earth and subsequently evolved into intelligent humans as we are now. The evidence will come one day, I am sure.

The writer is based in the UK Email: imsingh (at) onetel.com Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Posted on KanglaOnline: 2012-02-12

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/02/why-water-is-vital-for-life-how-did-it-come-to-earth/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

One Kristine Hawkins writes in response to my article: Scientists are nearer to finding the non-existence of God.

“Why does God have to be separated from Science. If you read the bible you will learn that God is Light, and the power of it. There is no time with God so what ever way he created all that it takes to be the universes or matter or antimatter or neutrinos or any other parts of what it takes for things to be. Are part of what he is. All things come from and are part of him. Which we call him, (him) so that we can connect with it. As we and all things are part of it. God is all. So really all your studies are the study of God.”

PS. If you read Genesis, you will see that God said let the waters bring forth life, and all started with light and dark matter, and water. Genesis 1:20. And also it may help you understand the order of Science.

WHEN I was in school I was taught in Astronomy classes that the earth was a bit of the Sun, which gradually cooled down forming a hard crust. It was not far from the truth.

It was more than half a century ago. Since then science has been making new discoveries in astronomy, astrophysics, anthropology, biology and other disciplines. For example: NASA’s Hubble Space telescope has just discovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stage of forming.

The famous American scientist, Carl Saga writes in his book, Demon-Haunted World:
“There is much that science doesn’t understand; many mysteries still to be solved. In a universe of tens of billions of light years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case for ever. Yet some New Age and religious writers assert that scientists believe that ‘what they find is all there is”.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions such as the existence of God. It counsels us to carry alternative hypothesis in our heads and see which best fit the facts. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.

God did not create the earth as it is believed in every religion. The earth was formed from the debris of the explosion in the Big Bang – a hypothesis that has been agreed as a closed debate.

Almost all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the Earth’s birth.

I often quote the Bible in my writings as it is the most scientifically studied book of religion, and it is useful as reference book in English, for comparison in theological perspectives.

I am not anti-Christian, nor anti-Hindu nor anti-Islam. They are all the same to me.

According to the Bible, the earth is only 6,015 years old. This is arrived at from some imaginative calculation of Earth’s age by James Ussher (Irish Protestant Bishop in Dublin) in 1650 (Cromwell’s time).

He calculated it by adding up the ages of 21 generations of people in the Hebrew Old Testament, beginning with Adam and Eve that the Earth was created 4004 years ago. To be exact, the time and date of creation was on the “nightfall preceding Sunday, October 23 4004 BCE
(2)
Christians for centuries had assumed a history of the Earth, roughly corresponding to Ussher’s chronology. Shakespeare, in ‘As You Like It’, has his character Rosalind say, “The poor world is almost six thousand years old.”
Many ‘Young earth creationists’ have argued that Genesis 5 and 11 provide all the information necessary to conclude that Creation occurred less than 5,000 years before the birth of Christ.
Ussher’s chronology has been subject to many criticisms. If Bible is to be believed, they were an exceptionally long-lived lot. For example: Genesis tells us that “Adam lived 930 years and he died.” Adam gave birth to his first son, Seth when he had “lived 130 years”, at which time no human man will have any sperm living in his testicles.
Palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould points out in an essay on Ussher, that the bishop’s calculation of the date of creation fuelled much ridicule from scientists who pointed to him as “a symbol of ancient and benighted authoritarianism.”
Now, scientists calculate that the proto-Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago from the rotating cloud of dust and gas containing hydrogen and helium, created shortly after the Big Bang.

The age of the earth is one-third of the age of the universe. The proto-Earth grew by accretion, billions of years ago and the planet is still forming and changing everyday.

Scientists have made computer simulation of the formation of the Earth. It has shown that it
was about a million years after the Big Bang when the Sun and planets formed from the cloud.

It is thought that there were about twenty to thirty large objects and a huge number of planetisimals in the space between the Sun and Mars. These large objects would have had the size ranging between the Moon and the Mars.

There were constant collisions between the large objects themselves and between the large and smaller objects.

It is hypothesised that one very large collision – a glancing blow by a large object of solid rocks to another was responsible for tilting the Earth to an angle and forming the moon as a separate planet about 4.53 billion years ago.

This hypothesis is referred to as the “Big Splash” by astronomers. The hypothetical impactor named Theia after the Greek goddess who gave birth to Selene, the Moon goddess is thought to have been a bit smaller than the current planet Mars.

The collision would have melted the surface of the earth as well as the outer layer of the incoming object, splashing away the mixed molten material around the Earth forming a ring of debris.

During this process the dense metallic core of the incoming object would have sunk through this molten outer layer and settled into the core of the young Earth.

(3)
The proto-Earth grew by accretion, until the inner part of the proto-Planet was hot enough to melt heavy iron-like metals, which sank to the Earth’s centre, known as Iron catastrophe, 10 million years after the Earth began to form, generating the Earth’s magnetic field.

Over time, such cosmic collisions ceased by a natural process, allowing the Earth to cool and form a solid crust all around. As the surface of the Earth cooled, the material in the ring around the earth fused with the moon, and thus a new planet was formed around the Sun.

The early atmosphere surrounding the Earth was of light (atmophile) elements from the solar nebula, consisting mostly hydrogen and helium, but the Earth’s heat would
have driven away this atmosphere.

When the Earth accreted to about 40 percent of its present radius, its gravitational pull retained the present atmosphere which included water.

The theory of this formation of Earth-Moon system was evidenced from a sample of rock brought back from the Moon during the Apollo programme that shows exactly the same components as the Earth’s crust.

The radiometric estimation of the age of the Moon rock gives the scientists a precise date for when the collision took place – 4.4 billion years ago, almost as soon as the Sun was formed.

Scientists have now found the oldest rocks on Earth on the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec. They are 4.28 billion years old.

John Gribbin, “The master of popular science writing” writes that there are more circumstantial evidence. The glancing blow would have made the Earth rotate so rapidly, once every 24 hours, while Venus rotates once every 243 of our hours.
The spinning has been slowing down ever since.

The glancing blow gave the earth its tilt and that is why the earth has seasons. The presence of a large Moon orbiting the earth has since acted as gravitational stabilizer over geological times.

Seismic measurements of moonquakes by instruments left over the Moon show that it has no significant metallic core especially iron. This is why the Earth has a stronger magnetic field.

The impact theory explains why the Earth – one out of eight planets in the Solar system has a moon (roughly 27 per cent of the diameter of the earth today) fairly comparable in size to the parent planet, Earth.

Gribbin says, the most likely explanation is that the Earth began life with a thick rocky crust while another object, about the size of the Mars, formed nearby. The most like place for this object to form would have been at one of the two places known as
Lagrangian points. These are 60 degrees ahead or behind the Earth but in the same
(4)
orbit around the Sun.

Lagrangiain points are locations where gravitational forces and orbital motions of a body balance each other. These are places where small objects can accumulate and stick around for a long time. There are five points in the Sun-Earth system.

The Lagrangian points are now used as stable parking places for satellites, such as the Herschel infrared telescope.

Evidence that such collusions took place is derived from the explanation that if there had been a head-on collision, all the lighter material would have been blasted away into space, leaving only the heavy core behind.

The impact hypothesis, according to Gribbin, explains why only one out of eight planets in the Solar System has a moon comparable in size to the parent planet

Over geological time water was brought to Earth by comets and asteroids and oceans formed. The process of plate tectonics played a major role in the shaping of the Earth’s oceans and continents as well as the life they harbour.

Earth became habitable and the earliest life forms that arose, released oxygen in the atmosphere. Life on earth remained small and microscopic for at least a billion years.

Only during the Cambrian period – the beginning of the Phanaerozoic Eon (the current Eon in geological time scale app. 544 – 570 million years ago), there began a rapid diversification into many of the modern life forms.

Because of a gradual change in geological time as the Earth gets older we now have a technological civilisation on Earth.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/02/how-was-the-earth-formed/

Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh January 15 2012

A normal science involves the acquisition of experimental data. It requires a certain scientific method in doing so. ‘World of Earth Science’ in 2003 explained the scientific method:

Looking at the scientific model of our planet, it is not always apparent that science can predict the natural events, but a little deeper reflection, usually can reveal the predictive value of any scientific activity.

Scientists have been trying to understand nature. The formulation of the scientific model of Earth has not always been subject to limitation of technique. Scientists can choose any technique. A new technique in postulating new scientific discoveries has been a way of validating new models. This is what is called the scientific method.

Scientists have now scientific evidence for postulating how the earth was formed and how the continents, oceans and everything on this earth were formed though still, it is only a hypothesis. Likewise, Stephen Hawkins’s Big Bang theory is a hypothesis but based on scientific evidence.

For years theoretical physicists postulated the existence of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation as a leftover from the Big Bang that occurred 13.7 billion years ago. It was finally mapped by Microwave Anisotropy Probe – a satellite sent up by NASSA. For this,
Pezias and Wilson were awarded Nobel Prize for physics for the joint discovery in 1978.

Alfred Wegner, a German meteorologist in 1912 first put the idea that continents and oceans began to form about 300 million years ago.

He postulated that continents had formed as a single “super continent” from the volcanic rocks. The single land mass was called Pangaea (Greek for “all the earth”). Pangaea had later split due to earthquakes and its pieces had been moving away from each other ever since (Continental drift).

There was only one ocean called Tethys (name of Greek god – mother of Oceanus) that existed between Asia and Australia – Antarctica during the Mesozoic era.

By the late 1960’s geologists, with the help of ocean surveyors began to understand what goes on beneath our feet. The theory of plate tectonics was formed and well supported. In the last 40 years the theory of plate tectonics has enabled scientists to view the mysteries surrounding the formation of continents and oceans.

The Theory of plate tectonics is probably the most important geological hypothesis ever developed, after the Theory of Continental Drift espoused by Alfred Wegner in the early 20th century. The scientific community at that time ridiculed Wegner and flatly rejected his hypothesis.

The theory of plate tectonics was formulated by American, Canadian and British geophysicists. It explains the earthquakes, volcanoes, the formation of mountains, and other
geophysical phenomena to interactions of the rigid plates forming the earth’s crust. The word tectonics derives from the Greek tektonikos, meaning ‘pertaining to construction’.

Dr Robert Ballard at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, wrote in 1983: “plate tectonics not only vindicated Wegner, it transformed geology as profoundly as the theories of evolution
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and relativity transformed biology and physics.”

The interior of Earth is divided into crust, mantle and core. According to the theory, the earth’s surface layer, or lithosphere (the upper layer of earth’s interior, including the crust and
the ‘brittle’ portion of the top mantle), consists of seven large and eighteen smaller plates that move and interact in various ways. They converge, diverge and slip past one another creating the earth’s seismic and volcanic activities.

These plates are not fused with each other but they are in constant but slow motion. This is what is known as “Continental drift”. This term is now replaced by “plate tectonics” (plate building).

These plates lie atop a layer of partly molten rock called the asthenosphere. These plates can carry both continents and oceans, or exclusively one or the other. Example: the Pacific plate is
entirely oceanic. The continental plates are lighter than the oceanic plates at the bottom of the sea.

According to John Gribbin, scientist and the master of popular science writings, at the heart of understanding plate tectonics is the discovery that the sea floor is also spreading.

The direct observations from the space, magnetic surveys of sea floor, seismography have produced many lines of evidence that there are cracks in the sea floor where molten materials from beneath the crust (magma) well up to the surface in a ridge, and then pushes out on either side of the crack, where it sets, especially in the Atlantic.

But the reverse destruction of the sea floor is also going, driving down back into the interior of the earth, somewhere, especially under a continent. The Pacific Ocean is shrinking as a result at about the same rate as the Atlantic Ocean is expanding. As these happen far out in the sea these earthquakes and underwater volcanoes do not bother us.

When the hot fluid material from beneath the surface of the earth rises and breaks though continents and cracks them apart, new oceans form, as it is happening in East Africa today. And sometimes continents collide, as the seafloor between them shrinks away to nothing, forming new mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas.

Continental plates are composed mainly of granite, while oceanic plates are mostly basalt, which is considerably heavier. The continents are thus lighter and buoyant and hence float higher on the earth’s mantle than the ocean’s crust does.

The average depth of the ocean is 3,800 m more than four times the average height of the continents, and two thirds of the planet is covered by sea.

John Gribbin says: “It is clear that these processes can only operate on a planet, like the earth, with a relatively thin crust of solid material on top of the fluid layers beneath. Without water none of this would happen; without water, there would be no plate tectonics.”

He says all these processes are necessary for the existence of life on earth. Gases bubble out of magma and rises to the surface, where they are released at volcanic vents, as water vapour,
carbon dioxide and nitrogen. All these gases are used by life on earth, maintaining the balance
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and regulate the earth’s temperature.

John Gribbin argues that without the combination of thin crust and water of the earth technology would not have been possible. And without the metals, intelligence alone, the technological civilisation would not have happened.
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There is scientific evidence that more than half of the continental crust that exists today had already formed by 2.5 billion years ago when the earth was struck by a series of major impacts. The rest was produced in just 700,000 years, less than a fifth of its life time to date.

There is direct evidence for these impacts in geological features known as Crations found in some ancient rocks. And there is indirect evidence from the battered face of the moon, from which astronomers can estimate how many impacts of different sizes affected the earth and its neighbour moon during different intervals of geological time.

Gribbin put this in perspective: the asteroid implicated in the death of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago was only 10 km across. The incoming piece of debris, say, at a speed of 20
km per second, would smash straight into the underlying crust, generating so much heat that it
would melt the surface of the earth into a lake of liquid rock, perhaps 400 km across.

The theory is very attractive by no means certain that plate tectonics helped tremendously in continent building. This is similar to my theory of the origin of Meitei language. At such a distance in time, any explanation must be speculative. One can take it or leave it. There is no point in arguing unless one has a more plausible hypothesis.

Andrew Glikson, of the Australian National University has a plausible explanation, but it is rather mouthful and is beyond the compass of this article.

The old theory of Wenger was right but he could not explain exactly how the continental drift had occurred. The answer now, is the plate tectonics.

The plate tectonics is new and widely accepted theory. It provides a convincing explanation of such phenomena as continental drift, earthquakes, mountain formation and volcanic eruptions. It explains the processes that have shaped the Earth in terms of plates and their movement.

The significance of plate tectonics as the “unifying theory” is emphasised by its inclusion in the book, The Five Biggest Idea of Science. Alongside plate tectonic theory there are four other monumental ideas: (1) the atomic model; (2) the periodic law, (3) the big bang theory; and (4) the theory of evolution in biological sciences.

Plate tectonics is now accepted as ‘central requirement for life on Earth because it is necessary for keeping the planet supplied with water after it supplied it with land. Without continents there would be no humans and Americans (NASA) would not have sent a
Mars Rover atop a rocket to Mars on November 2 2011, in its eight and half months’ journey to find life on it.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/plate-tectonics-how-the-continents-and-oceans-were-formed/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

I received emails from an American lawyer who “loved my article” and another from a Dane who didn’t like my article, both as educated response to my article – “Scientists are nearer to proving non-existence of God”.

The American writes: “I was on Google news and saw your article. I had to tell you that I love reading your article. Although I am an attorney by trade and not schooled in the hard sciences I love the process of discovering new truths. As an atheist, you encapsulated my views on why religion has too large a margin for error to be true. I just wanted to say I enjoyed the read, keep it up.”

The Dane writes:

i just read your http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/scientists-are-nearer-to-proving-non-existence-of-god/
article

WHY ARE YOU SO HELLBENT ON TRYING TO PROVE GOD DOESN’T EXIST?

extrapolating god’s existence from whether or not a human concept of a neutrino can
be identified or measured is really stretching it

It is amazing how different people presented with the same scientific results
can interpret them with such diametrically opposing points

you refer to a creation without a creator?
if you propose god doesn’t exit, maybe you should start avoiding use of this term??

thanks

Einstein had been unable to find a place for God in space (sky) – the eclectic choice where God was believed to live for generations. It was quite a disappointment for me.

The famous American scientist, Carl Saga writes in his book, Demon-Haunted World:
There is much that science doesn’t understand; many mysteries still to be solved. In a universe of tens of billions of light years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case for ever. Yet some New Age and religious writers assert that scientists believe that ‘what they find is all there is’.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypothesis in our heads and see which best fit the facts. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.

I studies for B Sc degree in physics and biology in Naini Tal, but was taught hardly anything about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Later in life in the 1990s when semi-retired I began to read books. Still the theory of relativity was written in scientific language and was not understood.

The theory of relativity is famous for being incomprehensible. In essence, it means that time and space, and gravity have no separate existence from matter. Matter is continuous fields in space-time.

The dominant view in physics is that the physical world is four-dimensional, philosophically, and as a mathematical model that can be proved by calculus. “Space” appears to be three-
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dimensional, with the assumption that we can locate anything in the universe using three
coordinates – occupying a certain position in our three-dimensional continuum.

By “space” we mean space beyond the Earth’s atmosphere – a three-dimensional and boundless expanse in which objects and events occur, and have relative position and direction.

Space and time is closely connected with the scientific picture of the world. For example: with the speed of current technology it will take four years to reach Mars from Earth.

We exist in space-time. Space is endless and time is endless. The flow of time is beyond human control. We have the power to neither halt nor prolong it. We can not go back in time either, as they do in science fiction movies.

In the physical model, the spacetime (or space-time continuum) is usually interpreted with space as being three dimensional and time as the fourth dimension ie the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.

The word “universe” is often taken to mean “everything that exists at the present time”.

To say that space has three-dimensions (length, breadth and depth) is like saying that the surface of the earth is observed only in two-dimensional slices of horizontal planes though having three dimensions with three coordinates – latitude, longitude and elevation from sea level.

According to particle physics and theory of relativity, at least ten dimensions of space existed at the beginning of the universe (with the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago from an initial spacetime singularity).

However, we can directly observe only three dimensions of space plus time dimension, known as spacetime. The other six are mumbo-jumbo or, rather incredibly compact dimensions of space.

Recently, I have been studying cosmology when I read a book by Richard Dawkins – Modern Scientific Writing (2008) in which he simplifies everything in any scientific discipline though he is a zoologist by profession.

Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist and ethologist. He is the most outspoken atheist in the world and believes that religion is incompatible with science. He is well known for his criticism of creation and intelligent design. He was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1996-2008.
Modern physics is essentially mathematical. It also makes considerable use of time ie mathematical time, replacing part of the Newtonian (17th century) conceptions upon which our knowledge of the universe was built.
Cosmological science needs theoretical physics like the Big Bang. The term “cosmos” comes from the Greek word meaning “order”, as opposed to chaos. Cosmology (study began in Greece, 6th century BCE) is the study of the nature of the universe.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) expanded his Special Theory (that applies to all phenomena with the exception of gravitation, published in 1905), to include the effects of gravitation on the shape of the space and the flow of time.
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His theory, referred to as the General Theory of Relativity or, simply as General Relativity (abbreviated, published in1915), proposed that “matter” causes space to curve.
In cosmology, the term matter includes visible and invisible ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’- currently poorly understood forms of mass and energy.
In cosmology, gravitation is the dominating force, overwhelming all others because of the vast mass of the cosmos and the expanding universe.

Richard Dawkins explains: Einstein spotted that although gravitation manifests itself as a force, it may also be understood in a completely different way in terms of ‘warped geometry’.

The rules of geometry we learned in school were established in Greece, referred to as Euclidean geometry after Euclid, who wrote it down. One of theorems that can be proved by Euclid’s axioms is that the three angles of any triangle add up to two right angles (1800).

This theorem works only on a flat surface eg on the Earth’s surface on a map, but it does not work on the curved or warped surfaces such as a globe, on which a triangle can contain three
right angles (2700).

He explains: If a flat triangle (ie it lies in a plane such as a blackboard) is drawn around the sun the three angles will be equivalent to 1800. Euclid’s geometry applies to this situation.

But if a flat triangle is drawn round the sun, the angles add up to a bit more than 1800.
The sun’s gravitational field distorts the Euclidian geometry of space in its vicinity ie the sides of the triangle are the straightest lines possible in the curved geometry.

Einstein himself, thought that the answer will be slightly greater than 1800, even though the triangle is flat, because the sun’s gravitation would warp the three dimensional geometry
around it.

Before Einstein almost everybody believed that space was flat with Euclidian geometry. But Einstein’s theory of general relativity proposed that a gravitational field can warp three-dimensional space, necessitating the use of non-Euclidian geometry to describe it.

Pilots and navigators are well aware of this and have to use different geometrical rules while flying to cope with the earth’s curvature.

Einstein thought the cosmos was static and finite, which he called “cosmological constants”, adding that the velocity of light was also constant (186,202 miles per second).

He was however, proved wrong by Hubble’s expanding universe, He admitted his “greatest blunder of his career” in favour of the Big Bang on February 3 1931, in the library of Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles.

He expanded Newton’s laws of gravitation by adding that space and time were also affected by gravity, in a flexible spacetime beyond earth by matter that will bend space in and out, or leave it flat where there is no gravitational pull.

It is also true that the sun’s gravity also bends light rays passing near it and thus distorting the angles because of unstable sides of the triangle.

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But the space is irreducibly curved and the straightening of the light beams will not restore Euclid’s geometry. This warping of space around the sun is tiny but measurable.

Arthur Eddington, the English astronomer, accompanied by Einstein, found during the total solar eclipse occurring on May 29, 1919 in Brazil and Africa, the position of the background stars appeared to change, thus demonstrating that the light from the stars was influenced by the sun’s gravitational field. That finding confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity (1915).

Furthermore, Einstein demonstrated that space is linked to time in a manner that makes it natural to consider space and time together as spacetime. Time itself cannot exist in the absence of matter and space. Space has three dimensions and time has one, making four dimensions in all. So he proposed that it is spacetime that is warped.

Even the much smaller earth’s timewarp is measurable by the fact that clocks tick slightly faster at higher altitude eg on a mountain top than at sea level.

The question I want to ask now is, as there are so many stars, gas and dust, which form the observable universe with about 10¯50 tonnes of visible matter, all of which combine to form a very stronger gravitational field, what would be the overall shape of the space?

Einstein set out to answer this question in 1917, two years after he first presented the theory of relativity. By applying the idea of warped space to cosmology he introduced several important features.

He postulated that the sun’s rays would be bent or curved by gravitational tug. That is, space could be either flat or curved inwards or outwards.

As the stars like the sun create small distortions, in Einstein’s mathematical model of the universe the curvature accumulates so that, averaged out over billions of light years, the shape
of space resembles a three-dimensional version of the surface of a sphere – hypersphere.

As the microwave radiation from space is so uniform it indicates that as far as we can see out there the space is fairly regular in shape though the universe has positive and negative curvatures. The space is also flat surface, which according to cosmologists, is within observable accuracy of about 2 per cent.

The reader might be surprised to know that there are many who are anti to the theory of relativity. These underground (faceless and nameless) “dissidents” bring out theories to prove that Einstein is wrong. But they are just hot air.

It is partly because Einstein was agnostic and kept his disbelief in God away from the ignorant public, saying that he did not believe in a personal God. Secondly, Einstein’s theory found no evidence of God’s presence in the cosmos.

It is a new front in the war against science that is based on “facts” while religion is based on “faith”.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@ometel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/einstein%E2%80%99s-general-theory-of-relativity-%E2%80%93-no-place-for-god-in-the-sky/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

It was in October 2010 that I wrote about the beginning of the search for the subatomic particle – ‘neutrino’ known as Higgs boson, nick-named ‘god particle’ that has an undetermined mass and travels at near the speed of light.

At last, scientists are nearer to finding the beginning of the universe without God. On Wednesday December 14 2011 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva have revealed the conclusive evidence of their finding of the Higgs boson – the mysterious subatomic particle neutrino and there are hopes the findings could be confirmed next year.

The experiments’ main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson if it exits is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the Atlas experiment and 115-127 GeV by CMS experiment.

The Standard Model is the science of particle physics – the existence of matter – the fundamental building blocks of the universe.

At the beginning of the universe, the space was completely filled with matter that was very hot and dense. As the matter expanded and cooled, the eventually produced the stars, the galaxies we see in the universe today. The space has no centre as it has no edge.

The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle, the existence of which was proposed by the British physicist Peter Higgs in the sixties. It is thought to provide everything in the universe with mass. Without it there cannot be universe except for the intervention of God.

Isaac Newton proved that the mass is the source of gravity. Albert Einstein proved by his E=mc2 that mass can be converted to energy. But no body knows what mass is and where it comes from. This is the crux of this research.

The Higgs theory is that mass arises when particles, such as protons and neutrons interact with “Higgs field” – a sort of force field that permeates everything. The Higgs boson allows the Higgs field to interact with particles that have mass.

Neutrino (Italian word for “little neutral one”) is a subatomic particle with almost no mass and no electrical charge ie neutral. As they hardly interact with solid matter, billions of them are supposed to be passing through our body at any time. In fact they can even pass though the entire Earth without being affected.

Neutrinos are everywhere. They permeate the very space all around us. Most of these neutrinos are from the Sun, created by nuclear reactions. They are therefore thought to have played an important role in the creation of the universe.

Neutrinos are fundamental particles that were first formed in the first second of the Big Bang, before atoms could form

The scientists at CERN, the giant particle accelerator, straddling the Swiss-French border has also made a revolutionary discovery though unconfirmed, that neutrinos travel faster than light.

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From 2009 through 2011 the massive OPERA detector buried in a mountain in Gran Sasso, Italy, recorded neutrinos generated at CERN arriving a smidgen early, faster than light can
move in a vacuum. One hundred and sixty physicists from 11 countries collaborate on the OPERA experiment, which is largely funded by the French, Japanese and Italian governments.

Some 16,000 wispy neutrinos zooming underground in Europe apparently have been outracing light by 60 billionth of a second.

In Illinois, America, Fermilab scientists operate a similar experiment, called MINOS that shoots neutrinos from Illinois to an underground detector in Minnesota. In 2007, MINOS sniffed a hint of faster-than-light neutrinos, but the margin of error was too big to make a claim.

In 2013, the upgraded MINOS detector will restart. It could than confirm or refute their earlier findings. They would be looking at a whole new set of rules for how the universe
works.

Professor Jenny Thomas, on of the MINOS scientists said “Now we have seven times more data.” The team will verify CERN’s findings in the next year and if positive, it will show as to how the neutrinos have outclassed Einstein’s theory.

If confirmed, the finding would throw 106 years of physics into chaos. The rules might bend or break Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, published in 1905. That was a theory that tied together space and time, matter and energy. It set a limit for the speed of light, later measured to be about 186,000 miles per second.

Scientist at LHC, are nearly solving the age old problem of symmetry between matter and antimatter. In theory, when the universe began there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That is, there should have been positively charged particles like a proton and negatively charged antiprotons. In that case they should have promptly wiped out each other.

This theory means no stars, no galaxy, no earth and no us. But we are here and therefore there must have been an imbalance.

The LHC scientists have discovered the unexpected difference between matter and antimatter particles that could explain why there is an excess of matter. This “supersymmetry” may explain the existence of the elusive “dark matter” that are believed to hold galaxies together.

Whatever, we do not have to wait too long. It is only the next year. If the neutrinos exist, Albert Einstein will be rolling in his grave. A faster than light traveller shocks physicists at the moment.

Why has the finding of neutrino got to do with the existence of God? This is the question I am going to try to answer.

It is simply that the mysteries of the universe, unlike the mysteries of God, are getting solved gradually by scientific investigations.

For most astronomers, the fact that the universe began after the Big Bang is a closed debate. The Big Bang marks the instant at which the universe came into existence and all the matter in the cosmos started to expand 14 billion years ago, dating back to just 10¯43 second (10 million trillion trillionth of a second) after the Big Bang.
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Before the Big Bang all four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force, were unified, but physicists have yet to develop a workable theory that can describe these conditions.

Three excellent reasons exist for the Big Bang theory to be true: (1) the universe is expanding as observed by Hubble’s telescope; (2) it predicts that 25% percent of the total mass of the universe should be the helium that formed during the first few minutes – an amount that agrees with observations; and (3) the presence of cosmic background radiation – the Big Bang theory predicted this remnant radiation, which now glows at a temperature just 3 degrees
above absolute zero, well before radio astronomers chanced upon it.

The important question that remains to be answered is why the Big Bang happened at all and why it produced this particular universe. Where did that infinitesimally small, infinitely hot and infinitely dense mass come from? No body knows yet. Many people will propose “God did it”.

The answer is for the moment, the “tiny point” did not have to come from anywhere; it was just there. Everybody has a father but God had no father. What is the difference?

The neutrino has a lot common with God, who is inferred from faith-based brain, but faith is not a phenomenon like neutrino that exists and can be proven by experiments done by science-based brain.

Worldwide, the neutrino is regarded as a matter of undisputed fact, while the very existence of God is hotly contested.

On the other hand, it is quite illogical to assign the task of creating this universe to God. The question is why did God need a Big Bang?

For an answer I have to quote Richard Carrier, a freethinker, in his Book – “Sense and goodness without God: a defence of metaphysical naturalism” (1967 p71).

He says this is an awkward fit. What does God need a Big Bang for? The process is a terrible, slow, messy and complicated way to create a universe, much less people. Why the vast expanse of the result?

One would think a god would simply create the whole universe at once or much more quickly at least and only make it as large as would suit us. There would be no need for long drawn-out processes, or of other planets and galaxies, much less all the hundreds of subatomic particles like neutrinos, muons and kaons that we know of.

“God did it” does not predict any of these things, nor does it explain them very well. God has no need for quarks (sic. the subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of normal matter), for example, neutrinos. Nor can they make any predictions about any of these things from the “God did it” hypothesis.

There are detailed assumptions about a god or his plans that could predict or explain all this, or one can resort to something vacuous like “God’s mysteries”, but either way, the god hypothesis is less plausible than any naturalistic theory that already predicts and explains all these strange things like neutrinos.

Scientists are testing them even as I write. The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/01/scientists-are-nearer-to-proving-non-existence-of-god/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

My journey of hopes and dreams of finding a God fell in ruins around me. It was like the Spanish conquistadors of the sixteenth century, who set off to find El Dorado – the mystic city of gold in South America. They never found it.

It had perhaps, been started upon false tracts. What began as a noble spiritual journey ended in the calm realisation that there cannot be a God

St Augustine’s journey to find God in his young adulthood ended in exhausted despair. He reports: “I had lost all hope of discovering the truth.” In the end he said God found him.

I may perhaps, be the first Meitei who set off on a journey to find God, any God. In the last leg of my journey of faith I came to perceive that life is not a journey towards God. As I wrote in my book – My Search for God, published in 2003.

The core of religion is God, the provider and moral keeper of suffering humanity. Philosophy plus God is religion. The English word “God” is used by multiple religions as a noun to refer to different deities.

The God who is above scientific thinking and commands religious and political adherence to him and to whom we must pay our gratitude and personal tributes for our proud civilisations, rules humanity from a safe place in Heaven – the eclectic choice for the spiritual philosophers.

I am not a philosopher, nor am I a theologian, nor an atheist. I was simply investing myself into finding a rational view of the concept of God in the light of new scientific discoveries.

‘Brevity is the soul wit’. I will be brief. For a start, I have travailed with the paradigm of God and his existence with such logical arguments in its favour as previously accepted by theologians.

The monotheist Abrahmic faiths – Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions still believe that God created human beings in the Garden of Eden (The Bible Genesis 2:8-14). The 2nd century Christians identified the place, located by the River Euphrates in Iraq, just west of the border between Iraq and Iran and just above the northern shore of the Persian Gulf.

But the present consensus among the palaeontologists and biologists is that human beings evolved through natural processes. The birthplace of humankind, according to the current consensus focuses on North East Africa.

Evolution means there has been ‘a change through time’ in certain lines of organisms giving rise to other lines or groups called macroevolution. The organisms do undergo changes during their lifespan, called microevolution.

While there is still a conflict between human evolution by natural processes, and human creation by God, evolution has now a strong standing power. It has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge, conducted independently.

Even Pope John Paul II issued a message to the Pontifical Academy of Science, reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church’s long-standing position on evolution: that it does not necessarily
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conflict with Christianity.

While there is no evidence for the existence of God there has been no attempt by the theologians to prove that there is a God or the validity of religion. Still there is belief that the Judeo-Christian God created this earth and everything in it.

A book appealing to Christians to accept as a proven fact the Darwinian theory of evolution, titled The Language of God, was published in 2006 by well-known genetic scientist Francis S. Collins, himself a believing non-Catholic Christian.

In his book Dr. Collins de¬clares that all living organisms have evolved from species to species by means of random change and natural selection without any intervention by God.

That human beings have evolved from lower animals and have not been created by a God has been proven by scientific methods, 150 years after Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution.

A scientific method is the process of proposing a hypothesis, and then testing its accuracy by collecting data on events the hypothesis predicts. If the predictions match the new data the
hypothesis is supported. Generally the best supported hypothesis is considered correct.

Evolution is the result of the frequency of the appearance of alleles in a population of organisms that changes over time. The alleles are the pieces of DNA that cause a particular trait eg “blue eyes” or “flat nose”.

My belief is that evolution and religion do not always contradict with each other except that the literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible is unscientific and therefore unacceptable to students of evolution. They are not provable like gravity or electricity.

A religious belief can not be tested scientifically as there are no empirical tests that give different results whether the belief is true or not. Religion usually presupposes a driving force – an intelligent designer. This intelligent being is not always predictable and thus experiments judging religious beliefs cannot have predictable results.

Different religions have different names of God. For example: the Meitei Sanamahi religion has Tengbanba Mapu (Lord of the universe). The question whether different names used by different religions are equivalent has been raised and discussed.

Correlation between various theories and interpretations of the name of God, used to signify a monotheistic or ultimate Supreme Being from which all other divine attributes derive, has been a subject of ecumenical discourse between Eastern and Western scholars for over two centuries.

Many of the world’s religions are based on ‘revelations’ eg the final book of the New Testament; Krishna’s revelation in the Gita; Mohammad’s revelation in the Koran; or Yahweh’s in Torah. Usually these predictions or prophesies can not always be verified.

American creationists are forever trying to build up Christian beliefs around scientific principles. But the belief is no more a fact than painting a brick with gold paint makes it a bar of gold.

American creationists are now infiltrating US geology. They are ridiculously claiming that the Grand Canyon in Arizona was created by Noah’s Flood (Bible).
(3)
The Biblical narrative is that God became aggrieved when he saw that the earth was polluted by wickedness. He commanded Noah to build an Ark (a vessel) to save himself, his family and the world’s animals before he sent a Great Flood to cleanse the wickedness.

What is more ludicrous is that the biblical literalists continue to explore the mountains of Ararat in present-day Turkey where the Bible says the Ark came to rest, in search of archaeological remnants of the vessel, without success.

I have just been to see the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It is 433 Km (277m) long and 1.6 km (1m) deep gorge. It was formed during the six mullion years of geological activity and erosion by the Colorado River on the tectonically upraised earth’s crust.

In my search for God on the principle of free enquiry and with scientific method, the biological science began casting doubts and created difficulties for a teleological view.

I am an agnostic – a believer in the practicality of science. I look the universe in the face with an open mind for conviction. Historically, agnosticism does not merely mean a suspension of judgement. Rather it means intellectual justification for a discard of theology.

Agnosticism rose in the West after the Industrial Revolution as a by-product of the rise in the standard of living measured by GDP and increase in the Human Development Index, measured by longevity, years of education of a typical citizen.

Thomas Huxley in 1869 invented the word ‘Agnosticism’ but it took twenty years for him to openly write his essay entitled – Agnosticism. Agnostic is anti-Gnostic. Gnostic is a believer in the intuitive spiritual knowledge (of God).

An atheist is one who affirms that there is no God but he can not make a dogmatic statement on God’s non-existence. Many famous intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron were atheists.

Atheism reared its head in 1811 when Percy Shelley (1792-1822), friend of Byron, wrote a pamphlet – The Necessity of Atheism as an undergraduate at the University College, Oxford. He was expelled from the University. Shelley argued about the development of a distinction between the workings of reason and imagination. He rejected revealed religion and its dogmas.

Many religions have different ideas of what God is and there is a disagreement whether God is male, female or neuter (Islam). The existence or non-existence of a God or Gods is a matter of faith. Our glimpse of God in this world and the next is hierarchical and ordered, and the meaning of the term religion has no single definition.

Every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. I know reality can not always been proved by logic, as logic does not always preserve the truth, It simply gives the idea about the subject matter.

And this article is my idea. Unlike St Augustine, God has not found me yet.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/a-futile-journey-of-a-meitei-to-find-el-dorado/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra singh

Robertson Chongtham writes: “I find all your articles quite informative and interesting … I also find your article on Origin of Meiteis quite informative though confusing because of contradictions… I appreciate on your contribution to enlighten young minds even though you are seven seas apart from Manipur and I hope all your hard works get paid off.”

Thanks Robertson. The Meitei origin is contradictory. That means no body knows the truth.
My article is also just a hypothesis albeit; nearer to the truth as it is based on scientific methods of rational thought.

A scientific method is the process of proposing a hypothesis, and then testing its accuracy by collecting data on events the hypothesis predicts.

Every article I write in the Sangai Express is available on the internet all over the world, and I have to be fact orientated.

OUR COUSIN APES still live in Africa. Very few science-oriented people will now disagree that early human ancestors (hominids) separated from apes. That is, men (Homo sapiens) share a common ancestry with modern African apes like gorillas and chimpanzees. A combination of fossil records and DNA ‘fingerprints’, is there for you to see.

There are fossils (though no genetic fingerprints) that can tell us, if not the exact date, when early humans split from the apes in the African Rift Valley region – a very rich source of fossils that allow study of human evolution

Though we share 98.6 per cent of our DNA with chimpanzees (with gorilla 75%) there are still many differences outwardly between humans and chimpanzees. These changes in the DNA and superficial appearances have accumulated through mutations over the millennia.

As the human brain grew bigger it acquired more intelligence and that brain size correlates with intelligence, though not always. Many women are more intelligent than men though their brain size is about 100g less (equivalent to a tea spoonful) than men (1,134g). The brain has now reached its evolutionary maturity.

We know that the Meitei have no fossil evidence of having arrived from the so called Tibeto-Burman regions, nor have any genetically proven evidence.

The Meitei language is not Tibeto-Burman (as was considered by Grierson). The world’s top linguistic authorities do not know its exact family position at the moment and it remains unclassified in the phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy.

The Meitei however, have empirical and some genetic evidence that during the human ancestral expansion from west India to East Asia, through the Northeast India, the Meitei ancestors separated and settled in Manipur, as the Australoid Khasi (genetically proven) did in Meghalaya.

The hypothesis is reinforced by the finding of Palaeolithic and Neolithic tools and artefacts in the surrounding hill caves and open areas in the plains of Manipur, which point to the arrival of Meitei ancestors from Northeast Africa.

(2)
The Meitei race, and their language though developed regionally during their evolution, are now and have been for a few thousand years, a fusion of proto-Australoid, Negrito, Sino-
Tibeto-Burman, Aryan and Dravidian races.

When I went to college in Bombay, doing Inter Science, I was captivated when the Professor of zoology drew a big diagram of an earthworm on the black board. Its internal anatomy and
physiology are quite similar to those of a human being, except that it has male and female organs (hermaphrodite).

Human beings are not special creations though we have many things that mark us out. We are simply a species of African ape that have serendipitously evolved, survived and expanded.

Scientists have made studies by DNA analysis of ‘archaic humans’ known as Homo neanderthal who populated Europe and parts of the Near East (Israel, Saudi Arabia); and Homo erectus who settled in parts of East Asia. In due course they became extinct.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, 14 human remains were discovered in a cave near Nazareth in Israel, showing the earliest evidence anywhere of modern human burial about 50,000 years ago.

During a severe draught, 4 million years ago, in which Africa’s forest diminished further (a similar draught 5 million years ago), a species called Homo habilis (handy man) emerged. They were the first ancestors who were able to make tools. It retained its ape-like body form.

They began to eat meat as fruits were scarce. Meat eating allowed smaller gut to grow bigger and provided extra nutrition to develop a bigger brain. The brain requires high quality nutrition that meat but not vegetarian food can provide.

The first Homo sapiens came out of Africa and dispersed across the world 50,000 years ago, at a time when the northern latitudes of Europe and Asia were covered by sheets of ice (Pleistocene Age).

Following the ‘Out Of Africa model’ of human expansion, which is accepted by the majority of scientists, there is genetic evidence that the descendants of those, fewer than one thousand ancestors, spread out on foot all over the world.

From Northeast Africa they crossed the Red Sea to Israel, Arabia and travelled until they reached India where they split into two groups, each going separate ways.

One group expanded along the coastlines of southern Asia until they reached Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania (a single land mass) some 46 thousand years ago.

The other walked across India and through Manipur to the East. And when they reached Europe they slowly evicted the Neanderthals. They even walked across the Bering Straits from Siberia to Alaska and all the way down to South America and settled (present Native Americans).

‘Modern humans’ in the past 20,000 years since their ancestors left Africa had occupied most of the world and were dependant on hunting and gathering food for their existence.

The evolutionary changes continued due to many environmental factors. The ‘anatomically modern humans’ were bereft of modern human behaviour and lacked the faculty of speech.

(3)
Human evolution is characterised by a number of changes such as morphological, developmental, physiological and behavioural, which have taken place since the split
between the human ancestors and the chimpanzees.

The study of recent human genome has enabled geneticists to trace the journey of the first emigrants from Africa by studying the male-producing Y chromosome and the maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the human population.

The lineage M is of particular interest in tracking the exodus of humans from Africa to India and Manipur.

The genes change in human evolution. Genes are strings of DNA molecules that embody the information to make proteins. Proteins are working parts of the living cell. Each gene comes in a variety of different versions known as “alleles” that pass at random onto the next generation and the next and so on until it becomes ‘fixed’ or ‘universal’.

When that happens the population is said to have gone through evolutionary change. Thus evolution is the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms.

Everyone carries about half of their father’s genes and half of their mother’s. The other halves are discarded along with the genes they contain.

All genes look alike but differ only in their effects on the embryo in the future generations. A “phenotype” is a term used to the effect of a modified gene for instance; the green eyes, pale skin, brown hair or snubbed nose,

The existence of different human races such as Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasian is more phenotypic evidence of evolution due to genetic differentiation as a result of several harsh environments.

It is believed that our ancestors who reached Europe about 45,000 years ago would have retained their black skin and other African features.

Recent finding of a jaw bone in a Devon cave, south England and its carbon dating showed that it was between 40.000 and 44,000 years old.

During the Last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago, a shift to a more European phenotype had occurred (Holiday 1997). Later changes occurred by about 11,000 years ago to European skin colour, eye colour, and hair colour through allelic changes.

Meitei developed the Mongoloid features as phenotypic evidence of evolution due to cold.

There is no definite evidence for the Mongoloid anatomical change in the Natural Selection theory. The current hypothesis is that the evolution to the Mongoloids emerged by genetic ‘drift.’ It means a random fluctuation in gene frequencies that occur between generations. It is a revolutionary change rather than evolutionary.

Biologists have long theorised that the Mongoloid features occurred during the end of the Last Glacial Maximum as an adaptation to the cold, 20,000 years ago, while the Mongoloid
skull would have developed by chance alone. The pale skin, the epicanthic folds of the eyes and
stockier body are all adaptations for survival in the cold.

According to Marta Mirazon, the physical anthropologist, “One archaeological data at least confirms that humans from the Mongoloid race resided in ‘North-East’ during the Palaeolithic
(4)
Era.

It is estimated that it was at the end of Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago that our human ancestors began to settle down in East Asia before the invention of agriculture.

It is thus possible that Meitei of Manipur changed anatomically during the late Last Ice Age, about 25,000- 20,000 years ago, from the original dark African ancestors to the Mongoloid phenotype because of ‘drift’ or by Natural selection, as adaptation to cold. The Meitei were a small population and thus favourable to the force of ‘drift’.

There are many physical variations among the Mongoloid phenotypes. The Meitei belong to the Paleo-Mongoloid (20,000 years ago) like the Naga and Thai, while the classical Mongoloid phenotype developed in Siberia in response to the Last Ice Age.

What then is a Meitei? A Meitei is a “New man” – a new phenotype from Manipur, the melting pot of Southeast Asian nations.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/how-did-the-african-apes-change-into-meitei-features-2/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

An email from HELUN TOUTHANG, Saikul Hill Town, Manipur, which reads: Sir, To spend a small time every Sunday on your article has been always a good time and it’s all the more today (27 Nov)… You have enlightened a big section of the people through your articles. Thank you very much, Sir…with bigger expectation for the comings.
Thanks Helun.

While in school I was very fond of cowboy films or Western films (Westerns). I used to read a lot of cowboy novels during my college days.

The most famous writer was Zane Grey (1872-1939), known as the “Father of the Western novels”. Famous Western movies starring popular actors such as John Wayne, James Stewart and later, Clint Eastwood were based on his books.

The popularity of the Westerns died in the early sixties. The young generations would have hardly seen any. My son has not read any cowboy book or seen any Western film.
Stirred by the Western films I always had a longing to travel through the Apache (pronounced Apachi) country of Arizona, Nevada and Colorado (Sonora) deserts with sage brush, sand and cacti.
Westerns are an expression of life in the settlements of immigrants from the “Eastern Seaboard” to the “West”.
They often stress the harshness of the wilderness and frequently set the action in a desolate village; or the small frontier town with its saloon, general store, livery stable and jailhouse.

It is usually the saloon that emphasizes that this is the “Wild West”. It is the place to go for music (raucous piano playing), women (often prostitutes), gambling (draw poker or five card stud), drinking beer or quaffing whisky, brawling and shooting.

In some Westerns, where “civilization” has arrived, the town has a church and a school with a single woman teacher who has come from the ‘East’. It often shows a rich ranch owner (a retired Major) with a lovely daughter and no wife.

Almost all the Westerns are fictional but some are based on true stories such as Gunfight at OK Corral in Arizona. The Westerns are set in the later half of the 19th century.
The American West is west of ‘Eastern Seaboard’ or around California – the easternmost costal states in the Pacific Coast such as San Francisco, San Diego to the east of Mississippi River.
It is a bit confusing in that San Francisco is in the Pacific Coast facing east. But you have to go there to believe that the Golden Gate Bridge, 1.2 miles (App. 2 Km) long connects San Francisco to the Marin County in California, facing the Atlantic Ocean, beginning from South Carolina.
My wife and I flew from London on Monday, September 26 2011 for the old cowboy trail in the Apache country. Until then I did not know where the American West was, often set in the
Westerns.

(2)
We landed in Los Angeles (The Angels, or the City of The Angels) Airport and from there we drove southwards along the coast to San Diego where we stayed for the Night and the next day.

Spaniards were the first Europeans to arrive at California, America. Whenever they discovered a place they named it after a saint such as San Francisco, San Bernardino, and Santa Fe. (San for male and Santa for female like Santa Maria). But Santa Cruz like the Santa Cruz airport in Mumbai means Holy Cross.

San Diego was the first European settlement in what is now known as California. It was named after the Spanish Flag Ship. It is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. It is an American naval base and Marine Training Centre.

We toured the USS Aircraft Carrier Midway that saw fighting in Vietnam and the Gulf War, with a collection of 27 restored aircrafts, now a museum piece in the San Diego bay.

On the third day we drove west towards Phoenix (full of unique Golf Courses) in Arizona via Yuma. It is the typical desert landscapes of the Wild West with mountains, reminiscent of many cowboy films. There are varieties of cacti. The most amazing ones are those you see in cowboy films, called Saguaro – tree size, native of Sonora Desert of Arizona.

Its flower is the State wild flower of Arizona. It looks like a white Datura flower (Sagol Hidak in Manipuri). Poaching the cactus (Federal property) carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in jail, and $20,000 fine. Usually the thieves get a fine of $50 – $70 per foot.

Arizona is Apache country. Apache is the best known Indian tribal names because of
their ferocity in fighting. Geronimo, the name of an Apache fighter evokes an iconic Western American Image. There is a Western with Victor Mature playing his part.

The Apache tribes lived and fought the invading Spanish in the beginning, then the white Americans. They were nomadic and lived in conical huts – wigwams made of wooden frames, covered by matting of brush. Men were hunters. The Apache men used to dress in dear skin shirts and breechcloths and moccasins. Women wore buckskin short dresses and long boots. They wore feathered headgear.

They now live on their reservations – land they own, but as US citizens, obeying American law. At present, about 55,000 Apaches live on or near reservations.

The next morning we travelled through Navajo Indian country and stopped at Sedona surrounded by spires of red stones mountains, for sight seeing.

Driving further uphill, past the Oak Creek canyon we had the stunning views of the rusty Grand Canyon – one of the most awe-inspiring sights in the world. It is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide and 1 mile deep. With a helicopter ride for 25 minutes we could see the mighty Colorado River running majestically though the gorges.

After lunch we descended to Flagstaff located on Historic Route 66 in North Arizona for the night. The next morning we drove north to Las Vegas. It is a city with excitement, which never sleeps. Our hotel Planet Hollywood was right in the middle of the strip. We could enjoy a simple stroll to and from the hotel.

All the hotels (5 Star) are resorts with colourful and amazing spectacles of light and a vast array of entertainments. You can gamble or, eat and dine all night and day.

(3)
Two days later we drove through the Mojave Desert eastwards to the ghost town of Calico where there is a replica cowboy town with a real life Sheriff and shoot-out show. After lunch we drove to Vasalia in north California for the night stay.

Next morning we travelled to the great Yosemite National Park in Sierra Nevada. Here, we found evidence ‘for the survival of the fittest’ in the plant Kingdom – the Sequoia trees.

The Giant sequoias can live over two thousand years. Their trunks can reach over 25 feet thick through which an old wagon could pass. They contain tannin and are resistant to fungus and insects, and even fire.

Through research they found that wild fire actually promotes reproduction of these tress, by clearing away the competing fir and cedars and by exposing bare mineral soil for the tiny seeds (size of a paddy) to take root.

Later, we drove to Sonora for the night. Next morning we travelled to the east coast city of San Francisco with the world famous Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf. We crossed the bridge to see a bit of the Atlantic Ocean.

After two days we travelled southwards along the eastern Pacific coast, one of the loveliest coastal routes in the world, to Cambria for the night’s stay.

Next morning we drove to Santa Barbara near California for lunch. It has miles of beautiful beaches – the American Rivera, where Hollywood stars had houses overlooking the beach.
We drove to Anaheim for the night.

Anaheim is very close to Los Angeles, where the Disney Land and Universal Studio are located. It was very enjoyable to visit this Studio, which is three storied. We also enjoyed a conducted tour of the old Queen Mary Liner, anchored there as a hotel and conference venue.

Two days later we went to Hollywood in the morning, visiting among other places, Hollywood Boulevard where the names of famous stars are immortalised with their palm and foot prints in cement on the sidewalk (footpath), known as Hollywood Walk of Fame. Because of the holy name, Mohamed Ali’s was set on the wall, not to be trodden.

The famous Sunset Boulevard is a street in West Hollywood that is an icon of Hollywood celebrity with its Sunset Strip – the centre of nightlife, where the famous stars used to hang around.

Hollywood is now dying as most movies are now filmed elsewhere because it is cheaper. The glamour of movie stars of the ‘50s and ‘60s became old fashioned by the ‘70s.

Since the mid-1960s Westerns were made in Italian Studios, known as a derogatory “Spaghetti (specific Italian dish) Westerns”, but typically featuring an American Star, such as Clint Eastwood in the “A fistful of Dollars”.

In the afternoon we left Hollywood for the Los Angeles Airport to fly back to London with a time difference of eight hours forward, and jetlag on arrival on Monday October 10 2011.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/12/on-the-cowboy-trail-in-apache-country/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

Manipur, many thousands of years ago was a distant cold country near India surrounded by hill ranges. It is in the northern Temperate zone between 23°58′ to 94° 45′E longitudes and between 23° 50′ to 25° 42′N latitudes. This was within the range of the ‘Last Glaciations’.

At the end of the Last Glaciations, 20.000 years ago, when the Meitei groups of ancestors arrived as hunter-gatherers at the surrounding hill ranges of Manipur, it was a cold barren hilly country where the valley was filled with water. They continued to survive as hunter-gatherers until such time when the water in the valley dried up.

Our hunter-gatherer or foraging ancestors obtained most or all food from wild plants and animals. All modern humans were hunter-gatherers until around 10,000 years ago, when they invented agriculture.

The Meitei ancestors, who changed from foraging to ‘settling down’ or “sedantism”, as they moved down to the valley when the water dried up, required a new way of thinking, living and social organisation. They must have changed a lot because of the new culture of sedantism

Genetically, the human evolution generates new species by mechanisms that are part random and part by a long sequence of events (Darwin). From an historical point of view, the most interesting class of evolutionary changes are those that have occurred in response to culture.

Many groups of Meitei ancestors learned to settle down and co-operate in larger groups with people to whom they had no kin relationship, forming the ancestors of ‘Meitei clans’ and subsequently a corporate Meitei nation.

Recent research by an international team of anthropologists, published in ‘Science Today’, on March 11 2011, observe that the foraging bands contain several individuals completely unconnected by kinship or marriage ties; yet they have males with a vested interest in their offspring, sisters and wives. This organisation mitigates the group hostility frequently seen in other apes, leading to a development of a large social network.

We know from our known history (33 CE) that the Meitei ancestors likewise, organised themselves as their genes responded to environmental and cultural changes. The Meitei culture is a major part of the environment of Manipur. Few genes remain constant for a long time.

Old primitive societies like our human ancestors from Africa had some form of religion, a practice which is as old as language. Religion served as an extra cohesive force besides the bonds of kinship to hold societies together.

Archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent V. Flannery traced the development of religion over a 7,000 year period from excavations in the Oaxaca valley of Mexico when the hunters and gatherers settled down to a settled egalitarian society.

Once settled to Sedantism and agriculture and on a full stomach with spare food in store, the Meitei ancestors had time to wonder about the workings of the mysteries of how they were born and how they would die.

They began to value the deeds of their ancestors who they believe live up in the sky, and paid homage to them, known as Apokpa khurumba – commonly known as Ancestor Worship.

They also began to develop on their mind, the concept of a creator of life, call it God. The Sanamahi religion was thus born.

The basis of Apokpa Khurumba is that our dead ancestors have a continual and beneficial interest in the affairs of the living posterity. The worship is not a religion in and of itself but a facet of an early religious thinking.

Ofer Bar-Yousef of Harvard University refers to this transition from hunter-gatherer to Sedantism as a major evolution. It brought about the beginning of formal religion in the form of “Ancestor worship”.

The theory has lent firmly to the autochthonous (the first inhabitant) status of the Meitei in Manipur, in view of the deep-rooted nature of their ancestor worship, akin to those prevalent in Africa.

Ancestor worship is also widely prevalent across the globe, differing only in the nature of the worship. It remains an important component of various religious practices.

As the Meitei ancestors descended down to the valley from the hills all around, they began to practice agriculture and animal husbandry, giving them a head start over the neighbouring ethnic groups, perhaps at about the time when the same group of migrants in Eurasia first started agriculture, giving Europeans a head start in economic development and domestication of plants and animals. They cultivated Meitei hui (dog) from the wolves.

Among the Meitei there are a variety of related kinsmen (Yumnak) such as my Irengbam, Haobam, Nameirakpam etc, who conduct separate ‘Apokpa Khurumba’ ie veneration of their ancestors.

At our family home at Uripok, there is a little temple where our ancestors “are housed in the form of some relics”. Every year, most of the Irengbam families gather together at our home in February. We have a feast to pay homage to our ancestors.

We simply venerate our dead ancestors, do not ask for any favours and simply seek their guidance. While alive as of now, Irengbam people give profound respect to our elders. We all give love and respect to the eldest in the clan by bowing to him.
Meitei Apokpa Khurumba, perhaps originated in Africa, outdates any major religion. It predates the Hindu ancestor worship or Pirtu Tarpan. It is prevalent in China, Tropical Africa, Malaysia and Polynesia
The Meitei also practice the Hindu-style ancestor worship known as Pirtu Tarpan. The word “Tarpan” comes from the root word “Trup”- means satisfying others. Offering water to the dead ancestors is called Pitru tarpan. This is performed on the day that followed the date of the Shradha.
The Meitei also perform Hindu-style Tarpan every year in September with a feast.
Apokpa khurumba is not the same as the worship of God where the supplicants ask for some favour that can be granted. Ancestor worship is ancestor veneration, not to ask favour but to do one’s filial duty.

Apokpa khurumba is based on the belief that the human soul survives in an afterlife and that our ancestors continue to exist with their personal identity beyond death. They also believe that the deceased family ancestors possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living.
Every year in the month of November when the leaves fall, each Meitei family will stick a tall bamboo into the ground near the Tulsi plant in the middle of the courtyard known as Mera wayungba. At the top end of the bamboo a pulley is attached and with the help of a thin rope a lit lantern is hoisted at dusk every evening for one month.
This ritual is celebrated with verve and a new sense of devotion by the Meitei. This according to my father was to guide our ancestors in the sky, to our dwelling.
The social or non-religious function of Meitei ancestor veneration is to cultivate kinship values, such as filial piety, family loyalty, and continuity of the family lineage. Besides, this act of veneration does confer some belief that that the departed ancestors have become some kind of deity.
In some Eastern cultures, and in Native American traditions, the goal of ancestor veneration is to ensure the ancestors’ continued well-being and positive disposition towards the living.
In China ancestor worship known as Pinyin seeks to honour the deeds of the deceased. In Korea, it is known as Jerye or Hanja ceremony and is performed periodically. In Vietnam, practically all Vietnamese regardless of religion, have an altar of their ancestors in their home.
In Britain and Ireland, Halloween is observed every year. Their ancestors are supposed to return on this night. Food for them is left outside and lights are left burning all night.

In the United States and Canada, apart from celebrating Halloween, flowers, wreaths, candles and small pebbles are put on the graves all the year round as a way to honour the dead.

Like the Meitei, the Catholic Church in Europe and America often offers prayers for the dead on November 2, known as All Souls’ Day, also called the Day of the Dead. They also observes All Saints’ Day on November 1 every year as feast day to honour all the Saints.

Confucius and the Buddha lived in the same epoch in China and India respectively. Filial piety is a theme preached by both the Buddha and Confucius to strengthen social relations for the betterment of society as a whole.

The teaching of filial piety by Meitei ancestors has integrated very strongly into the social fabric of Meitei society.

I am not a believer in the afterlife or for that matter, that the souls exist after our death, but our ancestors can be a vital force in our lives. What I learned from them is part of who I am today.

The least I can do is to say “Thank you for my existence to my father and grandfather, for who I am and who I will become.
The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/meitei-ancestor-worship-apokpa-khurumba/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

Karl Marx (German political philosopher and revolutionary, 1818-1883) said History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. …

One does not have to read books such as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) by Edward Gibbon, to find out. The Romans were ignorant of the extent of the dangers and the number of their enemies.

The greatness of something always led to its eventual collapse. Take USSR. People forget the chance that the other side of the coin being gold. What you see is not really what you get.

The Bourgeois ruled the world. Revolutions arose, killing millions of people. The Proletariat
came to power, destroying thousands of people and now back to the Bourgeois. This is what Karl max famously described.

Forget Karl Max. History is repeating here in such a short time in Manipur. It is an extremely important epoch in Manipur’s history when the Big Brother (Meitei) having learnt from the mistakes of their forefathers, are trying to integrate with other inhabitants of Manipur in an equal footing , with freedom from discrimination and equal share of prosperity.

History does not have to repeat itself. History repeats itself because the world doesn’t learn.
As George Bernard Shaw said: if history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?

History gives good lessons to those who are willing to listen. Nehru’s Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai diplomacy was the death of him. For those who are not listening, a bit of history is about to repeat at the door step of the Naga of Manipur.

Meitei shed some blood on June 18 2001 uprising. So did two Mao Naga boys in May 2010. Is it necessary for the Tangkhul or kuki to spill some more blood likewise? There is a greater likelihood of a settlement without resorting to violence. Mediation can take place. If proper steps are taken then a future disaster could be avoided.

Only the big problem is the question of ‘proper steps’.

The Sadar Hill entanglement draws parallel with the Kosovo crisis. Like in Kosovo, tensions between the Tangkhul and Kuki simmered throughout the second half of the 20th century with occasional eruption into major violence from both sides. The present crisis needs
to be nurtured in its embryonic state.

If the Americans had condemned Kosovo Liberation Army violence, and taken action to stop the supply of weapons over the Albanian border, there would have been greater likelihood of a settlement. And this might have encompassed a multi-ethnic community with autonomy for Kosovo within Yugoslavia.
In the beginning of the 21st century, Manipuri Naga’s demand of ceding the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur and merge with Nagaland was politically unacceptable to the non-Naga inhabitants of Manipur.

Ibobi Government has since introduced autonomous district councils that will lead to further freedom of organising themselves. The more recent demand of a complete secession of Naga-inhabited area from Manipur has brought the ongoing tripartite talk.

The Kuki have been asking for a separate revenue district of Sadar Hills in the Senapati District within Manipur itself for about forty years – not secession, unlike the Naga demand.

This is similar to the 2011 demand of a separate Phungyar District in Ukhrul in Manipur itself, for a better administrative structure, assessment of needs, and inventory of resources and definition of priorities.

Knowing the deep emotive issues that exist between the Kuki and the Tangkhul it seems cogent to me that the Kuki ask for a small separate district. They are not taking away that bit of land elsewhere.

The United Naga Council does not want to lose even an inch of Naga land but any inch of their land is not going anywhere. Besides, there is no such thing as Nagaland, Meiteiland or Kukiland in Manipur. Manipur belongs to every one of us, in as much as Imphal belongs to all the communities.

At a recent rally organised by the UNC, the Tangkhul Katamnao Long et al announced a firm declaration that not an inch of Naga’s land can be touched nor severed for creation of Sadar hills district without ‘the consent of the Naga people’.
The Tangkhul strongly condemned the alleged ‘divisive policy of the Ibobi Government to sow the seeds of communal hatred among the tribals who have been otherwise co-existing in harmony’.
In fact, successive Manipur governments have been resisting the creation of Sadar hill district for some forty years. The Kuki women are not fasting to death for Ibobi’s divisive policy. It is the other way round.
Perhaps, it’s time that the gutsy Iboby Government should stop musing – “To be or not to be” like Hamlet. It’s time to act. There will always be opposition to any project or any economic development by some groups of people or the other.

The Tangkhul called upon the Government to respect the various MoUs signed between the Government of Manipur and Naga social organisations. They claim that More than 47 Tangkhul-Naga villages are situated within the boundary of the proposed district.
They stress that the Naga have been living in the land of their forefathers since time immemorial, unlike the Kuki who allegedly migrated mostly from Chin-Burma (Myanmar) province. It cautions the Government of Manipur to look into the issue thoroughly and ‘not to take any hasty decisions’.

There is truth in their statement. It is also true that the Kuki have been fighting side by side with the Meitei to keep Manipur independent. Indeed, we all belong to this old country of Manipur.
I am glad about the Tangkhul statement such as “without the consent of Naga people” and “not to take any hasty decisions” because they give room for a concerted negotiated settlement.
It must not be forgotten that the Meitei are not sitting on the fence to watch the bull fight. They are facing tremendous hardship because of the blockade, which is now nearly four weeks old.
(3)
Blockading the Highways – the lifelines to the existence of the Manipuris has become an easy gambit for the tribal in the hills, to get their baroque demand granted by the government.
It’s like killing a fly with a sledge hammer. It shows lack of humanity compassion for any demurrer to let innocent and ill people suffer, in their attempt to influence the policy of the government. The end does not always justify the means.
CM Ibobi should convene a tripartite meeting of the representatives of the Sadar Hill Kuki and Tangkhul, he acting as a mediator to get the views of the Kuki and Naga. Then he should make a decision with the Manipur Legislative Assembly; come what may.
Creation of Sadar Hill District will serve as a precedent to Phungyar and Jiribam.
It’s hard to convey a feeling that permeates a generation. Both the Tangkhul and Kuki should think in terms of peaceful coexistence in Manipur, along with the Meitei, Pangal and other tribes. We are going to live together in Manipur whether one likes it or not.
I have a gut feeling that Manipur will stay intact within India. Nagaland will stay in India with some select autonomy while Kashmir will stay divided as it is. With this in mind, I think of Manipur where all the tribes live with freedom to choose their own religions, stay in a Swiss-style peaceful coexistence with equal share of the economic advancement and progress that are inevitable.
Old wounds heal very slowly. What different tribes do to each other today will remain smouldering under the ashes for generations to come. The wound of the ancestor Meitei treatment of other tribes is still a hot potato.
The showdown between French and English armies, headed respectively by generals Marquis de Montcalm and James Wolfe, was fought on a wide expanse of land outside Quebec City’s fortified walls that became known as the Plains of Abraham. It still has a particular negative significance in the French-Canadian collective consciousness.
The wounds of the genocide massacres by both sides during the Partition of India have not healed after an entire generation of Indians and Pakistanis.
I dream of a time when any of us living in Manipur is proud to say I am a Manipuri instead of I am Manipuri Meitei or Manipuri Naga or Kuki.

The post-War Manipur is on the brink of adolescence and in the ongoing journey to stretch our wings towards self-definition and identity we need an effort to stress Manipuri values of pluralism, mutual respect and understanding.

A peaceful negotiation is the only way out. Let the history of Kosovo not repeat in Manipur. Let us not obfuscate the Sadar Hill entanglement with tragedy of the fasting Kuki women or as a farce with bloodshed from both the parties.

As the 2011 is skittering to an end, let’s advocate engagement not disruption. Let’s stand on the Promised Land of integration. We must learn to live together as brothers in a Manipur society, or we will perish together.

The writer is based in the UK. Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.imsingh.uk.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/obfuscation-of-sadar-hill-entanglement/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

Of course, they are. A crying baby gets more milk. With the free infant formula milk from New Delhi, the feeding is easier. The idea is at least, as old as Jesus.

The idea that Jesus went to Rome after his crucifixion is getting a short shrift. So is the legend that Jesus was brought to England as a boy by his uncle Joseph of Arimatheia. The story that Jesus survived the crucifixion and died and buried in Kashmir is also getting a sort shrift though thousands visit this run-down shrine (BBC News March 27 20100).

Another saga is also falling by the roadside. Those of you who have travelled to Rome must have seen a small church in the southeast of Rome, called Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis, a tourist attraction.

By the Roman Catholic tradition, the spot is where Peter (St. later) supposedly saw a vision of Jesus when the former was fleeing Rome to escape persecution. He asked Jesus, Quo Vadis, domine? Whither goest thou, Lord? (King James’ Bible). Jesus supposedly replied, Eo Roman iterum crucifigo. I am going to Rome to be crucified anew. Peter felt ashamed, went back to Rome and was crucified.

According to modern Bible researchers; Paul actually met Jesus there as he continued to preach until he reached Rome where he was last seen at Ephesus at the age of 76 (Author’s book, My Search for God p204).

Why talk about Jesus in relation to Meitei? It’s partly because I know the Bible as the back of my hand. That includes Jesus. There is an analogy between Jesus and Meitei? It sounds like hard graft but not really.

It is their historical unaccountability and capacity for serendipity. Like Jesus, the authenticity of the Meitei origin is smothered by stylistic artifice.

Jesus is the most controversial figure in history. Who is Jesus, still haunts imagination of many thinkers including myself; because there is no evidence or proof of his existence external to what his followers wrote.

Likewise, the origin of the Meitei is in obscurity. There are many unverifiable narratives, beginning from regional creation to migration from Africa, interspersed with imaginary original locations like Kamtilong.

The “history” of Jesus and Meitei clumsily dates back to just over 2000 years ago. The existence of Jesus is unknown until his 30th year (Author’s book, Quest Beyond Religion p183) and the origin of the Meitei is equally unknown before 33 CE (Cheitharol Kumbaba). Without prevarication no doubt, there will always be Jesus and Meitei.

Let me begin from the beginning of why the Meitei are getting a short shrift. In the preterit and existing political and social disorder in Manipur, the romantic déjà vu of the Meitei over their grandiose past is still an intrinsic part of the pretty scenery of Meitei euphoria.

Despite all the well-ploughed furrows of Meitei history, the Meitei continue to sit like a tin of condensed milk with corrosive scepticism, refusing to assent to what they think to be a non-evident proposition – the rumble of the slide of a tectonic plate of Meitei history.

The current history of the Meitei is in a state of kinetic friction and inertia, having their mechanical energy stored in the fabric of Meitei space as they brace the internal tensions of Meitei insurgency and Naga energy density fields.

Despite impeccable heroic credentials, reckless bravado, tornadoes of rage, floods of tears, the Meitei remain solemn in cadence and stentorian in tone. The Meitei persona has dipped beneath the radar in the past 20 years.

“To be or not to be”: that is the question – Hamlet’s question reflects his anxiety about his responsibilities and he is clear about it. Both Brutus and Hamlet reflect at over the need to act. Brutus acts immediately while Hamlet does not.

The tribal elite act immediately like Brutus while the Meitei eggheads are in the doldrums, asking the question –“To be or not to be”- unable to make a decision like Hamlet.

For the Meitei whose instinct is politically naïve, they set about like static electricity, which though has potential to shock, does not flow in its electromagnetic field. The Meitei are apprehensive, but do not throw back and are happy to stay inert.

The forefathers of the Meitei must be choking with “tarpon” offerings by their offspring to know that their descendants fail to scratch themselves to relieve itchy political gaps! The Meitei lack some assertive ethnic nationalism even to the limit of conjuring up tension as pleural nationalism is hardly the one which is most popular and is hardly the best of circumstances. It’s time the Meitei are tickled to be a tad sensitive and feel overlooked if an epidemic misses them out?

Every Meitei with an ounce of instinct for self- preservation in his blood should have immersed to a degree, in neutralising the threat posed by militant Manipur Nagas while sincerely urging them to return to a composite Manipuri nationalism. Then let due process run its course. Credibility lies at the crux.

The story that is rapidly unfolding on the doorstep of the Meitei is not an illuminating one, but rather grotesque prejudices that serve as a catalyst for a break-up of Manipur, backed by a momentum of tribal ethnonationalism, which to some extent underscores their perceived inferiority in a plural, social and political makeup of Manipur. Their self-consciousness is bigger and more arcane than the real truth.

A Meitei with an I Q of plankton would not fail to realise the absurdity of committing political suicide. There are ways of playing floodlights across the political scene so that the Meitei name would be recognised far beyond gods.

Though the Meitei is not a finished article, he stays agog in this extra ordinary volatile period in history. Determined resistance and compromise together will put the Meitei back on an even keel in this turbulent time of disunity in diversity.

Almost every Meitei is a Brutus who stave in the back, as portrayed by William Shakespeare in the famous Julius Caesar quote: Et tu, Brute? Its literal translation in English is And you, Brutus? The widely accepted one is ‘You too, Brutus? It was Julius Caesar’s last word to Marcus Brutus (Act iii, Scene i). The quotation is widely used in Western culture as an epitome of betrayal.

In looking for an answer, perhaps it is true that the Meitei alpha male breaks out in a rash when he sees another Meitei on the top rung of the ladder because of his unrealistic feeling of inadequacy in that sphere, sometimes compensated by aggressive behaviour.

The Manipur government like any other has flaws. It is said that “The better the state is organised the duller will be mankind” (Nietzsche); and that “Populations get the governments they deserve” (Jefferson), as we get it in Manipur.

Manipur has now, generous annual largesse from Delhi in terms of money, big projects and modern developments. With urbanisation there is a rise in the middle class band as in the rest of India, with movement of people from the villages and hill districts to Imphal; shift from agriculture to services and rise in wages etc.

With the changing demographics, there is some flow of wealth to the poor rural areas of India. In Manipur itself, it has begun to filter to the rural and hill districts through the ‘jamboree’ of extortions, assassinations and embezzlement.

The rise in the standard of living means improved physical circumstances in which we live. But it has the downside of making holes in the pockets of the low earners because of the hike in prices. In Manipur, a significant number of today’s unemployed young people equate economic deprivation and job scarcity to a lame democracy with the resulting violence and insurgency.

The ATSUM, which is forever bemoaning about their “ill-treatment” by non-tribal Meitei, might appreciate what really aggrieves the Meitei youths. This is their ‘non-tribal’ classification in the Indian Constitution; no thanks to the peri-independent Congress leaders.

It may sound hyperbolic but it is worth remembering how the Meitei feel when more and more top-notch jobs in the local Manipur government bureaucracy are incrementally filled by the tribal people because of their privileged reservation system. Nationally also there are more IPS and IAS officers and even Air India hostess. The tribal bosses, over and above their perks, do no pay taxes on their handsome salaries.

The Meitei are seen more in lower paid government jobs, calling “sir” to their tribal bosses. This is because the Meitei belong to the majority population, are more educated and thus fill the posts, but not by discrimination.

It’s good in a way. The tribal are getting their own back from the Meitei. The Meitei have paid penance in suffering for their ancestors “sins”, though in law, children are not punished for the crime their parents committed. It’s time to throw in the towel. There should be no more wailing tribal souls, no more hi-hop lyrics.

To add insult to injury, the Meitei have now been ‘upgraded’. They are neither a tribe nor people, just a crowd (OBC) among ‘other backward classes’. It is like Gandhi’s ‘upgrading’ of the Untouchables to Hari Jans, a reberbative eponym, now renamed Dalit.

It surprises me to no end that just after the Independence, the most backward and illiterate Meitei were listed as superior class in the Indian Constitution and now the well-educated and prosperous Meitei as backward classes. Pythagoras must be turning in his grave.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/are-the-meitei-getting-a-short-shrift-from-their-tribal-brothers/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

Of course, they are. A crying baby gets more milk. With the free infant formula milk from New Delhi, the feeding is easier. The idea is at least, as old as Jesus.

The idea that Jesus went to Rome after his crucifixion is getting a short shrift. So is the legend that Jesus was brought to England as a boy by his uncle Joseph of Arimatheia. The story that Jesus survived the crucifixion and died and buried in Kashmir is also getting a sort shrift though thousands visit this run-down shrine (BBC News March 27 20100).

Another saga is also falling by the roadside. Those of you who have travelled to Rome must have seen a small church in the southeast of Rome, called Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis, a tourist attraction.

By the Roman Catholic tradition, the spot is where Peter (St. later) supposedly saw a vision of Jesus when the former was fleeing Rome to escape persecution. He asked Jesus, Quo Vadis, domine? Whither goest thou, Lord? (King James’ Bible). Jesus supposedly replied, Eo Roman iterum crucifigo. I am going to Rome to be crucified anew. Peter felt ashamed, went back to Rome and was crucified.

According to modern Bible researchers; Paul actually met Jesus there as he continued to preach until he reached Rome where he was last seen at Ephesus at the age of 76 (Author’s book, My Search for God p204).

Why talk about Jesus in relation to Meitei? It’s partly because I know the Bible as the back of my hand. That includes Jesus. There is an analogy between Jesus and Meitei? It sounds like hard graft but not really.

It is their historical unaccountability and capacity for serendipity. Like Jesus, the authenticity of the Meitei origin is smothered by stylistic artifice.

Jesus is the most controversial figure in history. Who is Jesus, still haunts imagination of many thinkers including myself; because there is no evidence or proof of his existence external to what his followers wrote.

Likewise, the origin of the Meitei is in obscurity. There are many unverifiable narratives, beginning from regional creation to migration from Africa, interspersed with imaginary original locations like Kamtilong.

The “history” of Jesus and Meitei clumsily dates back to just over 2000 years ago. The existence of Jesus is unknown until his 30th year (Author’s book, Quest Beyond Religion p183) and the origin of the Meitei is equally unknown before 33 CE (Cheitharol Kumbaba). Without prevarication no doubt, there will always be Jesus and Meitei.

Let me begin from the beginning of why the Meitei are getting a short shrift. In the preterit and existing political and social disorder in Manipur, the romantic déjà vu of the Meitei over their grandiose past is still an intrinsic part of the pretty scenery of Meitei euphoria.

Despite all the well-ploughed furrows of Meitei history, the Meitei continue to sit like a tin of condensed milk with corrosive scepticism, refusing to assent to what they think to be a non-evident proposition – the rumble of the slide of a tectonic plate of Meitei history.

The current history of the Meitei is in a state of kinetic friction and inertia, having their mechanical energy stored in the fabric of Meitei space as they brace the internal tensions of Meitei insurgency and Naga energy density fields.

Despite impeccable heroic credentials, reckless bravado, tornadoes of rage, floods of tears, the Meitei remain solemn in cadence and stentorian in tone. The Meitei persona has dipped beneath the radar in the past 20 years.

“To be or not to be”: that is the question – Hamlet’s question reflects his anxiety about his responsibilities and he is clear about it. Both Brutus and Hamlet reflect at over the need to act. Brutus acts immediately while Hamlet does not.

The tribal elite act immediately like Brutus while the Meitei eggheads are in the doldrums, asking the question –“To be or not to be”- unable to make a decision like Hamlet.

For the Meitei whose instinct is politically naïve, they set about like static electricity, which though has potential to shock, does not flow in its electromagnetic field. The Meitei are apprehensive, but do not throw back and are happy to stay inert.

The forefathers of the Meitei must be choking with “tarpon” offerings by their offspring to know that their descendants fail to scratch themselves to relieve itchy political gaps! The Meitei lack some assertive ethnic nationalism even to the limit of conjuring up tension as pleural nationalism is hardly the one which is most popular and is hardly the best of circumstances. It’s time the Meitei are tickled to be a tad sensitive and feel overlooked if an epidemic misses them out?

Every Meitei with an ounce of instinct for self- preservation in his blood should have immersed to a degree, in neutralising the threat posed by militant Manipur Nagas while sincerely urging them to return to a composite Manipuri nationalism. Then let due process run its course. Credibility lies at the crux.

The story that is rapidly unfolding on the doorstep of the Meitei is not an illuminating one, but rather grotesque prejudices that serve as a catalyst for a break-up of Manipur, backed by a momentum of tribal ethnonationalism, which to some extent underscores their perceived inferiority in a plural, social and political makeup of Manipur. Their self-consciousness is bigger and more arcane than the real truth.

A Meitei with an I Q of plankton would not fail to realise the absurdity of committing political suicide. There are ways of playing floodlights across the political scene so that the Meitei name would be recognised far beyond gods.

Though the Meitei is not a finished article, he stays agog in this extra ordinary volatile period in history. Determined resistance and compromise together will put the Meitei back on an even keel in this turbulent time of disunity in diversity.

Almost every Meitei is a Brutus who stave in the back, as portrayed by William Shakespeare in the famous Julius Caesar quote: Et tu, Brute? Its literal translation in English is And you, Brutus? The widely accepted one is ‘You too, Brutus? It was Julius Caesar’s last word to Marcus Brutus (Act iii, Scene i). The quotation is widely used in Western culture as an epitome of betrayal.

In looking for an answer, perhaps it is true that the Meitei alpha male breaks out in a rash when he sees another Meitei on the top rung of the ladder because of his unrealistic feeling of inadequacy in that sphere, sometimes compensated by aggressive behaviour.

The Manipur government like any other has flaws. It is said that “The better the state is organised the duller will be mankind” (Nietzsche); and that “Populations get the governments they deserve” (Jefferson), as we get it in Manipur.

Manipur has now, generous annual largesse from Delhi in terms of money, big projects and modern developments. With urbanisation there is a rise in the middle class band as in the rest of India, with movement of people from the villages and hill districts to Imphal; shift from agriculture to services and rise in wages etc.

With the changing demographics, there is some flow of wealth to the poor rural areas of India. In Manipur itself, it has begun to filter to the rural and hill districts through the ‘jamboree’ of extortions, assassinations and embezzlement.

The rise in the standard of living means improved physical circumstances in which we live. But it has the downside of making holes in the pockets of the low earners because of the hike in prices. In Manipur, a significant number of today’s unemployed young people equate economic deprivation and job scarcity to a lame democracy with the resulting violence and insurgency.

The ATSUM, which is forever bemoaning about their “ill-treatment” by non-tribal Meitei, might appreciate what really aggrieves the Meitei youths. This is their ‘non-tribal’ classification in the Indian Constitution; no thanks to the peri-independent Congress leaders.

It may sound hyperbolic but it is worth remembering how the Meitei feel when more and more top-notch jobs in the local Manipur government bureaucracy are incrementally filled by the tribal people because of their privileged reservation system. Nationally also there are more IPS and IAS officers and even Air India hostess. The tribal bosses, over and above their perks, do no pay taxes on their handsome salaries.

The Meitei are seen more in lower paid government jobs, calling “sir” to their tribal bosses. This is because the Meitei belong to the majority population, are more educated and thus fill the posts, but not by discrimination.

It’s good in a way. The tribal are getting their own back from the Meitei. The Meitei have paid penance in suffering for their ancestors “sins”, though in law, children are not punished for the crime their parents committed. It’s time to throw in the towel. There should be no more wailing tribal souls, no more hi-hop lyrics.

To add insult to injury, the Meitei have now been ‘upgraded’. They are neither a tribe nor people, just a crowd (OBC) among ‘other backward classes’. It is like Gandhi’s ‘upgrading’ of the Untouchables to Hari Jans, a reberbative eponym, now renamed Dalit.

It surprises me to no end that just after the Independence, the most backward and illiterate Meitei were listed as superior class in the Indian Constitution and now the well-educated and prosperous Meitei as backward classes. Pythagoras must be turning in his grave.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/are-the-meitei-getting-a-short-shrift-from-their-tribal-brothers/

By: Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh

The origin of languages is baffling for the biologists as spoken languages do not leave any fossil records. So is the origin of Meitei language (Meitei lon).

The scholarly interest in the origin of languages has only gradually been rekindled from the 1950s. The origin of Meitei language is also a topic that indulges my intense curiosity.

Darwin wrote: “Language is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learned. No child is born with predisposition to any language. But man has some few instincts in common such as self-preservation, sexual love and love of the mother. This might have led to the origin of language as an instinct for social communication.”

Such an instinct for social communication and self-preservation might have led to the evolution of the Meitei language, which has survived a few thousand years, balking the natural tendency of dominant languages such as Tibeto-Burman (TB) and Indo-European (IP) to make it extinct.

Many linguists predict that at least half of the world’s existing 6,000 or so languages will be dead or dying by the year 2050.

The Meitei language of Poireitons (the middle of the 7th century CE) developed much faster than Meitei evolution as languages do. It has well organised syntax, grammar, semantics and vocabulary.

Meitei lon evolved as a regional language under pressure for communication among the many groups of Meitei ancestors that migrated to Manipur in the Stone Age (2,000 BCE). Further, impetus for better communication led to the development of its own Meitei alphabet or Meitei mayek.

There are many speculative hypotheses surrounding the origin of languages. My hypothesis of the origin of Meitei lon, though not empirically supported, is based on the surmise that when our ancestors arrived in Manipur in the Stone Age, they began to use tools for hunting, cooking and making shelter.

Christopher Hinshelwood et al in 1993 recovered 28 specialised bone tools and related artefacts from the South African cave of Blombos, dating back 70,000 years, hinting at ‘symbolic thinking’ and use of vocal language rather than sign language as their hands were occupied.

As human brain developed incrementally and with the effort to communicate vocally, larynx and vocal cords began to develop. Researchers have now found that verbal language and sign language depend on similar neural structures in the cerebral hemispheres.
Meitei lon is a ‘language isolate’ ie a natural language with no proven relationship with any other living language (until proven otherwise). It has not descended (cognate) from Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages, but has ‘language affinities’ with some ie similar in some structure that may suggest a common origin.
There is no evidence that it has taken any leaf out of the books of neighbouring languages. It has no known common ancestry with any other language. Nor are there any available facts that it has been borrowed from any other language.

Commonly, most languages borrow words and other features from one another, from casual or chance contacts. There are also learned coinages of the kind that English systematically makes
from Latin, Greek and other languages.

Any two languages taken at random will show certain percentage of apparent similarities in basic vocabulary eg between Meitei lon and Hebrew or the Tibetan.

There are ‘universal features’ of human language. In most languages around the globe, the name of the bird cuckoo is just the same; Koyal in Hindi, kokil in Meitei lon. Because the name has been derived from the noise it makes.

Similarly, a vast number of languages in the world have “baby talk” words such as mama and papa (English); ma baba in Hindi; ima ipa (Meitei lon); mata pita (Sanskrit).

All languages change with time as in the Meitei lon, from a language spoken by Poireitons at least 1,000 years ago to the one which is now spoken.

The modern Meitei language is a mixture of languages and Manipur is the melting pot of several nations. A similar example is the English people and language.

The grouping of Meitei language with the TB group accrued because in the search for an original Meitei homeland in the first half of 20th century, missionary/colonial officials wrote our ethnography in which they included a section reporting the migratory origin of the Meitei tribe.

Such stories were habitually constructed, both as symbols of internal unity and as ways of distinguishing us from say, the Tangkhuls or Kukis, while grouping our languages as TB. The linguistic and the biological ancestors of modern TB language communities were not necessary the same people.

Such discussions sometimes neglect to engage various theoretical perspectives that have been developed to explain why people migrate in the first place.

In brutal honesty, can anybody frame an answer why people from China or hereabouts migrated to Manipur with barren hills and valley filled with water, unless they were drawn by an intense desire to eat our Pengba fish (Osteoma belangeri) – highly incongruous.

These 19th century Europeans were extreme racialists who are now called “white supremacists”. Their scholarly writings were to impress white supremacy. A famous American author wrote a book, The Aryan Race: Its Origin & Achievements (Morris 1888).

He wrote: “All the savage tribes of the earth belong to the Negro or Mongolian race. The Caucasian is pre-eminently the man of civilization” (p23-24) and that it were these Caucasians who had perfected the Aryan method of language.

The habitual putting of languages into categories made the ancient linguists and archaeologist
look scholastic though irrational and racist. Dr Grierson was knighted for his falsification of historical linguistics in India.

But as TC Hodson (The Meitheis, reprint 1975 p155) wrote: “The definite classification of the Meithei language as belonging to the TB group while occupying a distinct and separate group is a bald statement of the conclusions which are advanced in the Report of the Linguistic Survey of India.”

The first systemic study of the relationship between human languages began when Sir William Jones proposed to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta on February 2 1786. He proposed that Greek
and Latin, the classical languages of Europe, and Sanskrit, the classical language of India,
had all descended from a common source. This is disputed now.

In the study of the Meitei lon in its evolutionary maturity, this paper deals very briefly with three areas of research, based on current linguistic disciplines: (1) the mother-tongue theory; (2) the linguistic typology; and (3) the search for an original Meitei homeland.

The mother-tongue theory: it is an ideology. The advocates are in someway racist politicians of the 18th century. It is a theory of self-identification, and whatever passes as culture is wedded to language. There is no such thing as a mother-tongue.

The linguistic typology: the first 19th century proposals of linguistic typology was also an implicit ideological underpinning (Friedrich Schlegel, 172-1829). The scheme distinguished between the so-called ‘inflectional languages’ ie, the Indo-European languages, and those that have no inflection and therefore called ‘isolating’, as the Chinese has always been thought of.

The hypothesis was based on the notion that ‘inflectional’ languages were better developed and hence superior to others.

In general, the TB languages have a penchant for nominalising whole sentences, expressed syntactically rather than by inflection. The Meitei lon is an inflectional language with a number of sub groups (A Grammar of Meithei: Sobhana L Chelliah, Moulton Grammar Library, Berlin).

Over the centuries the comparative historical linguists had different ideas of their own. Friedrich Schlegel (1808) wrote: “it was clear that the original home of the Indo-Europeans must have been India. For Rask (1818) it was Asia Minor. Sir William Jones (1872), a staunch Christian adhered to the traditional Biblical story of The Tower of Babel.

By the 19th century the idea of Hebrew as the lingua Adamica (language of Adam) had been abandoned, and The Tower of Babel was no longer an explanation for the varieties of languages in the world.

The Tower of Babel: up until this point in the Bible, the whole world had one language when the people of the earth decided to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. God came to know and went to see the city and the tower.

God then realised that their intentions to build this ‘stairway to heaven’ would lead the people away from God Himself. As a result, God confused their language, causing them to speak different languages so that they would not understand each other. By doing this God thwarted their plans. He also scattered the people of the city all over the face of the earth.

If you believe this story in the Bible you will believe in anything. Speculations like these are not substitutes for hard facts.

The hard fact is the ‘Natural evolution theory’ ie Meitei lon evolved by means of natural selection, from gestural to spoken language for the survival of the individual and the community
of Meitei ancestors.

The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsing.co.uk

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/08/the-origin-of-the-meitei-language/