This is reminiscent of the ancient technology theories about Egypt put forward by people like Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock in the 1980s. They tried to show a link between the positioning of the Pyramids and the precessional cycle.

As someone who has a passing fancy with the history of astronomy, I believe that something like that could have occurred.

The historical period is defined as beginning 3,000 BC, when clay tablets were used to record information. About 1600 BC the Babylonians compiled their first star catalogs. This is a very interesting fact because ancient Babylonia sat between Greece and India. We are aware that the information from Babylonia flowed to Egypt, then later to Greece. The Egyptians never observed the position of the planets accurately, nor did they make complete records of planetary motions. Egyptian astronomy was just something to be integrated into their religious world view. It was the Greeks that (as far as we know) who took the information from Babylonia and attempted to explain the universe and heavenly bodies, they invented a geometrical model of the universe.

It was the Babylonians who compiled the data, the Egyptians just used it for religious purposes and never explored astronomy seriously, and the Greeks, in the form of Aristotle developed the first model, where the Earth was the center of the universe, and everything rotated around it. Ptolemy refined that model, and that model held up until the fifteenth century.

But that is the history of western astronomy, the records of what occurred to the east of Babylonia are not as distinct. It is very believable that the data from Babylonia also flowed to the east, and the time frame of approximately 1600 - 1700 BC is very interesting. That is the same time frame when the Babylonians compiled star charts, and it was that time frame when it is possible the ancient Hindus created the Rig Veda.

It is very possible the Hindus had the same data as the Greeks, but developed a different model of the universe, unlike Aristotle, the sun was the center of the universe.

In 1653, astronomer Christiaan Huygens calculated the distance from Earth to the sun. He used the phases of Venus to find the angles in a Venus-Earth-sun triangle. One does not need modern instruments for such observations and conclusions, one only required keeping a lot of data, being able to record positions in the sky with accuracy, accurate timekeeping, a knowledge of math, and inventive and creative brains. We cannot rule out that the ancient Hindus did not posses this ability.

But yes, there is a lot of woo in those writings.

It's not for everyone of course, but when I find something I can't explain I try not to form any beliefs about it. As a rule of thumb it's the most objective open minded approach I can take.

As for ancient texts, I have to be sceptical about claims which can't be evidenced, dubious about claims that deny know scientific facts or that outrage reason, and set the bar for acceptance, as I do for all claims, that objective evidence commensurate to the claim needs to be demonstrated.

If someone is claiming ancient Hindu societies wrote accurate descriptions of the workings of our solar system millennia before western science and there is objective evidence then great. They either made an extremely well observed guess or were more advanced in maths and possibly grinding glass lenses. None of this requires anything supernatural to explain it, and Occam's razor maintains a rational explanation.

As I said, it's clearly not for everyone, but I care that what I believe is true and therefore has appropriate objective evidence. Fallacious appeals to ignorance about how they may have known something way in advance of western science is irrational, and irrational arguments can't be demonstrated to be logically true.

It's intellectually honest to admit you don't know, and it's irrational to form believes rather than withhold them when you don't know if something is true because it can't be properly evidenced.

I don't know if they were clever, prescient or just plain lucky, but nothing implies real evidence they were divinely inspired. I'd also expect omniscient communications to be unambiguous and avoid cryptic or allegorical claims open to misinterpretation.

One last word since theists and religious apologists get this so very wrong all the time. When I say disbelieving something here, this is not the same as forming a contrary belief.

In the my long post I just explained the possibility of the flow of information and the possibility that the ancient Hindus were more advanced in astronomy than most assume. Please notice I never stated anything as fact, it was all possibilities and "it is possible".

I do not accept a claim like this (yet), it has not been proven.

I am very open to the possibility that back in 1700 BC they devised a model of the universe that had the sun at the center. They could have also figured out that the sun was the center and all the planets orbited around the sun.

But all the rest could be woo woo, mysticism laid on top of fact to explain their hypothetical deities. Just because one part of a story is true, that does not mean that the entire tale is valid.

Just because a book or movie shows Spiderman swinging from the Brooklyn Bridge (which is very real), that does not prove Spiderman is real.

Eastern civilization as we know it came out of ancient Babylonia, spread to Egypt, then Greece, then Rome. But the Romans and later the Christians destroyed a lot of knowledge. The period after was one of centuries of the dark ages, scientific progress stalled, and was suppressed by religion. If one was to graph knowledge against time, it would have a line steadily climbing, to only take a massive dip, then remain down until the dark ages passed and scholars started to advance knowledge again.

I am open to the possibility that to the east of Babylonia, knowledge did not endure that great drop, and that western civilization was far inferior to the east for many centuries. During that period, it is possible they advanced the concept of a heliocentric universe.

>> The hanuman Challis a (a book) has literally THE EXACT DISTANCE FROM THE EARTH TO THE SUN

See this: https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/a/18077

I blog referenced in the above Stack Exchange answer appears to be down but the link is:

https://denverth.ink/2014/10/05/hanuman-chalisa-bullshit/2/

My objections to this would be as follows:

- We have an elliptical orbit of the sun, so there is no one exact distance.
- The link to stack exchange by @SV offers a distance of 153,000,000km.
Despite this being reasonably close, it is not accurate.
- The link to stack exchange also has a reply from a member who dismisses the claim with fairly rational explanations.
I shall leave that to all of you to read and dissect for yourselves.

Furthermore, I would say all civilizations have had exceptional thinkers at various times, this is unsurprising.

Tycho Brahe in the early 1500s never had a telescope. .
(Tycho Brahe also had no nose...Tycho Brahe had no nose? How did he smell? Terrible...sorry couldnt help that...holiday season)
Johannes Kepler had no telescope nor computer, or slide rule, or calculator but he solved the mathematical description of the elusive orbit of Mars that drove many others to suicide. He also established the laws of planetary motion.

Anthropologists often mentioned that Cro-Magnon man from 50,000 years ago would have had the intelligence to learn to use a computer if not actually invent one. They would also agree that when you dont have a computer, you tend to pay more attention to your surroundings and at night theres no greater display than the sky.
The cultures of the Hindus, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Mayans and even a primitive tribe in Africa (the Dogon tribe) are steeped in the recording and mythologising of celestial events.

My point is that our modern society likes to think it has the monopoly on being clever, intelligent and sophisticated, but homo sapianism (lol, new word?) has been around a long while and didnt just spend all its time inventing gods and refining war.
It doesnt surprise me that the Hindus observed and recorded and roughly figured out what was really happening in the cosmos. They had time and intelligence to invent the mathematical concept of 'zero' which wasnt reinvented in the west thousands years later, but adopted from the Arabs, who adopted it from the Hindus.

Way back in the good ol' ignorant stupid ancient days we still had natural intelligence, no internet distractions, and a hell of a lot of time at night to watch and think, like I did last night on the headland waiting for the moon.