30 Million-Year-Old Civilisation In Pakistan?

[Mighty_Emperor]

This was posted on the front page (although I'm not sure how reliable an internet only newspaper like this is but....) so I thought I'd comment:

German Archeologist suggests exploring ancient civilization in Pakistani Salt Range


CHAKWAL (NNI): German Archeologist Madam Karron Wednesday said that salt range area is the heaven of archeology and fascinating for the western tourists.


The people of this area are the custodian of old human civilization and this area has a very strong cultural and historical back ground, she remarked while visiting Ban Amir Khatoon the fossils site area where more than 30 millions old fossils were discovered. The wife of the ambassador of Hungry based at Islamabad Mrs. Vera Sozlunki was also accompanying her. Local Geologist Malik Muhammad Riaz briefed about the fossils and told that he made this discovery in 1994 that raised the importance of this area.


The Pakistani Geologist continued as saying, “famous Pakistani archeologist Dr. Ahmad Hassan Dani visited this area many times and he claimed that this is the biggest concentration of fossils throughout the world.”


The local administration examined and tested these fossils from international laboratory and it was confirmed that these fossils are more than 30 million-year old. Secretary General Press Club Chakwal Khawaja Babar Salim told that all the evidences for the first man of human civilization was found in the salt range area and if research work should be done we are confident that the first human man must had been appeared in the salt range area of Pakistan.


Madam Karron shown great interest in these fossils and she was of the view that some international archeological associations should invest their money and in return some startling discoveries of old human civilizations and dinosaurs could be unearthed from the area.


She also visited Dhoke Tahlian Dam which was constructed in the heart of the salt range area. Madam Karron claimed that she had visited many places of the world but salt range is very fascinating.

http://www.pakistanlink.com/headlines/nov03/20/07.html

Immediate thoughts:

1. There is no link between 30 million year old fossils and civilisation. You can usually find fossils near evidence for civilisation but we have things like stratigraphy to work out the actual associations.

2. Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago so even if you accept all the shaky assumptions this report is on I can't see there being an association there.

And on a side note: "Karron Wednesday"??

A quick Google shows she only appears once - on the above site:

http://www.google.com/search?q="Karron+Wednesday"

Emps

 

[Anonymous]

There seems to be some sort of connection here to the work of Michael Cremo:

Originally found at http://www.mcremo.com/lectures.html
Cremo, M.A. (2001) Paleobotanical Anomalies Bearing on the Age of the Salt Range Formation of Pakistan: A Historical
Survey of an Unresolved Scientific Controversy. Presented at XXIst International Congress of History of Science, Mexico City,
July 8-14, 2001.

Abstract: The age of the Salt Range Formation in the Salt Range Mountains of Pakistan was a matter of extreme controversy among geologists from the middle nineteenth century to the middle twentieth century. Of great importance in the later discussions were fragments of advanced plants and insects discovered in the Salt Range Formation by researchers such as B. Sahni. According to Sahni, these finds indicated an Eocene age for the Salt Range Formation. But geological evidence cited by others was opposed to this conclusion, supporting instead a Cambrian age for the Salt Range formation. Modern geological opinion is unanimous that the Salt Range Formation is Cambrian. But Sahni's evidence for advanced plant and insect remains in the Salt Range Formation is not easily dismissed. It would appear that there is still a contradiction between the geological and paleontological evidence, just as there was during the time of active controversy. During the time of active controversy, E. R. Gee suggested that the conflict might be resolved by positing the existence of an advanced flora and fauna in the Cambrian. This idea was summarily dismissed at the time, but, although it challenges accepted ideas about the evolution of life on earth, it appears to provide the best fit with the different lines of evidence.

The existence of advanced plant and animal life during the Cambrian is consistent with accounts found in the Puranic literature of India.

Sounds good, eh? However...

"The soul that I am entered its present body at the moment I was conceived in the fall of 1947. I appeared from my mother's womb on July 15, 1948, in Schenectady, New York. That birth was probably one of millions I have experienced since I left my real home in the spiritual world. My mother tells me that when I was an infant, she would give me alphabet soup, and sometimes I would not eat it, but would just spell out words in the bowl. From that, I take it that I must have practiced writing in many previous existences. In this life, I recall always having wanted to be a writer.

"From the very beginning, my life has been a spiritual quest for love and truth....

"After carefully studying the Bhagavad-gita, a gift of some Hare Krishna people at a Grateful Dead concert, I decided that I should absorb myself in the yoga of devotion to the mysterious Lord Krishna. Later I moved to Los Angeles to join the staff of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and to write for the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT). By 1980 I was regarded as an accomplished writer. To date, the books written and edited by myself and other BBT staff have sold more than ten million copies and have been translated into many languages.

"With Dr. Richard L. Thompson, a founding member of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, I began a series of books aimed at both scholarly and popular audiences. The first to be published was Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race. This book shows that archaeologists and anthropologists, over the past one hundred and fifty years, have accumulated vast amounts of evidence showing that humans like ourselves have
existed on this planet for tens of millions of years. We show how this evidence has been suppressed, ignored, and forgotten because it contradicts generally-held ideas about human evolution."-extract from Michael A. Cremo's online bio.

 

[EnolaGaia]

An update of sorts ...

This 2017 research article reviews 5 biostratigraphical 'conundrums' concerning the Salt Range and its surrounding region. It updates the research results and evaluates the probability that earlier results - particularly those that derive from preconceived creation science tenets (like Cremo's) - don't recommend themselves as possibilities to the extent they once did.

Biostratigraphical dating conundrums in the Cambrian and earlier stratigraphy of the Indian subcontinent
NIGEL C. HUGHES
The Palaeobotanist 66(2017): 1–15 0031–0174/2017

ABSTRACT
Dating rocks by using fossils remains one of the most important stratigraphic tools both for Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks and, increasingly, for older rocks too. Inevitably situations arise in which different types of data offer seemingly contradictory indications of age, of which several examples from Cambrian and earlier rocks of Indian subcontinent are discussed herein. These examples highlight the main kinds of biostratigraphical conundrums and their resolution, their role in moving stratigraphic geology forward, and also surprising ways in which they are misused. The growth of geological knowledge regionally and globally, along with the introduction of additional techniques for dating rock strata, means that the temporal range of the alternative explanations related to particular conundrums has tended to decline with time, although a controversy with alternatives over 1.0 Ga apart is currently active concerning Vindhyan geology. Although important in their own right, the solutions to this and other conundrums must integrate with other types of geological data if age determination is to be satisfactorily concluded and the wider geological and evolutionary implications of biostratigraphical dating are to be realised.

SOURCE: http://14.139.63.228:8080/pbrep/bitstream/123456789/2138/3/PbV66N1_1.pdf