What if we’re late to the game cause someone else already thought of nuclear weapons 10,000 years ago?!

Well that’s todays wonder – the theory that nuclear weapons are not a 20th century invention at all, but a bronze age creation.

Of course, this is a conspiracy theory, with as many proponents as debunkers trying to argue it out. But let me entertain you with the believers story. Because, after all, I love a bit of weird and wonderful inspiration and this is how I get my book ideas.

The Mahabharata an ancient Indian scripture, is famed for detailing descriptions of weapons that sound oddly like modern nuclear weapons:

“A single projectile charged with all the power in the Universe…An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns, rose in all its splendor…it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race. “The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out, pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. “After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected. To escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves into the river.”  Disclose TV

But a single quote from a scripture isn’t really enough evidence to make a wild assumption like an ancient race having nuclear tech. So what of the physical evidence?

In India and Pakistan there are several geographical areas that have caused controversy. The first, Lonar Lake from the Buldhana region. Said to be created from a meteor impact, it’s age is said to be anywhere from 6000 years old to 570,000 years old. There is some disagreement about whether this crater was created by an asteroid. Although refuted (obviously *eyeroll*) there are claims that no meteorological material was found.

Harappa & Mohenjo-Daro

But more compelling than a big round bomb hole meteor crater, is the three square mile area west of Jodphur: a town called Harappa. All three square miles were found to be covered in a layer of radio active dust. The area was only found after a high rate of birth defects and cancer. The radioactive levels were so high in fact that the government cordoned off the area in order to do research. Research that unearthed remains of an ancient city and a bomb blast.

When they reached street level, they found petrified skeletons frozen in position almost as if they had no time to escape and there was no one left to bury them after. Why else would hundreds of skeletons all die simultaneously and be left in the street unburied? Oh, did I say they were irradiated too?

Glass – After the high intensity heat blast from a nuclear weapon, glass is formed. And guess what… That exact glass was found in great columns in the area, just like the remnants found in Nevada after nuclear testing.

Mysteriously, Oppenheimer the creator of the atomic bomb himself, responded when asked how he felt about firing the first atomic weapon, that it wasn’t the first, merely the first in modern times.  

Whether there were nuclear bombs in our ancient history or not remains a mystery to me. But what I do know, it that it’s cool to think about. I love the idea of hybridising an ancient race for a story. Ancient civilisation come science fiction. I guess that’s how the Steampunk genre came about – Science fiction meets the Victorian era.

But more than anything, it reminded me of my Flat Earth novel, that I am researching for and the concept that a race discovers the world they know is a total lie. What if ours really was? What if everything we thought we knew about our past was wrong.

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