NASA poured cold water on claims by Hindu news services that the US agency's spaceborne cameras had discovered the remains of the mythical bridge built by Rama across the Palk Strait.
"Remote sensing images or photographs from orbit cannot provide direct information about the origin or age of a chain of islands, and certainly cannot determine whether humans were involved in producing any of the patterns seen," said NASA official Mark Hess.
NRI websites like Indolink.com and the Vaishnava News Network had run a story earlier this week saying that "space images taken by NASA" had revealed "a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait." The story gained currency when it was picked up, unquestioningly, by the PTI.
NASA said the mysterious bridge was nothing more than a 30 km long, naturally-occuring chain of sandbanks called Adam's bridge. Hess said his agency had been taking pictures of these shoals for years. Its images had never resulted in any scientific discovery in the area.
The Internet story further claimed "archaeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to�about 1.75 million years ago" as does the age of the bridge. This, in turn, matched the age when the events of the Ramayana took place.
Historian B.D. Chattopadhyay of Jawaharlal Nehru University says the archaeological record says nothing of the sort. There is no evidence of a human presence in the subcontinent, he says, before roughly 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. It is generally believed man's hominid ancestors did not leave their African home until about two million years ago.
At least three ship channels have been dug through Adam's Bridge without any evidence of manmade construction. The sandbanks are not at a greater depth, never being more than 3 or 4 feet at high tide. Geologists believe the sandbank did at one time rise above sealevel.
Temple records suggest it was submerged by a violent storm as recently as 1480.
Communication experts say that false, suspect news finds much greater circulation than normal because of the internet. NASA's Hess said, "The images reproduced on the websites may well be ours, but their interpretation is certainly not ours."
Source: Hindustantimes.com
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