Our view of human history colors the perception of who we are in a fundamental way. It creates the infrastructure of ideas according to which we interpret the world. Like the limitations of our senses we seldom question the limitations of our historical view, which we take as a given fact, even though it changes with every generation. Each society creates an idea of history through which it interprets civilization in its own image. In the modern age science, technology and rational materialism have created an historical view that makes ancient Greece, in which the seeds of modern culture arose, the basis of civilization as a whole. It looks to the precursors of civilization in the ancient Near East, Sumeria and Egypt, from which the Greeks derived the rudiments of their culture. This view ignores or denigrates other ancient traditions like those of India, China or Mesoamerica as of little importance. Indeed if we examine books on world history today we discover that they are largely histories of modern Europ, with non-European cultures turned into a mere footnote, or simply dismissed as primitive, that is not technologically advanced, however spiritually or artistically evolved they may have been.

In the post-colonial era, however, we are now questioning this Eurocentric and materialistic view of humanity. We are recognizing the value of traditional cultures and indigenous peoples, whose mistreatment and devaluation now appears on par with the destruction of our natural environment that we have been hastily promoting in the name of material progress. With a new understanding of depth psychology, mythology and comparative religion we are gaining a greater appreciation of spiritual ways of life, like the science of yoga, which developed outside of both the European and Middle Eastern cultural matrixes.

A number of racial, ethnic and religious groups have challenged their negative portrayal in modern Eurocentric historical accounts. For example, the European conquest of America, which was previously regarded as the benign expansion of advanced European civilization, is now being reinterpreted as a genocide of native peoples and destruction of their ancient cultures. Non-European cultures are no longer accepting the European interpretation of their histories, which not surprisingly makes their cultures inferior to that of Europe. This movement of historical rectification is bringing about a revolution in our view of history that is only just beginning and is bound to change our idea of who we are as human beings.

India is another country whose history has been greatly distorted by a colonial and materialistic European bias. India was the foremost of the British colonies and the center for the spiritual view of humanity that the materialistic mind has ever opposed. Now historians of ancient India are raising questions about the Eurocentric interpretation of Indian history and bringing forth new views that give greater validity to the traditional culture and literature of the subcontinent which has always emphasized the spiritual life.

In this article we will examine important new discoveries in regard to ancient India that show the need for a radical reexamination of the history of the region. A careful study of the data today reveals that existing accounts of ancient India and thereby world history as well - particularly the Aryan invasion theory which is the cornerstone of the Eurocentric interpretation of India - are contrary to all the evidence and need to be totally altered. This is indeed a bold statement but, if true as the facts outlined below will indicate, requires changing the entire way in which Indian civilization has been evaluated.