Were Nuclear Weapons Used In the Ancient Past?

Were nuclear weapons used in the ancient past?

The detonations of the first ever atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which quickly led to the end of World War II, changed the world forever. Literally overnight, our world shifted from pre-nuclear age, into the nuclear age. Total destruction at the press of a button is now always a possibility.

During the Cold War of the latter Twentieth Century, this destructive potential was tritely summed up by the acronym MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. If the missiles started flying, few would survive. The world would change forever.

But was this actually the case of a reinvention of a much older technology? The detonation of the atomic bomb nicknamed ‘Little Boy’ over Hiroshima on the 6th August 1945 supposedly gave us this new nuclear reality. But was this really the first time that this planet had seen the atomic bomb?

A Dark Version of Our Past

When we think of the ancient world, and the world’s first civilisations, what images do we conjure up in our minds?

Pyramids, pillared temples, and visions of armoured warriors in chariots would be reasonable suggestions.

Yet from our deepest antiquity, there also exist ancient texts; literary records that paint the human past of this planet into vivid relief.

Amongst these are famous examples like the myths and legends of the Classical world around the Mediterranean. We have all likely heard of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey. The hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt describe Egyptian history in detail, and likewise share that civilisation’s mythology. Or the cuneiform texts of Mesopotamia recount traditions of the flood like The Epic of Gilgamesh: the prototype of the biblical story of Noah.

Fewer people likely know of the Vedic texts of India however. These date from the Iron Age period in India, as much as 3500 years ago (1500 BCE). This makes them some of the oldest texts from human history. So we certainly wouldn’t expect to find mention of advanced technologies within such texts.

Yet not only do these texts seem to describe such technologies. They also seem to speak of the darkest of all human creations: atomic weapons.

The Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is one of India’s two ancient epics written in Sanskrit. Whilst the oldest versions of this text date from 400 BCE, the text speaks of a much earlier time. Perhaps as early as 3000 BCE. A time close to the rise of Ancient Egypt’s first King, Narmer, before the Great pyramid was built. When civilisations like Sumer, in Mesopotamia, were on the rise. So this text is often considered to be a fifth Vedic text, due to the period it covers.

To put this in context, this means the time described coincides with some of the earliest urbanised human societies in our past. This was when some of the first examples of humans starting to live together in what we would now class as cities appeared.

The text describes an ancient war, which is not unusual. But the weapons that the combatants are described as using on each other certainly are. These weapons are described in the Bhagavad Gita portion of the work.

Magical Weapons With All the Power In the Universe

Amongst the descriptions of this war, there are a class of weapons called “astra.” There are various versions of these weapons. But one type is described as “a single projectile/ Charged with all the power of the universe.”1

Clearly, this was some seriously destructive kind of weapon.

Could this just be attributed to the author’s fanciful imaginings, an overactive imagination, since we humans are prone to exaggeration?

Perhaps. But we have to start to doubt this when we read further details relating to this weapon. Details that are too close to known facts about atomic explosions as we know them.

For example, the weapon is described as “an iron thunderbolt.” So clearly this weapon is metallic in nature, just like a missile.

Relating to the victims, “the corpses were so burned/As to be unrecognizable.” And in common with people, objects and animals further from the blast of an atomic weapon, that suffer the radiation: “The hair and nails fell out/Pottery broke without apparent cause,/And the birds turned white.”

Still unconvinced? Well how about a description of the famous mushroom cloud which issues forth from the detonation of an atomic bomb:

An incandescent column of smoke and flame

As bright as the thousand suns

Rose in all its splendour . . .

This ancient verse certainly sounds uncannily like the vertical mushroom-type cloud that issues from a nuclear-bomb detonation. Especially since “After a few hours, All foodstuffs were infected.”

Just Good Fiction?

As noted, this could just be a good example of fiction. The Mahabharata is an epic poem, and should entertain the audience. So it’s not inconceivable that the ancients would write something similar to our science fiction of today.

This supposition would be a reasonable one. If, that is, there was no other proof that this war with atomic weapons might actually have happened. After all, as any good detective knows, every case needs solid evidence.

In our case, the detectives would have to be archaeologists. But would physical evidence of such a war really still exist? A nuclear weapon flattens everything. So would anything remain for archaeologists to find as proof?

Lasting Evidence From a Nuclear Explosion

We all know that nuclear explosions create massive amounts of radiation. Furthermore, radiation remains in an environment for a phenomenally long time once it is released and absorbed into mediums like soil. The radiation at Chernobyl, for example, whilst not from a nuclear bomb, will likely last for 20,000 years.2

Radiation from atomic detonations is also extremely persistent. From 1946, for 12 years, the United States tested their nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean (most famously at Bikini Atoll). In total, 67 bombs were detonated, and today, the islands are between 10 to 1,000 times more radioactive than Chernobyl. Even though these tests occurred over 60 years ago.3

So radiation would certainly be one indicator of nuclear detonations in the past at ancient sites.

Similarly, other physical evidence would remain. The Trinity Test was the detonation of the first ever atomic bomb by the Manhattan Project. This was the program that developed the atomic bombs for use against Japan, which of course had to be tested first.

After this first test detonation at the White Sands Proving Grounds on July 16, 1945, the plutonium bomb was found to have left a glassy substance in the detonation crater. This was green in colour, and had been created by the immense heat of the detonation. The explosion had literally turned the desert sand into glass, which required a temperature of at least 1700 degrees Celsius to have been developed.

Since the test was called the Trinity program, this glass substance was named ‘Trinitite’ by the scientists involved, and is another physical marker of an atomic detonation.

Finally, since radiation has such adverse effects on human beings, even millennia later, the health of people could be an indicator. In particular, radiation related to atomic explosions causes a wide range of cancers to develop in the affected. This is true of victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, places like Chernobyl, and the Marshall islanders to this day.

Does Any Of This Physical Proof Remain From Archaeological Sites?

This is where things get really weird then. Because in a word, yes, all of these forms of evidence remain from ancient times.

In Pakistan, the Indus Valley Civilisation, named after the Indus River valley where its ancient sites are found, is the most relevant example. Dating from 3300 BCE, this ancient civilisation is located where the Mahabharata is set: the Indian subcontinent. Two of its most famous sites are the remains of the cities of Mohenjo-daro, and Harappa.

According to the mythological tradition of India, these two cities could have been two of the seven Rishi cities of the Rama Empire. And it is possible that the war described in the Mahabharata could be describing a war relating to just these cities.

It is strange indeed then that when archaeologists excavated these cities, they discovered many possible indicators of atomic warfare.

Firstly, in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the streets were found to contain skeletons sprawled around, with no apparent injuries. Some are holding hands. And very strangely, Soviet scientists found one skeleton to be 50 times more radioactive than usual.1

Other evidence found at these sites include the Trinitite-type glass. ‘Black stones’ as they are known have been found in their thousands at Mohenjo-daro. These seem to be the remains of thousands of clay vessels that have been fused together by heat. Similarly, at other sites from this civilisation, walls of the cities have literally been fused together. Again by heat.1

Finally, ten miles from the Indian city of Jodhpur, radiation levels have been found to be unusually high. When developers sought to build a housing project here, a pattern of radioactive ash and dust like that from an atomic bomb exploding in the air overhead was discovered. This covers three square miles. And people living in the Jodhpur area of India suffer much higher rates of cancers like leukaemia, prostate cancer and bone cancers.

Other Anomalous Ancient Sites

Findings like this in the very location where the Mahabharata is set seem conclusive enough that atomic bombs could have been used in ancient times.

But India is not an isolated example.

In Egypt, Trinitite-like glass was discovered in 1932 by a geological survey team on the Saad Plateau. This could be an example of ‘Libyan Glass’ however, which is a green Trinitite-like layer that extends over an area of 6,500 square kilometres from Libya, into Egypt. Since this is thought to be tens of millions of years old, this is perhaps more likely from something like a meteor strike.

This does not explain the Indian and Pakistan examples at ancient sites however. Nor does it explain why Trinitite-like layers have also been discovered in habitation levels at ancient cities from the Sumerian and Babylonian eras. Or even at Neolithic (New Stone Age) sites, also in Iraq.

Too Much Evidence

I’ll leave it to you to decide then. Were the ancients blasting each other into oblivion with atomic weapons long before we discovered this ability?

Clearly there is much evidence to suggest this may have been the case. All of the evidence we might expect to find for this is there at ancient sites.

Is this too much evidence to deny?

References

1: Bhagavad Gita in Childress, D. H., Lost Cities of China, Central Asia & India, (2005), Adventures Unlimited Press, Illinois, USA.

2: Cholteeva, Y., Making Chernobyl Safe: A Timeline, 3rd June, 2020, [Online]

3: Geggel, L., (July 16, 2019), The Marshall Islands Are 10 Times More 'Radioactive' Than Chernobyl [Online]