The art of navigation was invented 6,000 years ago by navigators of the Indus river. The
English word navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Navgatih’ and the word navy from
the Sanskrit ‘Nou.’ The first known reservoirs and dams for irrigation were also built in India. 
  Ayur-Veda, the earliest known system of medicine and surgery, was developed in the Vedic
period  in  India.  Sushrut,  the  father  of  surgery,  developed  surgical  procedures  including
cesareans, cataract removals, setting fractures, removing urinary stones and even plastic and
brain  surgery.  Over  125  surgical  tools  are  named  in  the  ancient  Sushrut  medical  texts.
Anesthesia   was   also   well   known.  Detailed  texts  on  anatomy,  physiology,  etiology,
embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics, and immunity date from Vedic times.  

Sometime around 444 BC, Empedocles introduced a medical system into Greece modeled
on the then ancient Ayurvedic system of India. Empedocles’ book on  Purification gives, as
we saw, the same definition of health as the Charaka Samhita. It bears repeating: health is
the balance of the fundamental elements (earth, air, fire and water36) in all parts of the body,
each part having the proper proportion of each that is right for it. Empedocles adopts this
definition from the Vedic tradition. Plato’s Timaeus  defines health in the same way. 
   Joseph  Needham,  the  eminent  physicist  and  cultural  historian,  comments  that,  “Future
research  on  the  history  of  science  and  technology  in  Asia  will  in  fact  reveal  that  the
achievements of these peoples [of India] contribute far more in all pre-Renaissance periods to
the development of world science than has yet been realized.”37 The first pioneer of wireless
communication was Jagdeesh Bose—not Marconi as commonly taught in the West. 
   India’s  most  substantial  gift  to  world  civilization  was,  however,  the  discovery of pure
consciousness and the mapping out of the architectonic structure of pure knowledge. All other
achievements derive from this great awakening of knowledge that took place in ancient Vedic
India. 

Summary and Conclusion  
   The Vedic heritage of India has been grossly miscalculated, misunderstood, and under-
appreciated. The light of Vedic knowledge burned brilliantly in Vedic India long before is
spread into Iran, the middle-east, and Europe.  
   It appears that Rig Vedic civilization originated in northern India, definitely before 1,900,
and probably before 3,000 BC. The Vedic tradition may have originated before 6,500 BC.
Passed on from father to son in unbroken tradition of pundits who recited the Vedic verses, it