Introduction To Jainism: Dinosaurs in the Indus Culture?

Did people live together with dinosaurs? According to the almost universally accepted scientific opinion dinosaurs died out some 60 million years ago, and cultural man came into existence not much more than 1 million years ago. But according to ancient Indian literature humankind already existed long before 1 million years. Jains (and also Hindus) do not find this strange, because according to their time calculations the first Tīrthamkara lived many millions of years ago and even then humanity had already existed for many millions of years. So estimates of the antiquity of the Indus art vary from 7 thousand years as a minimum to more than 60 million years as a maximum. No doubt it will take some time before everyone agrees on this subject. But it can hardly be doubted that some rock art is much older than the seals found at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, which archeologists estimate to be 7,000 years old. In any case, these are artistic masterpieces as well, and perhaps they were used as easily transportable souvenirs of what the South Indian rocks must have shown in enormous dimensions. All these writings and the Indus Key represent the initial stage of rock art.