Ramar sethu

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/04spec.htm

Certain historical inscriptions, old travel guides, old dictionary references and some old maps
have been said to reinforce a religious and geographical belief that this is an ancient bridge
(see Ramayana). In 2007 the Sri Lankan Tourism Development Authority sought to promote
religious tourism from Hindu pilgrims in India by including the phenomenon as one of the
points on its "Ramayana Trail", celebrating the legend of Prince Rama. Some Sri Lankan
historians have condemned the undertaking as "a gross distortion of Sri Lankan
history".[48] Vaishnava News Network and some other U.S.-based news services suggested
that they had discovered the remains of the bridge built by Rama and his Vanara army that
is referred to in the Ramayana, and that it was not a natural formation, basing their claim on
2002 NASA satellite footage.[49] NASA distanced itself from the claims saying that what had
been captured was nothing more than a 30-km-long, naturally occurring chain of
sandbanks.[50] It also clarified that, "The images reproduced on the websites may well be
ours, but their interpretation is certainly not ours. [...] 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."[50]

The Government of India, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India, said that there is no
historical proof of the bridge being built by Rama.[54] In connection with the canal project,
the Madras High Court in its verdict stated that the Rama Sethu is a man-made structure.[55]
Hindu belief is that the bridge was created by Shri Rama and Shri Lakshman with the
assistance of Lord Hanuman and the vanara army to reach Lanka in order to find Shri
Rama's wife Sita who was kidnapped by Ravana. A 2007 publication of the National Remote
Sensing Agency said that the structure "may be man-made", contradicting the report from
the Archaeological Survey of India which found no evidence for it being man-made.[56][57] In a
2008 court case, a spokesman for the government stated "So where is the Setu? We are not
destroying any bridge. There is no bridge. It was not a man-made structure. It may be a
superman-made structure, but the same superman had destroyed it. That is why for
centuries nobody mentioned anything about it. It [Ram Setu] has become an object of
worship only recently."[58]
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2007/09/bridge-built-by-monkeys.html