RFCs 561, 680, 724, and 733 are the antecedents to RFC 822, which remains the basis of every nearly every email sent today. The dates on the earlier RFCs start from 1973, with RFC 733 (what I think was the first one actually agreed upon as a standard rather than a, well, request for comments) merely in 1977, all before the supposed "invention" in 1978. (RFC 822 itself was only 1982).
It's even hard to take the claim that Shiva's invention was the first to mimic inter-office mail seriously: all of the header fields are clearly mentioned in RFC 680.
In other words, the only way that you can even plausibly claim that Shiva invented email is to define email so narrowly that the only candidate is, in fact, his product. This should come across about as absurd as saying that FORTRAN can't be the first programming language because it didn't include an if statement.
It's even hard to take the claim that Shiva's invention was the first to mimic inter-office mail seriously: all of the header fields are clearly mentioned in RFC 680.
In other words, the only way that you can even plausibly claim that Shiva invented email is to define email so narrowly that the only candidate is, in fact, his product. This should come across about as absurd as saying that FORTRAN can't be the first programming language because it didn't include an if statement.