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All they're saying is that the technology represented in this device has no equivalent in the historical record anywhere near that time and that place. It's no
by luma 5y ago
All they're saying is that the technology represented in this device has no equivalent in the historical record anywhere near that time and that place. It's not to say that it literally cannot exist, rather, our historical understanding of these peoples is clearly incomplete. These are the sorts of findings that change our understanding of history which makes it pretty exciting to me.
The Clickspring series on this mechanism was mentioned elsewhere and is some of the finest content on YouTube, I'd strongly recommend checking it out.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI think that's gp's point: rather than saying "An ancient computer that we don't understand is making us realise how little we know about the ancient world and challenging our assumptions about ancient technology" the headline is "An ancient computer that shouldn't exist".
- rozab 5y agoThere are actually several descriptions of similar devices in the literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_devices_in_ancient_literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_...
- luma 5y agoOh for sure and I think that's an important point: this device didn't pop out of nowhere. Something of this complexity strongly suggests an existing school/guild/etc which developed the knowledge and crafts around designing and building "clockwork" devices like this. China had discovered the geared wheel centuries previous so gears were known. It's the integration of the basic underlying technologies that is surprising, and I don't think it's a huge leap to presume that there must be more of these devices out there waiting to be discovered!
- rsynnott 5y agoAnd the Antikythera mechanism gave a lot of credibility to those descriptions. Without it, they might well be dismissed as fantasy; Roman and Greek writers, even historians, were generally pretty credulous by modern standards and the literature contains references to all sorts of things which couldn't possibly have been true.
- Joker_vD 5y agoI've seen people claimed that, e.g. the polished granite columns common across European palaces and even some cathedrals, could not have been a) polished so well without laser technology, b) could not be moved and then erected without modern engine-powered equipment. So all of it was the work of ancient aliens or something, and the history as we're taught it is completely falsified, for some reason. Because obviously, if you can't imagine how to do something then it must be impossible.
- luma 5y agoI've often wondered if the people making these claims ("you need lasers to make something that flat") are people working in archeology or are actual civil engineers or machinists etc. Talk to a master machinist about how to make a large stone flat with access to ancient technology and I suspect you'll get a handful of plausible answers.
- Joker_vD 5y agoI've seen exactly blue-collars workers arguing for impossibility: it's hard enough to do with modern technology ("I know it first-hand!"), how would you even do it without it?
- beowulfey 5y agoThat’s perhaps a testament to our dependence on modern machinery, if the skills did exist once.
- svachalek 5y agoIt's fairly simple to construct a way to see your own face. All you need is a high-grade color LCD or OLED display, a high-resolution digital camera, a power source, a few controls and a logic board. Too bad none of this was available before 2010, those poor ancients must have always wondered what they looked like.
- 5y ago
- chiefalchemist 5y ago> our historical understanding of these peoples is clearly incomplete That's the point being made.The conventional wisdom lens frames them as inferior, instead of us being the ones who are flawed. There's a difference between "They couldn't have done that..." and "We didn't realize they could have done it."