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Pompeii's battle scars linked to an ancient 'machine gun'
- zeusdclxvi 7mo agoThe polybolos was an advanced ancient Greek repeating ballista, often described as a "machine gun of antiquity," invented in the 3rd century BC by Dionysius of Alexandria. It used a unique chain-drive and gravity-fed system to fire bolts in rapid succession
- mkl 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybolos Apparently it was on MythBusters, but I don't remember that one.
- josefx 7mo agoCould it be this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN-V3nUCvpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN-V3nUCvpI
- Springtime 7mo agoMatches the name of episode 152[1] the Wikipedia article cites for the info. Seems the classification of seasons and even the season's episode order on Wikipedia differs from the one in the Youtube title. [1] Text-based summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2010_season)#Episode_152_%E2%80%93_%22Arrow_Machine_Gun%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2010_season)#Epis...
- lloydatkinson 7mo agohttps://youtu.be/IN-V3nUCvpI?t=2733 https://youtu.be/IN-V3nUCvpI?t=2733
- qingcharles 7mo agoWeirdly, not available in the USA :(
- zadikian 7mo agoI've heard of this, but what's the advantage? They still need to recharge the torsion the same way, which must've taken longer than someone manually feeding the next bolt.
- bfivyvysj 7mo agoYou can't imagine why a quick succession of bolt fire might be more advantageous than a slow reload?
- zadikian 7mo agoI mean how is it actually faster if the rate limiting step is the same. People are claiming it was 2-3X as fast.
- eucyclos 7mo agoMaybe it's harder to deal with ten projectiles in a minute followed by a nine minute reload than one a minute for ten minutes?
- ithkuil 7mo agoEven a short surprise can be crucial in an ancient battle, where breaking formation can be fatal
- b112 7mo agoBreaking a calvary would be very powerful. And horses are a larger target.
- zadikian 7mo agoI'm not even considering the magazine reload time, just the time between shots assuming a full mag. That's 10 recharges either way, as shown in the videos. It's not like a machine gun where the energy is in the powder.
- 7mo ago
- metalman 7mo agolikely would have had tactical utility to take out one select high value target especialy against an oponent who had not encountered it. so more of a battlefield assination weapon. it also decouples the need to have great physical strength ,and visual acuity
- bamwor 7mo ago[dead]
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoI not often cynical, but I confess to being uninterested in the "dead ends" of history. Perhaps these are areas though where a historian (or layperson) might find rich for "what if" speculation. For me it's more like if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it… The Antikythera mechanism is another one that is uninteresting to me because, whatever it is, it seems to have been a one-off. Maybe, like James Burke's obsession with "connections" in history, I am drawn instead to historic through lines.
- dndkdkdkdkdk 7mo ago[flagged]
- user_7832 7mo ago(I know this isn't exactly your intention, but it's a similar situation.) Do you think that we should give funding to study the mating habits of endangered iguanas in the Sonoran desert, or should we be funding cures for alzheimer's and diabetes? Trick question, it's the same thing! Science often finds weird things in weird places. Shamelessly plagarized from this tumblr post: https://i-draws-dinosaurs.tumblr.com/post/811645777885741056 https://i-draws-dinosaurs.tumblr.com/post/811645777885741056
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoNo and I have no problem with others being fascinated by history's dead-ends. I was just expressing my own leanings (in case it resonated with others—perhaps not, ha ha).
- bit-anarchist 7mo agoThey aren't the same thing though. They wield different expected results: - Studying the mating habits of endangered iguanas (or other apparently random research) is about describing real-life phenomenon; - Finding cures for Alzheimer's and diabetes are focused studies that funnel resources towards solving the diseases directly. The first is a breadth-first search that can provide inspiration and unique ideas for further research, and the second is a deep-dive, trying to solve a particular issue. They both have their times and places, but it is important to not paint them as "the same".
- rc_mob 7mo agothe ads on that article make it unbearable to read
- sebastianconcpt 7mo agoWhat's the proof for succession? How was discarded that the impact were simultaneous instead? Like spreading from a catapulted bunch of pellets?
- peet2521 7mo agoCame to the comments with the same question as you. I'm pretty sure the answer is that it almost certainly was a bunch of small projectiles hurled simultaneously, but that wouldn't be interesting enough to even write an article about. I'm pretty sure this isn't even written by a human, it's deliberately inaccurate infotainment LLM slop.
- zadikian 7mo agoGuessing the holes are too small and deep to be pellets, and there wasn't a recorded machine that fired multiple bolts simultaneously.
- sebastianconcpt 7mo agoThat's a rationalized guess, not an answer to any of my 2 questions.
- PhunkyPhil 7mo agoSlightly off topic, but when I read about these archeological discoveries being made thanks to custom software, ML or the like - Who is writing this code? To me these projects would be so fun to work on, but this domain seems so far out of a tradition SWE track. Are the researchers just cobbling the code together themselves? Cross department collaboration within the university? I'd love to have a hand in things like this.
- trgn 7mo agoi rolled into tech because of archeology. started using GIS for site mapping and need for customization just got me going. ended up going to school again for compsci. generally, students from other departments are writing the code, but current day most archaeologists can work with ready-made packages (model builders etc..) now too.