
Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time - soundsop
http://io9.com/5441889/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1500-years-ahead-of-its-time
======
cema
Oh, I remember reading about his find in an old (1970s or 1960s) issue of
Russian pop sci journal _Наука и Жизнь_ ( _Science and Life_ ; apologies if
the unicode did not work).

I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology,
technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and
support. Just having smart people is not enough.

I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started
focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution
had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much
farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.

~~~
sown
I remember something Carl Sagan said...something along the lines (paraphrased)
that the scholars at Alexandria questioned the movement of the stars but not
of social conventions like slavery. The machines they made were made for the
amusement of kings or for weapons but not for easing the burden of work or
increasing comfort for the common man. So when the mobs came to burn the place
down no one was there to stop them.

~~~
jacoblyles
Seems like something very self-serving for a modern to say, to claim that the
ancient civilizations crumbled because they didn't follow _our_ values.

I wonder if we have seen the last collapse of civilization? Will our
descendants marvel at the wonders left in our remains and chalk our decline up
to our own moral failing? Will they condemn us for not following their
doctrines?

"Such wonders these people made! But they were never willing to question their
gods of democracy. Even as their technology grew more awe-inspiring, their
governments grew more insane and profligate, until the whole structure
collapsed. What mighty and foolish people!"

~~~
pvg
I doubt anyone will be agog at concepts as mushy as 'democracy'. Few people
read history and exclaim 'feudalism? who ordered that?'. We tend to be
surprised at technological advances that somehow failed to be exploited
despite their, in retrospect, obvious value. The first inventions of things
like gunpowder, movable type and apparently mechanical gears fall under that
category. By that token, future-people are might stare at us in disbelief of
the less-than-optimal use we made of, say, packet-switched networks or the
radio spectrum.

------
tokenadult
Wikipedia article,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism>

submitted to HN 425 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233792>

~~~
stcredzero
Submitted to reddit many, many times! Writing yet another blog post about this
thing is a small cottage industry unto itself.

------
Luyt
Our ancestors were certainly not stupid ;-)

Gears were already used in India as early as 2600 BC, Aristotle described
gears in his lifetime - about 400 BC, and Archimedes' worm wheel dates from
about 200 BC. In 40 BC Vitruvius described a grain mill powered by a water
wheel and gear transmission, and in 28 BC someone equipped a carriage with an
odometer.

Brian Dunning devoted an episode of Skeptoid to the Antikythera Mechanism:
<http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184>

~~~
volida
Could you please supply more information about the gears being used since 2600
BC in India? Wikipedia's extensive reference doesn't seem to have any
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears>.

Also, your initial statement is _sine dicendo_ , therefore useless and rather
questions the reason of your comment.

Obviously the Antikythera mechanism is impressive because of the size and
detail of the gears and their usage for computation.

~~~
Luyt
I got the interesting information about gears from this document:
[http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT-
MADRAS/Machine_Desig...](http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT-
MADRAS/Machine_Design_II/pdf/2_1.pdf)

The reason for my comment that our ancestors were not as stupid as some
contemporary people think, was in reaction on another post which stated that
the Antikythera Mechanism was probably just a hundred-year old clock thrown
overboard in recent times (I should have quoted that comment for clarity).

Some people cannot fathom that ancient people could realize impressive feats,
just like we can. Take for example the pyramids: "the old Egyptians could
never have build themselves, they must have gotten extraterrestrial help".
This condescending view is also propagated by Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of
the Gods' books.

~~~
jacquesm
> Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods'

It's a contender in the list of 'biggest pseudo scientific bs', runner up is
the scientology junk.

------
raphar
Please don't miss the excellent two videos at Scientific American:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=140616529...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=1406165298&id=52209781001)
I find amazing some of the technical details shown there.

------
sarosh
Published paper in Nature is at: [http://www.antikythera-
mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera...](http://www.antikythera-
mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera_Nature2008_submitted.pdf)

------
scotty79
> All I have to say is that if it wasn't for the miracle of Christianity, we'd
> be on %@#&ing Mars by now.

Amusing comment.

Some time ago while looking at some painting in Florence depicting Ascension
of Jesus I had following idea:

Time travel is actually physically possible only very hard to come up with.
Christ was rouge time traveler who wanted to pose as god (like in 'Behold The
Man') and got himself into a mess. Angels were rescue team that were to revive
him and bring him back, but unfortunately the myth that our unfortunate
traveler had started screwed up development of human thought so much that
development of our science was delayed and took completely different path, far
away from any ideas that might lead us to time travel before earth will be
totally forgotten (Asimov's foundation like) or destroyed by future
generations.

Since Jesus and angels that took him will land somewhere in the future there
actually might be second coming. Sort of. i hope we will be able to compare
notes on development on human thought then.

------
pmorici
How is this a "computer"? The article really doesn't explain and to me it
looks more like a clock. Clearly a very advanced clock but a clock none the
less.

~~~
michael_dorfman
It depends upon your definition of "computer", of course.

A clock is a single-purpose computing device; it's certainly not a general-
purpose computing device, which is what most people when they speak of a
"computer".

------
dandelany
From <http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com> :

"Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as
not been a publication of the full text of the inscription."

Has anyone been able to find any of this text published anywhere?

~~~
sounddust
You can read the original text yourself:
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/antikythera_mechanism/> (you might need to
download the PTM viewer and PTM files to zoom in close enough).

~~~
dandelany
Yes, but it's in ancient Greek. I meant a translation?

------
motters
Also see <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184>

------
estrabd
1500 years ahead of *our time. It's ridiculous to think that they could not
have learned how to make special purpose computing machines.

~~~
BigZaphod
I suspect the problem, and why much knowledge like this came and went over the
centuries, is that so few people understood the why and how of it that once
the local guy who did was killed or died, the knowledge went with him and his
books were recycled, lost, or destroyed because they appeared meaningless.

------
dfischer
I find things like this extremely interesting. Oh the hope for a lost
civilization and or technology that stumps modern society...

------
yread
I still like the orloj more :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orloj>

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robg
This is the most utterly fascinating nugget I've read in a long time. The
questions without answers really do boggle the mind.

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daniel-cussen
Has it been established this thing works?

------
lucifer
Alternatively you can view this as evidence that catastrophic social changes
set back humans by 1500 years.

~~~
BigZaphod
Pessimist. :P

------
ismarc
How did they manage to replicate the time selection dial on my half-built time
machine? Speaking of which, I'm starting a fundraising campaign soon if anyone
wants to contribute.

------
niels_olson
I'm going with clock thrown overboard on a vacation cruise or one of many
complex geared machines used aboard ships throughout time for navigation. In
any case, just happened to fall off a ship and land on the one below, about 50
to 100 years prior to excavation.

~~~
robryan
Luckily we have good dating techniques to avoid this :)

