
An ancient Greek calendar was ahead of its time (2006) - gyre007
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/old-world-high-tech-141284744/
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dr_dshiv
Check out Archytas, the so-called "father of mechanical engineering." He was
the (philosopher) king of Tarentum and a major influence on Plato. He was one
of the last Pythagoreans and probably authored the first treatise of mech Eng,
"mechanical problems" (Winter, 2007). Archytas is attested to have built the
first self-propelled, steam powered flying machine. He was also a major
influence on Vitruvius.

The Pythagoreans were erased from history several times - but essentially
introduced the modern world view that the natural world, including the human
mind, has a mathematical basis.

This is completely off topic but I also discovered recently (from the source
text) that Philo of Alexandria, contemporary to Jesus Christ, twice described
the Essenes of Israel as "Pythagoreans". That is super strange, people! Jesus
was described as a Nazorean, a sect of the Essenes. Iamblicus claims
Pythagoras visited Mt Caramel (later the home of the Nazoreans) around the
time that the Jewish "babylonian captivity" ended. So, that's an alternate
narrative for the basis of Christianity that has better historical
documentation than most of the new testament. And, via Pythagorean ideas, is
far more commensurable with modern science. Just saying! It's a real rabbit
hole, these original source texts....

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bsder
It is sad how much of technology got lost over and over.

The Greeks in 500BC weren't matched again until the Romans at about 50BC-50AD
who weren't matched again until Florence in 1400AD.

How could Medieval art for the ruling classes be so terrible compared to
mosaics and art for the middle classes in Pompeii?

It is terrifying how much human progress and time have been wasted.

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TomK32
There's an ongoing youtube series about recreating the Antikythera Mechanism

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2)

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Double_a_92
That's a really great series, I just wanted to reccommend it myself. It's fun
so see something done with such high love for detail and professionalism.

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tzs
The Museum of Ancient Greek Technology has Antikythera mechanism replicas for
sale [1]. They are kind of pricey, at €550, but sure are cool looking.

[1]
[https://www.kotsanasmuseumshop.com/en/shop/108-antikythera-c...](https://www.kotsanasmuseumshop.com/en/shop/108-antikythera-
calculating-mechanism-2nd-c-bc)

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melenaos
Such great inventions ancient Greek made! I was impressed from an other
invention of steam power that was rotating a ball around it self. I suppose
that with some more hundrent of years of peace they might have invented steam
train or something.

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elorant
It's not wars that stopped Greece from further advancement. It was religion.
Same happened to all of the Western world in the middle ages. Since
Christianity took over they did everything in their power to fight science.
And up to this day they still do.

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lainga
That smacks of the infamous "gap left by the dark ages" chart, and doesn't
really account for the drop in innovation across the Roman world in the 1st
and 2nd centuries CE, when large parts of the empire (indeed, notably
excluding Greece) were not Christian or minority-Christian. Unless you are
supposing some crucial difference between Hellenism and its Roman adaptation?

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AnaniasAnanas
Just wondering, what was the reason for this? I would assume that the peace
brought by the Pax Romana alongside with the employment of military devices
such as ballistae in the roman army would increase innovation instead.

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earthicus
There was a discussion about this issue last month, where i wrote out a fairly
detailed reply and gave a good reference to learn more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880)

~~~
sherr
Where you mention the book :

The Forgotten Revolution by Lucio Russo

The Kindle version of this is being sold on Amazon UK for £52.24! Not much
cheaper than the paperback.

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yesenadam
pdf or djvu:
[http://libgen.io/search.php?req=the%20forgotten%20revolution...](http://libgen.io/search.php?req=the%20forgotten%20revolution%20russo)

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earthicus
I snapped a few photos from Russo's book 'The Forgotten Revolution' that show
the logical structure of the mechanism, and also the pump of Ctesibus
mentioned in the article:

[https://imgur.com/a/BnaGIvW](https://imgur.com/a/BnaGIvW)

The full citation for [Price: Gears] is

Derek J. de Solla Price, "Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera mechanism - a
calendar computer from ca 80 b.c.", _Trans. Am. Phil. Soc._ 64 (1974), part 7.
Book reprint: New York, Science History Publications, 1975.

\------

Copying an older comment of mine:

The spectacular technical achievement of the antikythera mechanism, apart from
its overall complexity, is the presence of differential gearing. Specifically,
a differential turntable allows it to add or subtract angular velocities: you
subtract the effect of the suns movement from the lunar movement to compute
the lunar cycle.

PS Gears and cog wheels were only invented a century or two before the
antikythera mechanism; scientific progress during the Hellenistic era was very
rapid! Then the decline after the roman conquest was quite rapid as well - by
the imperial period (eg Heron's writings) techniques like differential gears
had already been lost, and they wouldn't be reinvented till (i think?) the
18th century!

\--------

Also relevant to combat some of the nonsense about religion and rome that have
appeared in this thread is this comment about the decline of greek science:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18644880)

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rblion
So many mysteries about the ancient world, I can't ever stop learning enough.
It's endlessly fascinating.

