Computers are the building blocks of the modern world. Nothing really symbolizes the current era of human existence like them. What if I told you the first computer was over 2000 years old? You’d either tell me that you’ve already heard of the Antikythera mechanism,
I recently watched a documentary about an archeologist named Dr. Henry Jones Jr. about the Archimedes' Dial, an Antikythera mechanism. Not sure how legit that was but...
Yes. I read about it in one of the books some time back, but it was more from the angle of all other knowledge that got lost, and we had to reinvent it. How far ahead would we have been if all the knowledge/inventions were transferred from one generation to another? So many books of knowledge were burned internationally or unintentionally over the centuries and got lost/still buried, and devices and expertise (for example, nuclear bombs) were used for wrong purposes rather than only advancing the human species.
One of the questions I frequently debate is if everyone in the world collaborates instead of competing, is the world going to be better off? or whether the only way to advance the human species is through competition or wars. As competition/wars gave us computers, the internet, and many other things, would we have been further ahead with collaboration?
I know you may think I am expecting perfect behavior from an imperfect human species, and I do. Seeing the world where we all collaborate more and more without artificial boundaries of country/state/company so we leave the world much better than we found. I know things are getting better (Wikipedia, internet, open source are great examples) but we can do so much better without these artificial boundaries.
One of my favorite quotes, which is attributed to Newton, “If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.“ but how far further he could have seen if he had all the information available from the beginning of human species.
I certainly would love to see more cooperation and less cooperation. My own sense is that you need some of both in order to get the best results, but that we probably have too much competition right now.
National borders can't go away overnight, but maybe this century, we can figure out a better way to do this, so we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
We will eventually reach one country/state or a few countries/states concept. Still, it will require something external (a threat like the one defined in the movie Independence Day and
I am not saying it will be alien as it could be a Meteor) or economic reasons as the population starts decreasing if the current trends continue as consolidation is already happening compared to 100/500 years back.
We can see India as a great example since it is one of the most diverse countries with hundreds of languages, cuisines, cultures, and several religions. It was able to find a way to merge into one country (3 if you count Pakistan and Bangladesh) when they had hundreds of kings about 500 years back, and now it is three countries, even though once in a while, a state tries to get out of the union. I believe we will see more consolidation over time, and the EU is also one of such attempts; even though some years it feels like it will fall apart, these are growing pains. I see the UK joining again in the future.
I tend to agree, although I'm not sure the UK will necessarily un-Brexit or however you wanna say that. I think they could well join a different organization of states. That being said, there are also entities like NATO, ASEAN, ECOWAS, and other loose (or tight) economic and military organizations out there. I think those sorts of pacts will be front and center over the next half century.
Oh yeah! All bets are off for the next century. Sure, there will be some similarities with our past, but this century will look wholly different than any before it, and by a large margin, I think. We have to be ready for pretty much anything.
- **Astrolabes**: These are ancient astronomical devices used by classical astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Originating in the Hellenistic world, they were adopted and improved by Islamic astronomers in the medieval Islamic world. Astrolabes were used to solve problems related to time and the position of the Sun and stars in the sky.
- **Al-Jazari's Machines**: Al-Jazari (1136–1206) was an Arab Muslim polymath who wrote 'The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices', where he described fifty mechanical inventions. These included clocks, automata, pumps, and various devices for raising water, reflecting a high level of mechanical sophistication.
### Chinese Civilization
- **South Pointing Chariot**: This was a non-magnetic, directional-compass vehicle that was used in ancient China as a navigation aid. It was a two-wheeled chariot that carried a figure which always pointed south, and was an early form of a differential gear system.
- **Su Song's Astronomical Clock Tower**: Built in 1088, this tower featured an astronomical clock and was an early example of an escapement mechanism, which is crucial for timekeeping devices. It also featured a celestial atlas and mechanical figurines that chimed the hours.
### Mesoamerican Civilizations
- **Mayan Calendar**: The Maya had a complex astronomical and cosmological system, and their calendar was quite accurate. They used it not only for timekeeping but also to predict celestial events and for their ritual significance.
### European Middle Ages
- **Clocks**: The development of mechanical clocks in Europe during the late Middle Ages was a significant technological advancement. These clocks often featured elaborate gears and mechanisms, some of which were based on earlier knowledge from the Islamic world and classical antiquity.
### Indian Civilization
- **Water Clocks and Astronomical Instruments**: Various types of sophisticated water clocks and astronomical instruments were developed in ancient and medieval India. One of the notable astronomers and mathematicians was Bhaskara II, who designed a water clock called 'ghatiyantra'.
I'm wondering why they build a such sophisticated tool, I mean, was it designed only to be used for spiritual/religious purposes ? So mysterious ! Hope one day we'll find some more artefact like that or some more explanations. Thanks for the reading Andrew :)
I think it had a lot to do with similar reasons the Islamic Golden Age was so interested in getting the calendar to match up with the planets and stars. Not performing the correct ritual on the right day might have been considered sacrilege or heresy.
There was also a certain degree of pride in the craftsmanship that screams, "We can make this and you can't!" I think that very human tendency might have something to do with it, too.
Dude this is the perfect intro for the third chapter in my book. It's about computational devices, so I'll start with antikythera of course, and there to Pascal and Babbage.
This piece causes me to think that throughout history much has been lost. The knowledge we have today may be lost and have to be recreated or built again in the future due to that lose. How many times has this happened and how many more times will it happen?
Great story! It shows the ancients were also thinking. I'm wondering about power. Do you have ideas about how the ancients provided power for this impressive gadget?
Indeed, and it's not an easy question to answer. I wonder about all those little knowledge silos out there. I know shared knowledge is incredibly important, but I wonder if we got one or two things we might not have otherwise had, due to isolation and deep (vs wide) study.
The thing about isolation is that you can dive in really, really deep if you need to.
In a world before patent protection, the only way to protect valuable knowledge was secrecy. This one devise shows that there were communities of people who were inconceivably ahead of the typical remnants of their civilization that we have been able to scrape out of the fragmentary archeological debris. How many other extremely advanced groups were there? They stayed in secret and left no records. It's existence means there is an entire shadowy history we will never know, that may have been of great importance in the past.
Yes, to a limited extent. I think it's not possible that the world was connected in the past than it is today, and my argument is a bit circular, so bear with me for a sec.
The very reason we are seeing unfathomable things happen, things no one human could possibly figure out, is our fidelity and consistency in recording and disseminating information.
The reason AI tools are so amazing now, but they weren't 2 years ago, is because a billion people have played with them, and millions of developers have thought about how to push the space forward, and shared that info with everyone else working on the project.
There's secrecy today, just like there was in the past, but what's very different today is the very ability to share things instantaneously, on a global scale.
Whatever we did in the past is going to pale in comparison to what we can do today, simply because we're able to tap into the creative impulses of billions instantly, not to mention revisiting the eminent dead in ways that weren't remotely possible.
It makes me consider what other advance technologies existed Millenia ago that we just have yet to discover. I sometimes wonder if ancient civilizations were more technologically advanced than us in some regard, that we are unable to see.
Good considerations. I wonder myself about today's tech, and whether it is about to leave us behind, so to speak. I don't think that has happened in the past to the extent that it can happen today, simply because the world is more connected, and mass manufacturing makes it possible to distribute hardware and software in ways never before imagined.... but it's still intriguing to wonder what else might exist from the past, where we just weren't ready for the tech on a social level.
I recently watched a documentary about an archeologist named Dr. Henry Jones Jr. about the Archimedes' Dial, an Antikythera mechanism. Not sure how legit that was but...
Yes. I read about it in one of the books some time back, but it was more from the angle of all other knowledge that got lost, and we had to reinvent it. How far ahead would we have been if all the knowledge/inventions were transferred from one generation to another? So many books of knowledge were burned internationally or unintentionally over the centuries and got lost/still buried, and devices and expertise (for example, nuclear bombs) were used for wrong purposes rather than only advancing the human species.
One of the questions I frequently debate is if everyone in the world collaborates instead of competing, is the world going to be better off? or whether the only way to advance the human species is through competition or wars. As competition/wars gave us computers, the internet, and many other things, would we have been further ahead with collaboration?
I know you may think I am expecting perfect behavior from an imperfect human species, and I do. Seeing the world where we all collaborate more and more without artificial boundaries of country/state/company so we leave the world much better than we found. I know things are getting better (Wikipedia, internet, open source are great examples) but we can do so much better without these artificial boundaries.
One of my favorite quotes, which is attributed to Newton, “If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.“ but how far further he could have seen if he had all the information available from the beginning of human species.
I certainly would love to see more cooperation and less cooperation. My own sense is that you need some of both in order to get the best results, but that we probably have too much competition right now.
National borders can't go away overnight, but maybe this century, we can figure out a better way to do this, so we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
We will eventually reach one country/state or a few countries/states concept. Still, it will require something external (a threat like the one defined in the movie Independence Day and
I am not saying it will be alien as it could be a Meteor) or economic reasons as the population starts decreasing if the current trends continue as consolidation is already happening compared to 100/500 years back.
We can see India as a great example since it is one of the most diverse countries with hundreds of languages, cuisines, cultures, and several religions. It was able to find a way to merge into one country (3 if you count Pakistan and Bangladesh) when they had hundreds of kings about 500 years back, and now it is three countries, even though once in a while, a state tries to get out of the union. I believe we will see more consolidation over time, and the EU is also one of such attempts; even though some years it feels like it will fall apart, these are growing pains. I see the UK joining again in the future.
I tend to agree, although I'm not sure the UK will necessarily un-Brexit or however you wanna say that. I think they could well join a different organization of states. That being said, there are also entities like NATO, ASEAN, ECOWAS, and other loose (or tight) economic and military organizations out there. I think those sorts of pacts will be front and center over the next half century.
Yes, you may be correct, but you never know what a war or external threat can force a country or people to reconsider in 50-100 years or earlier.
Oh yeah! All bets are off for the next century. Sure, there will be some similarities with our past, but this century will look wholly different than any before it, and by a large margin, I think. We have to be ready for pretty much anything.
Here are some more examples as per ChatGPT:
### Islamic World
- **Astrolabes**: These are ancient astronomical devices used by classical astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Originating in the Hellenistic world, they were adopted and improved by Islamic astronomers in the medieval Islamic world. Astrolabes were used to solve problems related to time and the position of the Sun and stars in the sky.
- **Al-Jazari's Machines**: Al-Jazari (1136–1206) was an Arab Muslim polymath who wrote 'The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices', where he described fifty mechanical inventions. These included clocks, automata, pumps, and various devices for raising water, reflecting a high level of mechanical sophistication.
### Chinese Civilization
- **South Pointing Chariot**: This was a non-magnetic, directional-compass vehicle that was used in ancient China as a navigation aid. It was a two-wheeled chariot that carried a figure which always pointed south, and was an early form of a differential gear system.
- **Su Song's Astronomical Clock Tower**: Built in 1088, this tower featured an astronomical clock and was an early example of an escapement mechanism, which is crucial for timekeeping devices. It also featured a celestial atlas and mechanical figurines that chimed the hours.
### Mesoamerican Civilizations
- **Mayan Calendar**: The Maya had a complex astronomical and cosmological system, and their calendar was quite accurate. They used it not only for timekeeping but also to predict celestial events and for their ritual significance.
### European Middle Ages
- **Clocks**: The development of mechanical clocks in Europe during the late Middle Ages was a significant technological advancement. These clocks often featured elaborate gears and mechanisms, some of which were based on earlier knowledge from the Islamic world and classical antiquity.
### Indian Civilization
- **Water Clocks and Astronomical Instruments**: Various types of sophisticated water clocks and astronomical instruments were developed in ancient and medieval India. One of the notable astronomers and mathematicians was Bhaskara II, who designed a water clock called 'ghatiyantra'.
🤯 reminds me of one of my fave sci-fi plot twists of a super sophisticated civilization that is no more and what happened to them?
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
That's so CooL!! Analog computers are awesome! I have always been fascinated by them.
Same here - completely incredible. Also, incredible that there's a 2000 year gap between this and the next analog computer. That is just mind blowing.
🤯
I'm wondering why they build a such sophisticated tool, I mean, was it designed only to be used for spiritual/religious purposes ? So mysterious ! Hope one day we'll find some more artefact like that or some more explanations. Thanks for the reading Andrew :)
I think it had a lot to do with similar reasons the Islamic Golden Age was so interested in getting the calendar to match up with the planets and stars. Not performing the correct ritual on the right day might have been considered sacrilege or heresy.
There was also a certain degree of pride in the craftsmanship that screams, "We can make this and you can't!" I think that very human tendency might have something to do with it, too.
I know I should be fascinated by this realization (and I duly am), but all I could think about was "where's that exaggerated overreaction gif from?"
So I spent a good ten minutes trying to find the original clip, and so far mostly found multiple copies of the gif but am no closer to the source.
That tells you something about my brain. If you cared to know.
I wondered that too! Isn't there some reverse AI doohickey you can do to determine the origin?
Well I used Google Lens which successfully found many places using the same GIF. But I'll try again when I'm by the laptop later.
Dude this is the perfect intro for the third chapter in my book. It's about computational devices, so I'll start with antikythera of course, and there to Pascal and Babbage.
Wonderful! Your book is going to be really good. Keep me posted on how I can help (limited bandwidth being what it is).
This piece causes me to think that throughout history much has been lost. The knowledge we have today may be lost and have to be recreated or built again in the future due to that lose. How many times has this happened and how many more times will it happen?
Great story! It shows the ancients were also thinking. I'm wondering about power. Do you have ideas about how the ancients provided power for this impressive gadget?
Great question. The mechanism was hand-cranked, so you could say it was very eco-friendly!
An Australian has built the Antikythera device using ancient tools and techniques. A mind-expanding voyage of craftsmanship and knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/@Clickspring/playlists
Best to all.
Love it!
I love that at the time we found it, we weren’t technologically advanced enough to figure out what it was.
This is like the apes discovering the monolith!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9woRJ7-mD7Y
The uncanny valley affect hits me so hard every time I see this. So unsettling.
The only thing that's up there with this, to me, is the automata of Heron. It's kinda tough to imagine anything even close to this.
Didn’t he invent a holy water vending machine?
Yes! Yes he did.
I am not ordering you, but I am telling you that you should write about this.
Really tempted, ngl.
One wonders where we would be technologically had history taken some different routes, such as avoiding the Dark Ages.
Indeed, and it's not an easy question to answer. I wonder about all those little knowledge silos out there. I know shared knowledge is incredibly important, but I wonder if we got one or two things we might not have otherwise had, due to isolation and deep (vs wide) study.
The thing about isolation is that you can dive in really, really deep if you need to.
I've heard about this before, but I have yet to get bored reading about it and its discovery.
Were you bored enough to read my whole article? :)
Joke's on you. I wasn't bored at all! =P
In a world before patent protection, the only way to protect valuable knowledge was secrecy. This one devise shows that there were communities of people who were inconceivably ahead of the typical remnants of their civilization that we have been able to scrape out of the fragmentary archeological debris. How many other extremely advanced groups were there? They stayed in secret and left no records. It's existence means there is an entire shadowy history we will never know, that may have been of great importance in the past.
Yes, to a limited extent. I think it's not possible that the world was connected in the past than it is today, and my argument is a bit circular, so bear with me for a sec.
The very reason we are seeing unfathomable things happen, things no one human could possibly figure out, is our fidelity and consistency in recording and disseminating information.
The reason AI tools are so amazing now, but they weren't 2 years ago, is because a billion people have played with them, and millions of developers have thought about how to push the space forward, and shared that info with everyone else working on the project.
There's secrecy today, just like there was in the past, but what's very different today is the very ability to share things instantaneously, on a global scale.
Whatever we did in the past is going to pale in comparison to what we can do today, simply because we're able to tap into the creative impulses of billions instantly, not to mention revisiting the eminent dead in ways that weren't remotely possible.
I am in wholehearted agreement with this.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2&si=lwghkwl03J5elTUw
ICYMI
It makes me consider what other advance technologies existed Millenia ago that we just have yet to discover. I sometimes wonder if ancient civilizations were more technologically advanced than us in some regard, that we are unable to see.
Good considerations. I wonder myself about today's tech, and whether it is about to leave us behind, so to speak. I don't think that has happened in the past to the extent that it can happen today, simply because the world is more connected, and mass manufacturing makes it possible to distribute hardware and software in ways never before imagined.... but it's still intriguing to wonder what else might exist from the past, where we just weren't ready for the tech on a social level.
Cool! The Antique of Antikythera
Antique-kythera, IMO!