Live data from Hacker News

A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

nature.com

21–30 of 136 posts

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antikythera is the name of the location where the archeological discovery of the mechanism was made. Its origins are unknown. Thus the mechanism has no relation to the sanskrit word.

Not sure if it would be wise to dismiss the possibility so easily. We clearly do not know all the causal elements involved, plus I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the island itself had something to do with "antariksha".

[deleted]

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#22
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

Rome was the fiber internet of those days. When west rome collapsed europe went back to dial-up.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#23
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

Literally the dark ages...go read up on it.

Define irony

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#24
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

Very broadly speaking we tend to now think of history or time as being fairly linear with progress being made while ancients tended to think of history as cyclical and those before them as random.

The Antikythera mechanism or the somewhat inexplicable late bronze age collapse and the unidentifiable "sea people" that caused it are good examples to indicate there's some degree of cyclicality, wherein people stumble across ruins more advanced than their own civilization and wonder where they could have gone.[1]

Getting to the "why" part, Peter Turchin's work expanding on Ibn Khaldun's concept of Asabiyyah seems the most compelling to me.

[1]https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#25
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

Knowledge is passed on from master to apprentice. Nearly-universal literacy helped to alleviate this issue somewhat, but even today most practical knowledge is passed on by people working together.

The result is that even a gap of a single generation is enough for some knowledge to be lost. That's why Roman concrete was forgotten, why we can't build a Saturn V anymore, why you can't just start a chip-fab with enough money, and why it's so hard to maintain code without access to someone that designed the code-base.

Most things, even if they're written down, are more accurately modelled in someone's brain.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#26

I always wonder what future archaeologists in will read into artifacts from our time when they find them in 2000 years...

I read someware that in 2000 years the books we managed to save from the middle ages and up to about 1850 will still be around but anything printed after that will be gone because the paper of the modern age is to fragile to last.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#27
post #24
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

Very broadly speaking we tend to now think of history or time as being fairly linear with progress being made while ancients tended to think of history as cyclical and those before them as random. The Antikythera mechanism or the somewhat inexplicable late bronze age collapse and the unidentifiable "sea people" that caused it are good examples to indicate there's some degree of cyclicality, wherein people stumble acr…

Peter Turchin is not a professional historian. He's a hack whose theories have been debunked.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#28
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations. Many ancient Greek classics, such as the works of Aristotle might have been lost forever had they not been saved by Islamic scholars.

And don't think it couldn't happen again. We've stored the entirety of our cultural knowledge on an ephemeral digital network that depends upon an intricate and vastly complex technological infrastructure. If that collapses, so does modern civilization, and we're back to horses and buggies.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#29

Clickspring has been recreating the Antikythera[1] and findings[2] went into a research paper.[3] [1] Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKgdq57uOo [3] https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/

For added incentive for those who make the poor call to not check out the videos, he doesn't just recreate the mechanism... He invents or re-invents the tools and techniques required to make it, using only materials and technology known to be available at the time.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#30
post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

oops
Post reply on HN