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A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

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

#61

Post by jcrubino »

sho_hn wrote: post #45
belval wrote: 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?

In the case of the Antikythera mechanism, it turns out the knowledge and technology weren't entirely lost. There's a fairly well-established throughline now from Babylonian observation-based astronomical tables to Greek philosophical views and mathematics (and craftmanship) to Arabic astrolabes (retaining some of the gear-train tech) and then back to Europe, to the monastic astronomical clocks. Then the escapement wa…

The Roman were truly a successful agrarian civilization, but became lackluster in progress from there.

They never made an overwhelming shift to mathematical / science based civilization. They took over Syracuse with a mandate to keep Archimedes alive, but that failed. Some scholars say the only roman contribution to math was numerals.

Basically they reaped the profits of empire, and fell into the cargo cults of opulent success, abandoning the prior agricultural based common sense by never integrating new ideas in the Aristotelian domains except for to pay homage to the originating culture enough to collect taxes.

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

#62

Post by ddingus »

rfrey wrote: post #29
jdefelice wrote: post #2

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.

And that is super cool. I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do.

And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time.

I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They could go to some parts of the world and literally see the future, and other parts of the world and perhaps feel very connected to the very basics.

Meta: I sure wish this Google Voice thing would not randomly capitalized words. Sorry for the typos I just dictated this and hit send

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

#63

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

tokai wrote: post #58
belval wrote: 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?

As I understand it this idea of the dark ages isn't supported by modern historians.

The "dark ages" is a good description of what happened throughout most of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The nuance is that the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire survived much longer, and that somewhat well organized kingdoms remained in parts of the West for a time.

But there was a remarkable economic and cultural collapse in most of the former Western Roman Empire. Large cities mostly disappeared. Literacy nearly disappeared, and was only really preserved by the Church. The extensive Roman system of taxation and the public goods it paid for (roads, aqueducts, baths, theaters, security) nearly disappeared. Without large cities, roads and security, long-distance trade collapsed and the economy became much simpler. Skilled trades that existed in the highly complex Roman economy were forgotten. Classical literature and philosophy were largely lost in the West. Essentially, urbanized classical civilization disappeared.

There's a tendency to talk nowadays about the "transformation of the Roman Empire," rather than its fall, but I find that a bit too euphemistic.

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

#64

Post by belval »

LegitShady wrote: post #39
McRask wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define irony

meh the dark ages are well studied and any minor effort to find some information on it will get someone more and more accurate information on it than asking on HN. It's the kind of question that has a short but useless answer that fits on hackernews 'fall of rome bad for progress' but the answer you should get is to go put in some basic effort and look it up - its easy to find information on using the terms 'dark age…

You assessment is fair, but there is a lot of data out there that you simply won't find by using Google search. One exemple is the "A collection of unmitigated pedantry" blog which I found after someone used it in a comment when replying to me.

If you google "Iron processing in the middle ages" you won't find Bret Devereaux' excellent series[1], yet it is a much better read than the Wikipedia page.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

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

#65

Post by posterboy »

ddingus wrote: post #62
rfrey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that is super cool. I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do. And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time. I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They c…

you can go to, say, India today and see the past. Same difference.

Since the Median empire at least, the post was also fairly standard. Vice versa, I am affraid I severely underestimate what pockets of real mastery exist in the world, hidden behind NDAs, paywalls and below the threshold in libraries. I'm normally pretty much satisfied with holding a telecommunication device in my hand.

This includes, hypothetically, the modern knowledge of ancient knowledge. So I don't disagree with you.

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

#66

Post by willhslade »

ddingus wrote: post #62
rfrey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that is super cool. I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do. And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time. I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They c…

You can do this today: hang out with a reindeer herder in Siberia and then pop over to Shanghai. Nothing's changed.

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

#67

Post by mikepurvis »

posterboy wrote: post #65
ddingus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is super cool. I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do. And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time. I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They c…

you can go to, say, India today and see the past. Same difference. Since the Median empire at least, the post was also fairly standard. Vice versa, I am affraid I severely underestimate what pockets of real mastery exist in the world, hidden behind NDAs, paywalls and below the threshold in libraries. I'm normally pretty much satisfied with holding a telecommunication device in my hand. This includes, hypothetically,…

Having the ability to send letters is one thing, but that's not the same as having the kind of widespread societal/academic support system which circulates knowledge, elevates budding experts, and brings together groups interested in a common area of study.

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

#68

Post by posterboy »

sho_hn wrote: post #45
belval wrote: 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?

In the case of the Antikythera mechanism, it turns out the knowledge and technology weren't entirely lost. There's a fairly well-established throughline now from Babylonian observation-based astronomical tables to Greek philosophical views and mathematics (and craftmanship) to Arabic astrolabes (retaining some of the gear-train tech) and then back to Europe, to the monastic astronomical clocks. Then the escapement wa…

> The history of instrument-making and how it is intertwined with philosophical and religious views on the skies and the topology of the universe is quite fascinating (e.g. the motivations for observing the sky ...

While this is in part to be attributed to superstition and religion, this in turn was of material importance to navigation, aggriculture, and perhaps philosophy. Indeed, it is curious how those interrelated.

For one, nomads would need to know when it was time to move on, and where to.

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

#69

Post by stryan »

ivanhoe wrote: post #56
stryan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. "Halted" and "post-apocalyptic" are strong words. The Fall of Rome was a very long and drawn out event, and plenty of technological and cultural development continued after the F…

Well, almost all of the work of Greek philosophers and their science and philosophy achievements were in Catholic Europe completely forgotten and actively censored for centuries. Fantastic Roman infrastructure, aqueducts, running water inside the multi-storey buildings and huge sewage systems were completely neglected - people completely lost the Antic ideas of hygiene - resulting in horrible sanitary conditions as n…

> Well, almost all of the work of Greek philosophers and their science and philosophy achievements were in Catholic Europe completely forgotten and actively censored for centuries.

While less available they were still known and studied and certainly not censored. Neo-Platonist and Aristotelian thought was very influential in the Post-Antiquity and Early-Medieval time periods: see the Desert Fathers and the Scholastics. And that's not even talking about the fact that the Byzantines were there the entire time; most "Renaissance" ideas had the origins in Medieval Byzantine thought.

As for hygiene, feel free to look at the Wikipedia article for it[1]: the sewers weren't that effective, people still threw rubbish in the streets, and the bathhouses were cesspools of disease. And that's not talking about that fact that Roman sewage and hygiene was just that: Roman. It's not like the Roman Empire was some golden age where every city in Europe lived like that. Most places it was just as dirty and filthy.

> Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually. It went from being under the control of an autocratic emperor to...being under the control of an autocratic feudal lord. Saying it "fell into [..] conservatism" seems a bit off when it really just traded one man for many. Religious fanaticism I won't bother talking about (why does everyone think people suddenly became more religious after Rome?). As for the term dark ages, that's just a term Petrarch alluded to the time period with, which was then later used in reference to the fewer historical records we have for the time period. It made no reference to religious fanaticism or conservatism.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome

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

#70

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #60
shakezula wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even just the specific knowledge of building a house is probably a generation removed from most people these days. It scares me to think of just how fragile we really are.

Sure, but what is forgotten makes room for novel ideas which are hopefully sometimes improvements. Plus, now we have computers to write and share this knowledge so it doesn't always have to be memorized.

> which are hopefully sometimes improvements

The death of Latin is very upsetting.

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