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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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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.
That's why I'm saying it's the same as today. There is no good reason a peasant would be unable to read, except that nobody taught them, which should not take too much time for alphabetics, or that it was written in a foreign, holy language.
Heck, Runes were considered to have magical power and ritual incantations were highly formularized--as they are today: a) e.g. in fashion brands, b) e.g. in law code to the extent that it requires professional translators
Or closer to the topic, take maths, which has a highly formularized, international, often ambiguous and domain specific writing system. Indeed, it's also a good example of a science where instruction is crucial, and most information is left out in writing because the reader is expected to have it all in working memory.
Even better analogy, computing machines: Not only do write with them, but in a sense we encode information in the, well, object, just like a sine and cosine wave diagram (or animation) encodes the motion of a radius in the circle. Only the keenest reverse engineers are able to read out the fundamental principles of its working. But, for analogy, CISC was found unwieldy so the trend is going back to RISC and doing hyperscalarity via networking, to solve heat problems.
Anyhow,domain knowledge implies today as it did then where to get stuff, not just how to use it. Specifically for the Iron age this means knowledge of iron mines, geography and geology. Maths and other structural sciences are only peripheral.
Given that early Iron was meteoric, one can kind of see how a connection to the skies and gods could be drawn.
And we have to wonder about fate, too. Some resources simply deplete. It's not that the knowledge is lost, but its application. Calenders have been further developed, certainly. Currently we predict the future on the end of global climate. Yeah that's sad, but it puts the little bit of heat that I put out as background noise into perspective.
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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 Scholastic…
You are arguing against an ideology.
Save your breath.
This is their view of history:
Ancient Rome was enlightened. Then Christianity destroyed all the worlds great accomplishments. Then, Galileo showed everyone who was boss.
Oh yeah... a corollary to this version: Islam was as nearly enlightened as Rome and would have ushered in an age of elegant sophistication but for the no-good Crusaders.
So sad...
In reality, Ancient Rome was a brutal slave-based society where life was cheap, religious fanaticism was rampant, children were disposable, and death was glorified.
Given a choice of being an average inhabitant of the Roman Empire or an average inhabitant of medieval Europe, only the truly ignorant would choose the former.
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Great tip. Archimedes in the Sand Reckoner cites to be solving on a problem from the "Eastern Philosophers". The problem is also in the Vajra Sutra where the numbers of sands in the cosmos is contemplated. Archimedes Father was an astronomer. Great parallel lives material that never maid it into the original. The Antikytheron is written in a Corinthian dialect, from where Archimdes father is said to have come from. M…
The wikipedia article suggests doubt on the Archimedes connection - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism In particular when it says "it was demonstrated in 2017 that the calendar on the Metonic Spiral is indeed of the Corinthian type but cannot be that of Syracuse," although as evidence goes that doesn't sound definitive. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Archimedes was part of an active i…
Thanks for posting the link. Much of my commentary comes from past research on Archimedes... so I am biased and amused.
If I recall the founding of Syracuse is by Spartans and Corinthians... Archimedes society cared enough about knowledge that he was sent to Alexandria to study. Syracuse was a melting pot of cultures from the start and the Phonecians and the roman conflicts reinforced that to the end.
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Modern digital recordings can last for a very long time. And old USB stick dug up in hundreds of years, can be reinterpreted by a future modern civilization. They're kind of all 'saved by Islamic scholars' in that sense?
The data on that USB drive will deteriorate over a couple decades. NAND memory generally isn't an adequate format for archival purposes.
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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.
Part of it may be that superior knowledge was highly secretive and well guarded. That's why I'm saying it's the same as today. There is no good reason a peasant would be unable to read, except that nobody taught them, which should not take too much time for alphabetics, or that it was written in a foreign, holy language. Heck, Runes were considered to have magical power and ritual incantations were highly formularize…
Obviously in-person mentorship and instruction is still ideal, but the modern internet is much more than just a virtual text book or a bunch of videos of recorded lectures— for any given topic there are a hundred communities which happily welcome novices and are willing to examine your reasoning about a particular problem and help plug the holes.
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…
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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.
Exponential population growth is weird.
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Antikithira is a composite word: Anti (a prefix meaning opposite) + Kithira (a nearby island). So maybe it is the other way round, "antariksha" is named after the island ?
Never said it was named after antariksha. Merely pointed out the possibility of a connection. Are we considering word formation and origin retracing a settled matter? Also just realised that I am replying to a sock puppet account. Thanks anyway.