For those of you with a serious bent towards Archaeology and Astronomy, the latest Antikythera search is on in earnest. This will rival king Tut in importance. Find the gears boys and girls!
Check out the blog: From the Field :: Return to Antikythera
BTW. What a research vessel! Seriously expected super models up the pointy end. Throw in some whips and that’s a good reason to take up Archaeology.
Also the really cool Diving Exosuit will be available for 1 week should the need arise.
And the Antikythera Mechanism itself:
[quote]This machine has the oldest known complex gear mechanism and is sometimes called the first known analog computer, although the quality of its manufacture suggests that it had undiscovered predecessors during the Hellenistic Period.
It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and is estimated to have been made around 100 BC.[/quote]
It was designed to predict astronomical positions and eclipses.
I’m looking forward to see what they find.
And it’s a pretty impressive display of technology between the yacht, the suit, the communications infrastructure and the underwater robot.
We actually know what that thing’s purpose is now?
Awesome.
Check out: The Antikythera Mechanism - 2D - YouTube
The mechanism was most likely a device representing the work of Hipparchus. He was a Greek mathematician (father of trigonometry) and astronomer. He died on Rhodes about 120BC. The device itself doubts from around the same time. Rhodes itself was noted (by Cicero for one) as a place where many mechanical devices like this were made. Sadly none of them survive. The possibility exists that this was not the work of a lone genius but rather the creation of a workshop. If so then what caused all this knowledge to be lost during the Roman Empire and its fall is one hell of a question.
And of course it would be remiss of me not to mention the other great current dig in Greece, the Amphipolis Tomb.
See: http://www.theamphipolistomb.com/
Could this be Alexander’s Tomb? How the hell could you miss a mound of this size for so many years? So many questions from those crazy fun loving Ancient/Classical Greeks.
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
Check out: The Antikythera Mechanism - 2D - YouTube
The mechanism was most likely a device representing the work of Hipparchus. He was a Greek mathematician (father of trigonometry) and astronomer. He died on Rhodes about 120BC. The device itself doubts from around the same time. Rhodes itself was noted (by Cicero for one) as a place where many mechanical devices like this were made. Sadly none of them survive. The possibility exists that this was not the work of a lone genius but rather the creation of a workshop. If so then what caused all this knowledge to be lost during the Roman Empire and its fall is one hell of a question.
[/quote]
Not really much of a question. For most of history trade secrets and techniques have been passed down from masters to apprentices. If enough were killed by war or plague that knowledge could be lost forever. I believe concrete was a technology that was lost for a millennia and had to be rediscovered.
Hi UncleG,
Cicero said that Rhodes was full of these sorts of mechanical devices. So you would have to think that a reasonable number of workshops were churning them out. Hence the knowledge of how to make gears, arrange them in ways to make something useful or at least entertaining was reasonably wide spread. Whats’ the critical mass of people with knowledge required for the survival of a skill?
Or is there something else required? The Greeks were a literate people. The majority of male citizens of a Greek state would have been able to read. The Antikythera Mechanism even has written instructions observed on the device itself. But perhaps mere reading and writing alone are not sufficient. A picture is worth a thousand words. When was technical drawing invented?
How vital is it too transmitting the knowledge? Here is a thought, the Chinese lead the World in the production of Iron, the production of ships and in so many areas…yet never developed gears or even a written drawing system that could tell you exactly what size and shape to make something to fit slot A in hole B.
You would think that even as ‘Rich mans toys’ there would have been a fair export market for these things. The Greeks and Romans were no slouches in that regards. Yet no sign of such devices was ever found in the ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii, both of which were destroyed only 200 years afterwards. So what happened? Were they looked at as toys and just went out of fashion?
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
Hi UncleG,
Cicero said that Rhodes was full of these sorts of mechanical devices. So you would have to think that a reasonable number of workshops were churning them out. Hence the knowledge of how to make gears, arrange them in ways to make something useful or at least entertaining was reasonably wide spread. Whats’ the critical mass of people with knowledge required for the survival of a skill?
Or is there something else required? The Greeks were a literate people. The majority of male citizens of a Greek state would have been able to read. The Antikythera Mechanism even has written instructions observed on the device itself. But perhaps mere reading and writing alone are not sufficient. A picture is worth a thousand words. When was technical drawing invented? How vital is it too transmitting the knowledge? Here is a thought, the Chinese lead the World in the production of Iron, the production of ships and in so many areas…yet never developed gears or even a written drawing system that could tell you exactly what size and shape to make something to fit slot A in hole B.
You would think that even as ‘Rich mans toys’ there would have been a fair export market for these things. The Greeks and Romans were no slouches in that regards. Yet no sign of such devices was ever found in the ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii, both of which were destroyed only 200 years afterwards. So what happened? Were they looked at as toys and just went out of fashion?
[/quote]
They never would have written such knowledge down, not because they were illiterate but because they didn’t want their techniques to be copied by the competition. If it was a rich man’s toy then it was valuable, hence all the more reason to protect the secret. They had no patent law.
As to why no others have been found it’s hard to say. I know that we live in a throw away culture, but if you go back even 100 years pretty much every scrap of metal was re-used. In colonial times they had laws to prohibit people from burning down houses to get the nails. In those days the population was almost constantly moving west for cheap land, so rather than leave a house behind for the next immigrant people would strip and burn it.
I imagine things were the same in the ancient world. It the gear mechanism fell into disrepair and no one knew how to fix it all that brass would have quickly been melted back down to use on something else within a generation or two.
Ancient discoveries like this are some of the most fascinating and frustrating things to read about. Obviously we’re learning from the discoveries, but the elephant in the room is that a majority of ancient knowledge has been lost to history for whatever reason.
I full faith if humanity ever discovers anything really cool we’ll fuck it up somehow.
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
If so then what caused all this knowledge to be lost during the Roman Empire and its fall is one hell of a question.
[/quote]
Historians have speculated that the device was unique to Greece. The vessel was a Roman plunder ship bound for Italy when it sank.
Going with the lost knowledge, the fire at the library in Alexandria
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I trained fairly extensively as a commercial and technical diver. Romantic visions of making all kinds of money in offshore oil and gas and getting in on these kinds of operations in my well funded spare time. I was pretty sure there’d be dancing girls.
I am still a total sucker for this kind of stuff.
Thanks for posting.
Hi UncleG,
I tend to think whoever made these sorts of things would have had to write down a hell of a lot. You can’t just knock up something as complicated as this without some planning. What size gears? How many teeth? How should the teeth be cut? Will the gear push another gear or a lever? Gear ratios? It could possibly represent the labours of many individuals all of whom have to be coordinated.
Even if it represents the hobby of some guy and not an actual commission, the fact is you are going to need an incredible education to make this, with a long history of making similar but possibly less complicated devices.
So I think that the device implies the existence of some form of written and drawn documentation. Furthermore a master would have had to train his apprentices in the skill of planning this stuff. So I could see the project documentation surviving as a teaching aid. Probably guarded heavily. I’m thinking Harrisons reluctance to reveal details about his clock to the Longitude committee.
So I’m still curious about critical mass of people capable of making such devices. What is required to make it a stable enterprise? I’m still thinking Rich Mans toy that went out of fashion as no one could think of a practical use for it.
[quote]roybot wrote:
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
If so then what caused all this knowledge to be lost during the Roman Empire and its fall is one hell of a question.
[/quote]
Historians have speculated that the device was unique to Greece. The vessel was a Roman plunder ship bound for Italy when it sank. [/quote]
Another one I like is that it was a garbage scow full of scraps being taken away to be melted down. But I prefer the plunder ship version.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Going with the lost knowledge, the fire at the library in Alexandria
And here’s an extra one for you. To this day if you wish to use the Bodleian Library at Oxford University you will be asked to swear out load an oath to the effect that you will not kindle a fire within the library.
Librarians have long memories.
[quote]batman730 wrote:
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I trained fairly extensively as a commercial and technical diver. Romantic visions of making all kinds of money in offshore oil and gas and getting in on these kinds of operations in my well funded spare time. I was pretty sure there’d be dancing girls.
I am still a total sucker for this kind of stuff.
Thanks for posting.[/quote]
Ditto on the suckerage. But I swim like a house brick…straight down and bubble at the bottom.
Bad luck on the dancing girls front.
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
Hi UncleG,
I tend to think whoever made these sorts of things would have had to write down a hell of a lot. You can’t just knock up something as complicated as this without some planning. What size gears? How many teeth? How should the teeth be cut? Will the gear push another gear or a lever? Gear ratios? It could possibly represent the labours of many individuals all of whom have to be coordinated.
Even if it represents the hobby of some guy and not an actual commission, the fact is you are going to need an incredible education to make this, with a long history of making similar but possibly less complicated devices.
So I think that the device implies the existence of some form of written and drawn documentation. Furthermore a master would have had to train his apprentices in the skill of planning this stuff. So I could see the project documentation surviving as a teaching aid. Probably guarded heavily. I’m thinking Harrisons reluctance to reveal details about his clock to the Longitude committee.
So I’m still curious about critical mass of people capable of making such devices. What is required to make it a stable enterprise? I’m still thinking Rich Mans toy that went out of fashion as no one could think of a practical use for it.[/quote]
I agree with you.
I would say it was definitely the work of multiple craftsmen. Maybe one genius with multiple craftsmen under him who could not comprehend the whole but were skilled enough to do the pieces assigned to them.
They probably sketched out technical schematics and diagrams of a sort. But paper does not survive long. The ancient texts that survived did so because scribes and monks copied them out by hand every few centuries or so. Most monks/scribes probably wouldn’t know what to make of such drawings, and probably wouldn’t bother to copy them out.
Off the top of my head I’m not sure what kind of medium they used as paper then, whether it was papyrus or parchment (and I’m not going to google it just to look smart) but that may have been prohibitively expensive, especially in the days before erasers, so they may have used a different medium all together, wood or plaster for example.
Then there’s all the ways that such things can perish. Fires accidental, fires intentional. Cities get sacked, or monks and imams get wild hairs up their asses and start purging works that are pagan or “anti-Islam” or whatever.
In short, I would not speculate as to why the drawings didn’t survive, but rather I would be in awe that any of the written words we have did.
[quote]MartyMonster wrote:
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Going with the lost knowledge, the fire at the library in Alexandria
And here’s an extra one for you. To this day if you wish to use the Bodleian Library at Oxford University you will be asked to swear out load an oath to the effect that you will not kindle a fire within the library.
Librarians have long memories.[/quote]
That’s pretty cool, thanks!
