Fascinating!
I am a history geek and I love when we make some startling find which changes the way we think about our own so called technological supremacy, look at this story about a 2000 year old computer in the journal Nature.
Ancient Moon 'computer' revisited
The delicate workings at the heart of a 2000-year-old analogue computer have been revealed by scientists.
The Antikythera Mechanism, discovered more than 100 years ago in a Roman shipwreck, was used by ancient Greeks to display astronomical cycles.
Using advanced imaging techniques, an Anglo-Greek team probed the remaining fragments of the complex geared device.
The results, published in the journal Nature, show it could have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses.
The elaborate arrangement of bronze gears may also have displayed planetary information.
"This is as important for technology as the Acropolis is for architecture," said Professor John Seiradakis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and one of the team. "It is a unique device."
posted by Bomber @ 10:07 am
4 comments
4 Comments:
Its amazing how many false starts man kind has had before we finally "got technological" for want of a phrase...The Greeks and Romans were more advanced in many ways than those in the Dark Ages. When we're we finally able to build the Colosuem or Great Pyramid again after the originals?! And if you think about the Enlightenment and the Dark Ages before that, the Roman / Greek cultures that were superior to much of the Dark Ages weren't too far away from the Industrial Revolution...hard to argue that 400 years...thanks religion (dark ages) You held back human development for 1000 years!!
And to think mankind hasn't really advanced at all in 80,000 years the cradle of civilisation could have taken off at any time if the weather etc had been a little more settled...yet even when it was we stuffed it up again and again...no doubt religion will be the death of our civilisation, and for the sake (and all sides are gulity of this) of scrapping over a small patch of desert :\
I strongly believe overall that religion is a force for bad in the world, and more bad than good has come from it, and will continue to do so!
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Fascinating post there Anon - do you really think Religion is that bad? Christianity certainly suppressed science, but by supporting art as strongly as it did, it created (inadvertently) help with the rise of the individual.
That's a difficult question Bomber. I've been mulling it over ever since I read Anon's post. Religion is nothing but bullshit and dogma and I'd like to think we'd all be better off without it. But would we really?
What's kept me from replying to this post for ages is that bullshit and dogma, like all of our supposed negative traits, are closely linked to positive traits that we have. There's a saying I've been using recently about that, (don't know if anyone has ever ventured the idea before so if you know of someone who already has, please let me know): Your weaknesses are also your strengths. Well, a tendency to come up with (and believe) bullshit comes directly from our inventiveness, and being dogmatic has positive attributes to it as well - it makes us tenaciously stick to new, often initially questionable, ideas (continental drift) and even dissuades us from ignoring and forgetting past lessons too. So both are valuable traits in the right situation. Without them would be, in fact, less advanced than we are?
Having said that, I still have hope that one day religion will get relegated to history when we advance to the point where people can live without it. Anyway, I promise that I'll revisit this idea sometime if and when I'm (a) not quite so fucking busy and (b) my inner brain has resolved some more ideas on this topic.
- Nobody.
Religion is nothing but bullshit and dogma
Perhaps a little harsh ;-). Think instead of a huge spiralling edifice, beset with gems and precious stones, pleasing to the eye but where the foundations are glued together with shit. Looks nice from a distance. On close examination there's a lot of fake jewelry and tinsel though. Those who live there don't understand what you mean when you mention the smell. They're used to it.
- Nobody.
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