JUPITERASC
Well-known member
and you consider yourself unbiasedBut here you are posting ancient pulley's and lever's, Lol.
Pulleys and levers...
are you sure I'm the one who underestimates our ancient forefathers?
Look, jokes aside, lets assume that all of those findings are legit.
And the ancients built the first computer.
It still doesn't rival the technology we have today.
Hell, our technology from 10 years ago doesn't even rival what we have today.
We've collected more information in the past 5-10 years then we have in the entirety of human existence.
In addition to that, unless the ancients had something akin to the Internet,
which allows the sharing of information with fine fella's like yourselves, we're still way ahead.
Again, it's a great time to be alive.
'......Cicero wrote of a bronze device
made by Archimedes in the third century B.C.
And James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington
thinks that the eclipse cycle represented is Babylonian in origin
and begins in 205 B.C.
Maybe it was Hipparchus, an astronomer in Rhodes around that time
who worked out the math behind the device.
He is known for having blended the arithmetic-based predictions of Babylonians
with geometric theories favored by the Greeks....'
The Antithykera Mechanism
is by far the most advanced piece of ancient technology ever discovered
is older than we thought
and
not quite as Greek as we thought either.
Researchers think they have identified a particular solar eclipse
predicted by the device's complex cycle of astronomical calculations
which can find the location of the Sun and Moon, the phase of the Moon
and possibly the positions of the planets for any given day.
Christian Carman, a science historian at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina
and James Evans, a physicist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington
reached their conclusions by comparing the mechanism's eclipse predictions
found on the Saros dial
with records from Babylon.
That gave them the cosmological clockwork's start date
12 May 205BC
more than a century earlier than originally thought
The evidence persuaded Drs Carman and Evans that
the ANTITHYKERA mechanism was designed according to Babylonian arithmetic principles
rather than Greek trigonometry, which had not been invented in 205BC.
But while the principle used was imported
it remains likely that the mechanism was built in Greece
the lettering on it is Greek
it has a dial that predicts when the Olympic Games will be held
and
bears an inscription mentioning an athletic event on Rhodes.
NEVERTHELESS
The markings on the face of the device
show both Babylonian and Egyptian dates translated into Greek.
Although it is possible
that the device was configured
to start at a point in time earlier than its date of manufacture
that would make it less accurate
hence less useful
as tiny errors accumulate over time
And accuracy was clearly a primary concern of the maker
since the device gets its astronomy spot on.
Drs Carman and Evans research only became possible
after the discovery by Tony Freeth and his colleagues
that the dial on the lower back of the device corresponded to the Saros cycle of eclipses.
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