My academic training, many decades ago, was primarily as a historian, and as recent archeological, astronomical, and other discoveries have come to light, these clues are starting to form a so far dimly seen picture of mankind’s past—what might be termed a “secret history,” that is far different than the one I was taught, and some of the “fringe” ideas about the past history of the human race are starting to look as if they might be more accurate than the conventional picture.
As some evidence for this view there is the Antikythera mechanism, a fantastically complex astronomical computer, fabricated of metal gearworks, found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, the mechanism dated to as early as 200 B.C.
A computing mechanism whose complexity and capabilities—it has been said—were only matched by the very complex astronomical clocks of the 14th century. *
Where did the necessary mathematics, the very detailed and accurate astronomical knowledge, the knowledge of complex gearing and metallurgy, the technology and practical techniques that produced the Antikythera mechanism come from?
There are the recent discoveries of a growing number of catastrophic meteor impacts which have had major deleterious effects on Earth’s climate, and thus on any human civilizations then present.
The most recent such impact likely to have caused the Younger Dryas Period, around 13,000 B.C., wiping out any advanced human civilizations that may have existed at that time. **
There is the recent discovery of Gobekli Tepe and subsequent discovery of other similar sites on the Anatolian Plateau, in modern day Turkey, immense, complex stone constructions, each site covering many acres–a tiny fraction of which have been excavated to date—which date back to 12,000—13,000 B.C., roughly the time of the end of the Dryas. ***
According to the conventional picture of human development at this time period, this was supposedly before the invention of agriculture, before the cultivation of grains, before the domestication of farm animals, before the formation of the first settlements, before even pottery and writing.
Humans at this time period were supposed to have consisted of small family groups of wandering, semi-starved, barely subsisting hunter-gatherers.
Where did the knowledge to enable the creation of such immense and complex stone constructions come from?
How could such immense efforts—apparently extending over a couple of millenia—have been carried out without writing, mathematics, and the ability to form, direct, and coordinate such complex and long-lasting human organizations and projects?
All these clues taken together, the picture I see emerging is of an advanced human civilization—perhaps even a series of them, each one rising and falling over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years in the past—the evidence of each wiped off the face of the Earth, or buried deep underground due to the results of various catastrophic geological and astronomical events.
The last one of these advanced human civilizations destroyed around 13,000 B.C., as the result of the comet impact that caused the Younger Dryas.
But, a few of the people from this advanced civilization survived to spread their knowledge around the world, among various groups of less advanced humans, some of which conserved and passed on this knowledge. Knowledge that, over the millennia, and given the right conditions, led to the advancement of certain human populations.
Thus, the creation of Gobekli Tepe, thus the idea/memory of Atlantis, thus the survival of some of this knowledge to millennia later create the sudden rise of what seems to be a far too fully developed Egyptian civilization, thus the survival of some of this knowledge to make possible the creation of the Antikythera mechanism.
Moreover, now that the government has officially acknowledged that UFOs/UAPs are real, and looking at the evidence for their presence in the distant past–”Ezekiel saw the wheel”-Ezekiel 10:9—we also have to consider whether in the distant past beside just observing us, some of the aliens presumably directing these UFOs decided to land, and to “influence” our development.
The presentation was corny, but the substance was convincing. For readers of Neo’s blog, some of it will be unsurprising. Even so, it’s worth a look for the cell phone tracing and surveillance videos of the mules.
Baryshnikov is just moreso in every way. More athletic, more fluid, more expressive, more interesting. Probably more ballet tho I’m not qualified to judge that; just guessing. Not to detract from Polunin, who is awesome, but with Baryshnikov even the novice is fascinated to see what he’s going to do next. Genius.
I got my California mail-in ballot for the primaries in Saturday’s mail. EVERY registered voter gets one. Of course. No excuses about covid that I’m aware of.
I agree with AMartel. I don’t even really know what to look for, and what Polunin is doing is likely brilliant, however Baryshnikov came across much better.
Snow on Pine,
While I am happy to see some of the certitude and hubris of many historians knocked down a few pegs, I think the existence of really advanced civilizations that we are not aware of, in the far, distant past is unlikely. How advance would any of our current cities or nations be without communication and trade with many other sources? Every once in awhile a town like Syracuse will spawn an Archimedes and a town like Alexandria will spawn a Hero, but without communication and trading links between the two locations it’s difficult for singular inventions to spawn great innovation. It’s also difficult for brilliant, massive engineering to remain hidden, at least in the 21st century. Portions of Rome’s aqueducts and roads are still visible.
And when advanced civilizations communicate and share with one another, or battle with one another, there are historical records. Obelisks and victory arches, maps and ledgers, roads and sunken vessels.
The Antikythera mechanism is a really neat thing, but what’s the great mystery? Spinning, enmeshed, toothed gears replicating orbits.
Summation of rulings issued over the weekend. The swamp at work.
Rufus T. Firefly—
Re: the difficulty of creating the first, very accurate analogue computer–the Antikythera mechanism–used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for decades in advance, to track planets, and to track the four year cycle of the Olympic Games–given relatively primitive 200 B.C. Greek technology, in which the height of that technology was apparently “Archimedes Screw.”
First of all, bringing this mechanism into being doesn’t seem like it would be the work of just one artisan, but would rather be the work of a team of scholars, proto-scientists, and artisans.
It seems to me that this team would have to have mastery of several very detailed and precise sets of knowledge and techniques to create something like the Antikythera mechanism, and each one of these sets of knowledge and techniques would have to have had a developmental history—probably a long one–behind each one of them, to bring them up to the level of sophistication and perfection necessary to create something so accomplished, precise, and complex as the Antikythera mechanism.
First, you have to have extremely accurate observations and measurements of the orbits of the Sun, the Moon, and the five different classical (visible) planets, an understanding of their orbits, and the math to describe them.
Then, you have to figure out how to take that mathematical model and translate it into a computational device, a machine to illustrate those orbits, how they relate one to each other, to the calendar, and to particular Greek festival days, to track the Moon and the Sun through the Zodiac, to predict eclipses, the highly irregular orbit of the Moon and, in addition, to track those five different classical planets.–Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
In order to do this you have to somehow figure out how many moving parts you will need for your computing mechanism, what the size and shape of each one of these interlocking gears will be, and their ratios–and unless you are just going to try to do all this by eye–you’re apparently going to have to determine perhaps as many as 30 plus measurements/gear ratios/shapes to create each one of the estimated 35-37 gear wheels that are estimated to have comprised the Antikythera mechanism. To take just one example, the largest gear, at 5.1 inches in diameter, had 233 teeth. *
Once you determine the sizes and shapes of the gears, you will have to move on to obtaining and refining very high quality raw materials, then, shaping and casting these metals, and from watching how craftsmen in the areas of India, Nepal, and Tibet use bare-bones, primitive means to cast and craft impressive Buddhist and other religious images (rupas), and watching things like a lot of episodes of “Forged in Fire,” I think I have a pretty good appreciation of just how many things can go wrong when you are working with hot metal.
From rough casting you will then move on to refining and fitting these shapes by hand.
In addition, you will have to create extremely accurate pointers and dials so that you can point to the dates of various events, plus a case to house your mechanism.
Perhaps we have it all wrong, and the Greece of 200 B.C. was far more highly sophisticated in terms of it’s knowledge and technology than I understand it to have been.
But, to me, all in all, creating such a sophisticated and complex astronomical computer seems far beyond the knowledge, capabilities, and technology base of 200 B.C. Greece that has so far been found.
However, if you had the help of some salvaged astronomical, mathematical, or technological knowledge, passed down from a past higher civilization, this would have made creating the Antikythera mechanism far more possible.
Great, the stock selloff continues as the market loses another 3%. I don’t know about you, but my retirement money is dwindling down at an alarming rate. FJB.
“Perhaps we have it all wrong, and the Greece of 200 B.C. was far more highly sophisticated in terms of it’s knowledge and technology than I understand it to have been.”
Roger that. “We” have it wrong. Study the entirety of Euclid’s Elements, Apollonius’ Conics and Ptolemy’s Almagest, understand them, and then return to this question. I believe a different answer will emerge.
(Hmm. Wonder if the Taliban can “lend” Zelensky some “stuff”…since surely they don’t really need all of it…)
Anyway, those crises just keep on coming. Regularly. Consistently. Inexorably. Surely a coincidence….
And once antifa gets psyched, the fun will surely begin.
I imagine they’re just waiting for the signal.
physicsguy,
The market decline is very severe. The S&P500 isn’t at bear market levels yet, and while it is the conventional market index, it doesn’t capture the blood letting that thousands of other stocks are seeing.
Anybody need a laugh?
Here is a quote from Paul Begala speaking on the Bill Maher show about the popularity of Biden forgiving student loan debt.
Maher observed that the push to forgive large amounts of student debt is a “loser issue” for President Joe Biden, and Begala agreed in colorful fashion:
PAUL BEGALA: You think? Yeah, well, and this is revealing a big secret. Don’t tell anybody that we Democrats have a lab. Two labs, actually, secret labs, one in Berkeley and one in Brooklyn, where we come up with ideas to completely piss off the working class. And it’s working wonderfully.
BILL MAHER: Labs, you say, actual labs…
PAUL BEGALA: And they all have PhDs right in pissing off the working class. Somehow, in my lifetime, the Democrats have gone from being the party of the factory floor to being the party faculty lounge. I went last week. I spent Wednesday last week in Chicago with the machinists union. Hung out with the machinists all day. Great guys. Not a one of them came up to me and said, Gee, I really hope you take my tax dollars to pay off the debt of somebody went to Stanford. Right. But I have.
So Biden’s under enormous pressure. He’s not for it, he didn’t campaign for it. He says he’ll relieve maybe $10,000, which I suppose is good.
But what I’d much rather see Democrats do is go back to their roots, which is earn it. We’re the party that carried the G.I. Bill, and nobody called that free college because it wasn’t. The guys who got the G.I. Bill earned it. Why don’t we have a system where we say: You want to get out of your college debt, serve your country, Marine Corps, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps. [and so on]
Regarding Snow on Pine’s speculations; the more we learn the greater the certainty that “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Snow on Pine,
You’re mixing several disciplines and assuming the odds of all of them convening is a multiplier, or exponential. They are disparate things.
People look at the stars, planets, sun and moon. Every society we have records of did this and those who developed some form of writing kept very accurate records. It is not odd at all that Greeks were predicting the movements of the sun, moon and planets in 100 B.C.
The gears of the Antikythera are bronze. Current evidence points to the bronze age going back as far as 3,000 B.C. So that’s 2,900 years of humans working with bronze, devising better and better methods to refine it and work with it. Bronze was an important metal and capital (human and financial) resources were focused on technological improvements.
We can’t “run” the Antikythera mechanism so we don’t really know how accurate it is. Based on the inscriptions and the gears and their teeth and how they mesh we can make some well educated guesses on what it did. And it likely did those things. Olympic games are every four years. There are 365 days in a year. So you turn a handle 1,460 times and an arrow tells you it’s time for the Olympics. It’s just teeth and gear diameters. It’s really not very complex ratios or mathematics.
If we could run the Antikythera mechanism I’m certain it would get less and less accurate as it ran forward in time. It doesn’t account for “leap days” or the Earth’s procession on its axis… Also, the tolerances of the gears and teeth are probably inferior.
It’s a cool, amazing object! It’s a great story of how it was found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea and it’s a great story how modern cryptologists, engineers and linguists ciphered out its function.
But the fact that a civilization would be tracking the movement of celestial objects and devising instruments to tally the days, months and years according to their calendar? Every culture has done that throughout history with the best technology their priests, rabbis, tradesmen and/or scientists could devise. The Druids, the Chinese, the Mayans, the beautiful Prague clock… It’s a very typical thing humans do.
Snow on Pine,
Study what Charles Babbage did with teeth and gears using the advanced metal working techniques of the 19th century. And study the logic George Boole sussed out sitting in a chair with a pencil and paper. Together they intuited and developed all the components employed electronically in today’s, modern computers.
In my study of Babbage and Boole’s accounts I don’t recall any mention of contact with extraterrestrial travelers.
The Ancient Greeks had brains as large as ours and they had a lot of time to discuss and think about the physical world. How many lesser Antikythera devices are on shipwrecks that we don’t know about? One that just did days and months. Then a bronze fabricator notices those are selling well so he adds a gear for the Zodiac. Then another guy adds the Olympic games gear…
@Physicsguy “Great, the stock selloff continues as the market loses another 3%. I don’t know about you, but my retirement money is dwindling down at an alarming rate. FJB.”
I retired from the State Dept in December. Last week I moved my entire federal TSP into our Treasury fund. I know that it loses value everyday to inflation, but I just was too nervous about how much it may lose to a full market catastrophe, courteous Brandon and his team. It will stay there until I transfer it into my Fidelity account, where I have better options than the limited TSP.
FJB, indeed.
Stacking assumptions one on top of another to “prove” utust have been extraterresterials is almost as much fun as stacking turtles, or stacking multiple universes. Proto-scientistists, or proto-alchemistists? It ain’t science if it ain’t falsifiable (Carl Popper?). Oh well, beats shouting at clouds or waiting forbthe saucer to carry you away.
Baryshnikov has the quality of ballon or as one of my dance instructors put it: boom boom legs. He takes to the air without discernible effort.
Baryshnikov also has uncanny speed in his turns.
And he is quite a handsome fellow as well.
A prince charming, for sure!
“Maps of The Ancient Sea Kings” digs into the pre-history history. Hapgood’s reviews are somewhat south of “mixed” but there are some anomalies worth noting.
The Antikythera Mechanism seems not to be sui generis, which is Latin for one-off, which is Brit for something or other. There were references, contemporary, to orreries.
See, at some remove, Chrestaller’s Central Place Theory. He suggests that there are certain conditions which must exist for there to be a town or city. An implication is that, where such conditions exist, there must be a city and if there is not, that bears investigation.
neo on the Mother’s Day post:
I’ve never been a big acrobatics fan, though. Kind of creeps me out.
Acrobats and contortionists creep me out too!
Hello. Is anyone doing gardening this year? I’m still in the preparation stage, having only just put up two hanging flower baskets, but as soon as we get out from under these night frosts, the herbs can go in. I thought I’d try growing the same ones I grew last year, pretty much: 1 box of spinach (use more of it this time), 2 of basil, 1 thyme and 1 cilantro.
At the local garden store that I like, I noticed the rosemary seeds were all sold out, uniquely among the herbs. I thought that a little curious.
@ Philip > in re gardening
We lost all of my usual April prep-time due to a family crisis, so it looks like my garden will be limited to some herbs that have over-wintered the last couple of years.
I was somewhat surprised, being in the Denver area, but my rosemary, oregano, thymes of various types, lavender, and tarragon keep coming back.
Fun discovery last year – I cook corn on the cob in my InstantPot, and layering the ears with tarragon stalks gives them an amazing flavor. Rosemary and oregano are good for that also, depending on the taste you are looking for.
Re: The gardening posts
I celebrate you. My husband calls me Dr. Kevorkian in the Garden.
My domain is the kitchen where I use many herbs, especially tarragon, thyme and rosemary.
Thank you Aesop for the inspired idea of combining tarragon with corn on the cob.
Here is a beloved recipe from Ina Garten involving pork, fennel, tarragon, carrots and onions. Sublime.
“Biden”, in “his” focused, tenacious and concerted efforts to crash the country, continues to pile up victory after victory….
“Peter Schiff: The Fed Has Already Lost The Inflation Fight”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/peter-schiff-fed-has-already-lost-inflation-fight
And if anyone still feels like chuckling (or weeping)…
“Ministry of Truthiness”—
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/ministry-of-truthiness
H/T Powerline blog.
My academic training, many decades ago, was primarily as a historian, and as recent archeological, astronomical, and other discoveries have come to light, these clues are starting to form a so far dimly seen picture of mankind’s past—what might be termed a “secret history,” that is far different than the one I was taught, and some of the “fringe” ideas about the past history of the human race are starting to look as if they might be more accurate than the conventional picture.
As some evidence for this view there is the Antikythera mechanism, a fantastically complex astronomical computer, fabricated of metal gearworks, found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, the mechanism dated to as early as 200 B.C.
A computing mechanism whose complexity and capabilities—it has been said—were only matched by the very complex astronomical clocks of the 14th century. *
Where did the necessary mathematics, the very detailed and accurate astronomical knowledge, the knowledge of complex gearing and metallurgy, the technology and practical techniques that produced the Antikythera mechanism come from?
There are the recent discoveries of a growing number of catastrophic meteor impacts which have had major deleterious effects on Earth’s climate, and thus on any human civilizations then present.
The most recent such impact likely to have caused the Younger Dryas Period, around 13,000 B.C., wiping out any advanced human civilizations that may have existed at that time. **
There is the recent discovery of Gobekli Tepe and subsequent discovery of other similar sites on the Anatolian Plateau, in modern day Turkey, immense, complex stone constructions, each site covering many acres–a tiny fraction of which have been excavated to date—which date back to 12,000—13,000 B.C., roughly the time of the end of the Dryas. ***
According to the conventional picture of human development at this time period, this was supposedly before the invention of agriculture, before the cultivation of grains, before the domestication of farm animals, before the formation of the first settlements, before even pottery and writing.
Humans at this time period were supposed to have consisted of small family groups of wandering, semi-starved, barely subsisting hunter-gatherers.
Where did the knowledge to enable the creation of such immense and complex stone constructions come from?
How could such immense efforts—apparently extending over a couple of millenia—have been carried out without writing, mathematics, and the ability to form, direct, and coordinate such complex and long-lasting human organizations and projects?
All these clues taken together, the picture I see emerging is of an advanced human civilization—perhaps even a series of them, each one rising and falling over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years in the past—the evidence of each wiped off the face of the Earth, or buried deep underground due to the results of various catastrophic geological and astronomical events.
The last one of these advanced human civilizations destroyed around 13,000 B.C., as the result of the comet impact that caused the Younger Dryas.
But, a few of the people from this advanced civilization survived to spread their knowledge around the world, among various groups of less advanced humans, some of which conserved and passed on this knowledge. Knowledge that, over the millennia, and given the right conditions, led to the advancement of certain human populations.
Thus, the creation of Gobekli Tepe, thus the idea/memory of Atlantis, thus the survival of some of this knowledge to millennia later create the sudden rise of what seems to be a far too fully developed Egyptian civilization, thus the survival of some of this knowledge to make possible the creation of the Antikythera mechanism.
Moreover, now that the government has officially acknowledged that UFOs/UAPs are real, and looking at the evidence for their presence in the distant past–”Ezekiel saw the wheel”-Ezekiel 10:9—we also have to consider whether in the distant past beside just observing us, some of the aliens presumably directing these UFOs decided to land, and to “influence” our development.
* See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism and https://www.asme.org/getmedia/248c6ed7-94a0-4bcf-aa3c-bdbb0e3431d5/271_1.pdf
** See https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/younger-dryas-0012216
*** See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe and https://www.gaia.com/article/new-evidence-ties-younger-dryas-impact-with-gobekli-tepe and https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/05/is-an-unknown-extraordinarily-ancient-civilisation-buried-under-eastern-turkey/
Ah. The joys of living in Dem controlled areas.
This goes on. Every. Single. Weekend.
6 killed, 18 wounded in Chi Town last weekend:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/8/23062027/weekend-roundup-chicago-shootings-homicides-may
Yesterday, on bitchute, I watched a free version of Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules,” a documentary about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Here’s a link
https://www.bitchute.com/video/TizNoVq1qcwb/
The presentation was corny, but the substance was convincing. For readers of Neo’s blog, some of it will be unsurprising. Even so, it’s worth a look for the cell phone tracing and surveillance videos of the mules.
The Lori Lightfoot parade.
And the May 9, 2022 Victory Parade:
https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/05/09/putins-victory-day-celebration-fewer-troops-fewer-vehicles-no-aircraft-and-no-mention-of-nukes-or-of-victory-n561980
De-Nazification of the Kremlin?
Baryshnikov is just moreso in every way. More athletic, more fluid, more expressive, more interesting. Probably more ballet tho I’m not qualified to judge that; just guessing. Not to detract from Polunin, who is awesome, but with Baryshnikov even the novice is fascinated to see what he’s going to do next. Genius.
Cornflour:
Rumble’s first movie launch is going to be 2000 Mules. Rumble says it is now under an unprecedented level of attack. Perhaps the Ministry of Truth doesn’t want us to see the movie?
I got my California mail-in ballot for the primaries in Saturday’s mail. EVERY registered voter gets one. Of course. No excuses about covid that I’m aware of.
I agree with AMartel. I don’t even really know what to look for, and what Polunin is doing is likely brilliant, however Baryshnikov came across much better.
Snow on Pine,
While I am happy to see some of the certitude and hubris of many historians knocked down a few pegs, I think the existence of really advanced civilizations that we are not aware of, in the far, distant past is unlikely. How advance would any of our current cities or nations be without communication and trade with many other sources? Every once in awhile a town like Syracuse will spawn an Archimedes and a town like Alexandria will spawn a Hero, but without communication and trading links between the two locations it’s difficult for singular inventions to spawn great innovation. It’s also difficult for brilliant, massive engineering to remain hidden, at least in the 21st century. Portions of Rome’s aqueducts and roads are still visible.
And when advanced civilizations communicate and share with one another, or battle with one another, there are historical records. Obelisks and victory arches, maps and ledgers, roads and sunken vessels.
The Antikythera mechanism is a really neat thing, but what’s the great mystery? Spinning, enmeshed, toothed gears replicating orbits.
Margot Cleveland, The Federalist:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/09/spygate-judge-tries-to-protect-hillary-clinton-in-latest-pre-trial-rulings/
Summation of rulings issued over the weekend. The swamp at work.
Rufus T. Firefly—
Re: the difficulty of creating the first, very accurate analogue computer–the Antikythera mechanism–used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for decades in advance, to track planets, and to track the four year cycle of the Olympic Games–given relatively primitive 200 B.C. Greek technology, in which the height of that technology was apparently “Archimedes Screw.”
First of all, bringing this mechanism into being doesn’t seem like it would be the work of just one artisan, but would rather be the work of a team of scholars, proto-scientists, and artisans.
It seems to me that this team would have to have mastery of several very detailed and precise sets of knowledge and techniques to create something like the Antikythera mechanism, and each one of these sets of knowledge and techniques would have to have had a developmental history—probably a long one–behind each one of them, to bring them up to the level of sophistication and perfection necessary to create something so accomplished, precise, and complex as the Antikythera mechanism.
First, you have to have extremely accurate observations and measurements of the orbits of the Sun, the Moon, and the five different classical (visible) planets, an understanding of their orbits, and the math to describe them.
Then, you have to figure out how to take that mathematical model and translate it into a computational device, a machine to illustrate those orbits, how they relate one to each other, to the calendar, and to particular Greek festival days, to track the Moon and the Sun through the Zodiac, to predict eclipses, the highly irregular orbit of the Moon and, in addition, to track those five different classical planets.–Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
In order to do this you have to somehow figure out how many moving parts you will need for your computing mechanism, what the size and shape of each one of these interlocking gears will be, and their ratios–and unless you are just going to try to do all this by eye–you’re apparently going to have to determine perhaps as many as 30 plus measurements/gear ratios/shapes to create each one of the estimated 35-37 gear wheels that are estimated to have comprised the Antikythera mechanism. To take just one example, the largest gear, at 5.1 inches in diameter, had 233 teeth. *
Once you determine the sizes and shapes of the gears, you will have to move on to obtaining and refining very high quality raw materials, then, shaping and casting these metals, and from watching how craftsmen in the areas of India, Nepal, and Tibet use bare-bones, primitive means to cast and craft impressive Buddhist and other religious images (rupas), and watching things like a lot of episodes of “Forged in Fire,” I think I have a pretty good appreciation of just how many things can go wrong when you are working with hot metal.
From rough casting you will then move on to refining and fitting these shapes by hand.
In addition, you will have to create extremely accurate pointers and dials so that you can point to the dates of various events, plus a case to house your mechanism.
Perhaps we have it all wrong, and the Greece of 200 B.C. was far more highly sophisticated in terms of it’s knowledge and technology than I understand it to have been.
But, to me, all in all, creating such a sophisticated and complex astronomical computer seems far beyond the knowledge, capabilities, and technology base of 200 B.C. Greece that has so far been found.
However, if you had the help of some salvaged astronomical, mathematical, or technological knowledge, passed down from a past higher civilization, this would have made creating the Antikythera mechanism far more possible.
Great, the stock selloff continues as the market loses another 3%. I don’t know about you, but my retirement money is dwindling down at an alarming rate. FJB.
“Perhaps we have it all wrong, and the Greece of 200 B.C. was far more highly sophisticated in terms of it’s knowledge and technology than I understand it to have been.”
Roger that. “We” have it wrong. Study the entirety of Euclid’s Elements, Apollonius’ Conics and Ptolemy’s Almagest, understand them, and then return to this question. I believe a different answer will emerge.
Gosh. Seems like another crisis has “developed”:
‘US “Running Low” On Javelin Missile Stockpiles After Supplying Ukraine, Warns Congressman’—
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-running-low-javelin-missile-stockpiles-after-supply-ukraine-warns-congressman
(Hmm. Wonder if the Taliban can “lend” Zelensky some “stuff”…since surely they don’t really need all of it…)
Anyway, those crises just keep on coming. Regularly. Consistently. Inexorably. Surely a coincidence….
And once antifa gets psyched, the fun will surely begin.
I imagine they’re just waiting for the signal.
physicsguy,
The market decline is very severe. The S&P500 isn’t at bear market levels yet, and while it is the conventional market index, it doesn’t capture the blood letting that thousands of other stocks are seeing.
Anybody need a laugh?
Here is a quote from Paul Begala speaking on the Bill Maher show about the popularity of Biden forgiving student loan debt.
Regarding Snow on Pine’s speculations; the more we learn the greater the certainty that “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Snow on Pine,
You’re mixing several disciplines and assuming the odds of all of them convening is a multiplier, or exponential. They are disparate things.
People look at the stars, planets, sun and moon. Every society we have records of did this and those who developed some form of writing kept very accurate records. It is not odd at all that Greeks were predicting the movements of the sun, moon and planets in 100 B.C.
The gears of the Antikythera are bronze. Current evidence points to the bronze age going back as far as 3,000 B.C. So that’s 2,900 years of humans working with bronze, devising better and better methods to refine it and work with it. Bronze was an important metal and capital (human and financial) resources were focused on technological improvements.
We can’t “run” the Antikythera mechanism so we don’t really know how accurate it is. Based on the inscriptions and the gears and their teeth and how they mesh we can make some well educated guesses on what it did. And it likely did those things. Olympic games are every four years. There are 365 days in a year. So you turn a handle 1,460 times and an arrow tells you it’s time for the Olympics. It’s just teeth and gear diameters. It’s really not very complex ratios or mathematics.
If we could run the Antikythera mechanism I’m certain it would get less and less accurate as it ran forward in time. It doesn’t account for “leap days” or the Earth’s procession on its axis… Also, the tolerances of the gears and teeth are probably inferior.
It’s a cool, amazing object! It’s a great story of how it was found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea and it’s a great story how modern cryptologists, engineers and linguists ciphered out its function.
But the fact that a civilization would be tracking the movement of celestial objects and devising instruments to tally the days, months and years according to their calendar? Every culture has done that throughout history with the best technology their priests, rabbis, tradesmen and/or scientists could devise. The Druids, the Chinese, the Mayans, the beautiful Prague clock… It’s a very typical thing humans do.
Snow on Pine,
Study what Charles Babbage did with teeth and gears using the advanced metal working techniques of the 19th century. And study the logic George Boole sussed out sitting in a chair with a pencil and paper. Together they intuited and developed all the components employed electronically in today’s, modern computers.
In my study of Babbage and Boole’s accounts I don’t recall any mention of contact with extraterrestrial travelers.
The Ancient Greeks had brains as large as ours and they had a lot of time to discuss and think about the physical world. How many lesser Antikythera devices are on shipwrecks that we don’t know about? One that just did days and months. Then a bronze fabricator notices those are selling well so he adds a gear for the Zodiac. Then another guy adds the Olympic games gear…
@Physicsguy “Great, the stock selloff continues as the market loses another 3%. I don’t know about you, but my retirement money is dwindling down at an alarming rate. FJB.”
I retired from the State Dept in December. Last week I moved my entire federal TSP into our Treasury fund. I know that it loses value everyday to inflation, but I just was too nervous about how much it may lose to a full market catastrophe, courteous Brandon and his team. It will stay there until I transfer it into my Fidelity account, where I have better options than the limited TSP.
FJB, indeed.
Stacking assumptions one on top of another to “prove” utust have been extraterresterials is almost as much fun as stacking turtles, or stacking multiple universes. Proto-scientistists, or proto-alchemistists? It ain’t science if it ain’t falsifiable (Carl Popper?). Oh well, beats shouting at clouds or waiting forbthe saucer to carry you away.
Baryshnikov has the quality of ballon or as one of my dance instructors put it: boom boom legs. He takes to the air without discernible effort.
Baryshnikov also has uncanny speed in his turns.
And he is quite a handsome fellow as well.
A prince charming, for sure!
“Maps of The Ancient Sea Kings” digs into the pre-history history. Hapgood’s reviews are somewhat south of “mixed” but there are some anomalies worth noting.
The Antikythera Mechanism seems not to be sui generis, which is Latin for one-off, which is Brit for something or other. There were references, contemporary, to orreries.
See, at some remove, Chrestaller’s Central Place Theory. He suggests that there are certain conditions which must exist for there to be a town or city. An implication is that, where such conditions exist, there must be a city and if there is not, that bears investigation.
neo on the Mother’s Day post:
Acrobats and contortionists creep me out too!
Hello. Is anyone doing gardening this year? I’m still in the preparation stage, having only just put up two hanging flower baskets, but as soon as we get out from under these night frosts, the herbs can go in. I thought I’d try growing the same ones I grew last year, pretty much: 1 box of spinach (use more of it this time), 2 of basil, 1 thyme and 1 cilantro.
At the local garden store that I like, I noticed the rosemary seeds were all sold out, uniquely among the herbs. I thought that a little curious.
@ Philip > in re gardening
We lost all of my usual April prep-time due to a family crisis, so it looks like my garden will be limited to some herbs that have over-wintered the last couple of years.
I was somewhat surprised, being in the Denver area, but my rosemary, oregano, thymes of various types, lavender, and tarragon keep coming back.
Fun discovery last year – I cook corn on the cob in my InstantPot, and layering the ears with tarragon stalks gives them an amazing flavor. Rosemary and oregano are good for that also, depending on the taste you are looking for.
Re: The gardening posts
I celebrate you. My husband calls me Dr. Kevorkian in the Garden.
My domain is the kitchen where I use many herbs, especially tarragon, thyme and rosemary.
Thank you Aesop for the inspired idea of combining tarragon with corn on the cob.
Here is a beloved recipe from Ina Garten involving pork, fennel, tarragon, carrots and onions. Sublime.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roast-loin-of-pork-with-fennel-recipe-1942033