# 1,500 year old computer!!!!



## WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade (Jan 1, 2014)

Well, once I surfaced from my slumber that was definitely not caused by me drinking way too much last night.... *wink wink people*  I pooped onto Facebook, mainly to look at all the hilarious pictures of me rocking about with a false moustache on! 

I was doing that when I saw a link from someone on Malazan Empire (a seriously fun group, if anyone is into the series!)
I shall share it here, because I think that this is really interesting, and shows the possibilities that we can have with our worlds, and that's without magic!!!! unless the Greeks were wizards.... I'll be back to you on that one 

Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time 
( I hope this is hyperlinked. If not people please go to the effort of pasting this into your search bar- it is really worth it! 
I've just seen, it is hyperlinked, people we can rest easy, nobody has to exert themselves! thank god for 2014 and its wonderful technology!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!! I RECKON THIS IS CLICHED, BUT IT'S GONA BE A GOOD ONE!!!


----------



## WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade (Jan 1, 2014)

LOL, I've just noticed that I wrote "Pooped"!!!!! popped was the word I was looking for. I'm not going to change it, because people, it is hilarious!!!  It makes me proud to be me


----------



## CupofJoe (Jan 1, 2014)

Always be proud to be you!
[unless of course you're not - then be whatever you need to be]
For me the Antikythera Device is one of the greatest WOWs of history...


----------



## Ruby (Jan 1, 2014)

Hi, thanks for posting this. It goes to show that there's nothing new under the sun as they say. Those Ancient Greeks were really advanced eg Eratosthenes!


----------



## WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade (Jan 1, 2014)

Yeah, its pretty mind blowing. CupofJoe, I am still trying to figure out that quote of yours- Always be proud to be you!
 [unless of course you're not - then be whatever you need to be] - I thought I had it, but then I lost it again. I am tying my mind in fancy knots trying to untangle it. Though it is about two thirds of the way through my Christmas holiday, so my mind is more or less switched off (that's what I tell myself  )


----------



## CupofJoe (Jan 1, 2014)

@WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade
Me to 2/3 way through my break and 2/3 way through a bottle of very nice Merlot.
I'm not sure I was trying to be profound, it was just my take on "Be the change you wish to see in the world" [which I am assured is by Gandhi so it's probably not].
@Ruby
I did a history of Mathematics course a few years ago and loved learning about the Greeks and Babylonians. Never was algebra so interesting.


----------



## Shockley (Jan 1, 2014)

Just as a historian, I never got the fascination with the Antikythera Mechanism. It's not, as they say, 'ahead of its time' - it was in the exact time it was created. It's not a technological marvel - just something the ancient writers never really mentioned (and why, pray tell, would they?). It gives people as false an idea of ancient civilizations as the perception that they were all backwards, slightly advanced cavemen. 

 Also, the idea that we lost technology/know-how from the ancients is not exactly an old idea/understanding. It's called the 'Dark Ages' for a very good reason.


----------



## WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade (Jan 2, 2014)

Yeah, some of the stuff that they had was amazing. My favourite area of history  is the military side (bloody little git that I am  ) and you see some awesome stuff that we cant actually reproduce. E.g the Greek's Linothorax. it is an armour, that seems to be made out of linen. No one is a 100% sure how it is made, but attempts have been able to stop spear thrusts. This from about half an inch of boiled linen! there is also Greek fire. 

And also structures like Stonehenge and the Mayan/ Aztec temples. They show that these "barbaric" civilisations were in the possession of some sort of understanding of the world, or just bloody clever and observant, to make these structures that so perfectly line up with the sun and moon.


----------



## Shockley (Jan 2, 2014)

Well yeah, they looked up at the sky and built accordingly. The idea that lining something up with a heavenly body required advanced understanding is kind of silly.


----------



## CupofJoe (Jan 3, 2014)

What I take from learning about history [as deep/far back as you like] is that what we know to be "true" seems to change every few years.
A hundred plus years ago, all Dinosaurs were seen as slow dimwitted lizard that lived in swamps and wouldn't know if their own tail was being eaten. Now we "know" that some had feathers [, and the colour of their feathers], that some were fast agile hunters with a metabolism more like mammals and birds.
A hundred plus years ago we "knew" that Stonehenge was aligned with the summer solstice and was made for the Druids by peoples from the south of England. Now we "know" that it is aligned with the winter solstice, had nothing to do with the Druids and that it was a focal point for people all over the British isle and beyond.
I don't know if these current truths are the final word. I doubt it and I love the crackpot ideas as much as the academically approved ones.


----------



## psychotick (Jan 3, 2014)

Hi,

I often poop on Facebook. I have an unusual web browsing technique!

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## Ruby (Jan 4, 2014)

CupofJoe said:


> What I take from learning about history [as deep/far back as you like] is that what we know to be "true" seems to change every few years.
> A hundred plus years ago, all Dinosaurs were seen as slow dimwitted lizard that lived in swamps and wouldn't know if their own tail was being eaten. Now we "know" that some had feathers [, and the colour of their feathers], that some were fast agile hunters with a metabolism more like mammals and birds.
> A hundred plus years ago we "knew" that Stonehenge was aligned with the summer solstice and was made for the Druids by peoples from the south of England. Now we "know" that it is aligned with the winter solstice, had nothing to do with the Druids and that it was a focal point for people all over the British isle and beyond.
> I don't know if these current truths are the final word. I doubt it and I love the crackpot ideas as much as the academically approved ones.


Hey CupofJoe, How interesting: I didn't know that some Dinosaurs had colourful feathers or that Stonehenge wasn't built by the Druids.


----------



## Quillstine (Jan 6, 2014)

Shockley said:


> Just as a historian, I never got the fascination with the Antikythera Mechanism. It's not, as they say, 'ahead of its time' - it was in the exact time it was created. It's not a technological marvel - just something the ancient writers never really mentioned (and why, pray tell, would they?). It gives people as false an idea of ancient civilizations as the perception that they were all backwards, slightly advanced cavemen.
> 
> Also, the idea that we lost technology/know-how from the ancients is not exactly an old idea/understanding. It's called the 'Dark Ages' for a very good reason.



I tend to agree with Shockley on this one. I never really understood the notion so often proclaimed, that the Antikythera Mechanism was going to totally change the way we understood history or what the ancients where capable of. 
There were other devices from around the same period that had a similar functions that had already been discovered, which I believe they used in identifying the function of the Antikythera?
As a technical marvel, certainly it is a fine piece of astounding workmanship, but why we consider people from that era as begin previously unable to create such thing seems very ignorant. After all a great deal of the math, and astrological understanding that would have been used in creating the Antikythera, was known many, many years prior….


----------



## psychotick (Jan 6, 2014)

Hi,

Actually just on the dino front - I've always had trouble accepting them as fast moving. I know they assess it through measuring stride length and such, but I'm sceptical. I mean if an elephant weighs five tons and has four legs and can for short periods of time his something like twenty miles an hour, imagine ten or fifteen tons on two legs. There's just no way. And lets face it, they didn't have to be fast. Just faster than their prey.

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## CupofJoe (Jan 7, 2014)

@psychotick - I don't think the really big dinos were fast. Physics cannot be denied. We could probably out walk/run a sauropod.
That said I did read a few years ago that gait measurement done of T-Rex bones and tracks came up with a jogging figure of 25km/h [15+m/h] that could be kept up for hours. I don't know enough to decide if the TRex was a predator or a scavenger but I wouldn't want to try an evade something that could do 15+m/h all day [except by running in circles - apparently they weren't all that nimble].  TRex was about the same mass as a large elephant [5-7 tonnes].
When you get to Troodon and Deinonychus [smaller predators/omnivores] you are looking at animals that are rougly comparable in size, build and mass to smaller Ostriches. Ostriches can do 40+km/h, leap, kick, spin etc.. Even if the Troodon and Deinonychus were half this speed I really would not want to meet one.
But my original point was that the accepted state of knowledge changes as we learn or understand more.
There are a lot of unknowns to yet know - like do we really have soft tissue from a TRex fossil - a few people have claimed that they have recovered it... if we do, will we be able to get DNA or something similar from it?


----------



## SeverinR (Jan 15, 2014)

Good luck finding tech suport or software.
How many programs do you find for the vic 20? TRS80? Thats only 30-40 yrs ago.
lol
Of course, if its in the movies, Will Smith will be able to plug right into it and make it work for him. Oh, and Chuck Norris would dare it to not work for him and it would.

"I'll hit you with so many alt's you'll beg for a control alt."


----------



## Yellow (Jan 19, 2014)

I also find it strange that people wonder at how advanced we were 1500 years ago. I mean, on an evolutionary scale that's the blink of an eye. I'm no evolution specialist, but i'd guess we aren't so much smarter than ancient humans as most people seem to think. We do however have access to more information. From that you can either understand that ancients were much smarter than we think, or that current humans are much dumber than we presume. I really don't know which is true.


----------



## Shockley (Jan 20, 2014)

Well Yellow, I think plenty of the great minds would have functioned fine today. I think Aristotle would have no trouble setting up a TiVo, as it were. That said, just since 1920 they have had to reset the IQ test three times because of how rapidly the average IQ has increased (a 100 in 1920 would be 130 by the modern scale). While you are broadly right, there is something else going on right now that I can't exactly put my finger on.


----------



## CupofJoe (Jan 21, 2014)

I see it as a band of knowledge that is ever changing.
We don't know things that were once considered common and even vital.
How many of us have ever [let alone regularly] had to make a fire from scratch.... no matches, or chemical striker..., just a flint and steel [et al]? Yet ~200 years ago, I would imaging that most people knew how to do it. 
Or soap. My mother knows how to make soap... My father knows more about car engines that I have done or will ever do and could fix just about any thing mechanical or electrical, but for him there is nothing to "fix" on integrated circuits [to him its a bumblebee that shouldn't fly but does... He and I am happy and accept that!]
"Common Knowledge" moves on...
I think what marks out earlier great thinkers, not that they were smarter, but there was a chance that they understood more of the whole knowledge that was available to them. There was a greater chance of an idea used in one area being understood and adapted by someone in another area [say, field area measurement for taxations [geometry] being used in architecture as well as root of perspective in art]


----------

