Man of Honour
- Joined
- 29 Mar 2003
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It's Paul's mates.
The Antikythera Mechanism
- Thread starter Kosmiche
- Start date
It's Paul's mates.
Another factor to the "out of it's time" label is that the technology/knowledge appears to have been lost and there's no other examples of anything similar until centuries later.
In your steam engine analogy, it would be like finding a steam engine which predates Watt's steam engine by several hundred years but was then apparently forgotten about.
I think much less so. None of the individual aspects of the Antikythera mechanism (astronomy, gearing, metallurgy) were new or even very recent at the time it was made, so it wouldn't have been as anomalous as a medieval steam engine.
If you go back far enough in time, the death of one person resulting in the complete loss of the knowledge they had acquired was a lot more likely than it was in more recent times. On top of that, there's the issue of the survival of records and the issue of immediate usefulness at the time of invention (which greatly increases the chance of the invention become better known and thus less likely to become lost to time). What would have happened if that ship hadn't sank? Would the device have been seen at the time as an interesting example of fine craftsmanship, become a conversation piece in a wealthy person's house and been forgotten about within a couple of lifetimes? Or would it have been seen at the time as a useful tool for philosophers, clerics or government officials (or all three) and become well enough known for enough copies and records to be made for knowledge of it to remain over the millenia?
Dr. Tony Freeth was interviewed recently on Event Horizon. He's one of the founding members of the mechanism and talks about the early days of its discovery both past and present. Really interesting insight and details previously not covered by any media.
