A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism(nature.com)
nature.com
A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w
135 comments
The flipside of being so small and dense is that was fragile, which is a problem when you're trying to preserve something for a millennia. It was also undoubtedly expensive, meaning few were produced in the first place and they would be a prime target for thieves and artifact hunters. The one in the article could easily be the last one remaining.
Would the maker have really been thinking that the thing being made would still be usefull 50, 100 or 1000 years later? Sure, it could be used to look that far ahead, but would they have been concerned about longevity of the device itself?
On one hand, it's hard to imagine a craftsperson considering the life of a piece beyond the life of the craftsperson themselves.
But I suspect a craftsperson is first and foremost focused on the quality of materials, quality of the construction — no doubt in large part so that the piece is durable. The degree to which that adds to the longevity is probably unimportant.
Like arguing wether the workbench you built will last 200 years or 400. What does it matter and who could know?
But I suspect a craftsperson is first and foremost focused on the quality of materials, quality of the construction — no doubt in large part so that the piece is durable. The degree to which that adds to the longevity is probably unimportant.
Like arguing wether the workbench you built will last 200 years or 400. What does it matter and who could know?
> The design, so slim, so dense, so well engineered.
It's the Apple M1 of its time.
It's the Apple M1 of its time.
There are some interesting parallels between the technological and cultural history of mechanical watches and smartphones... call it an iphone of its time, or apple watch of its time, and you're on to somthing.
Meaning, it's one of billions only just slightly less sophisticated?
Can anyone help me understand why gears with prime numbers of teeth would not be mechanizable?
For Venus the original designer faced a dilemma: the known period relation (5, 8) was very inaccurate, whereas the accurate (720, 1151) was not mechanizable because 1151 is a prime number, requiring a gear with 1151 teeth.
I thought that gears with prime numbers of teeth would be advantageous because it would spread the wear evenly across the gear that it contacted.
For Venus the original designer faced a dilemma: the known period relation (5, 8) was very inaccurate, whereas the accurate (720, 1151) was not mechanizable because 1151 is a prime number, requiring a gear with 1151 teeth.
I thought that gears with prime numbers of teeth would be advantageous because it would spread the wear evenly across the gear that it contacted.
In addition to the other comments, gears with a prime number of teeth were undesirable because they couldn't be laid out by iterative division of a circle. A gear with 64 teeth can be easily laid out by dividing the circle into fourths, dividing those fourths into fourths, and again to get 64 even divisions. For a gear with a prime number of teeth, the only option is to guess-and-check walk a pair of calipers around the circle, adjusting them iteratively until you make the exact number of steps and wind up at the exact same place. Without vision magnification, this was extremely difficult to do accurately. Clickspring (see top comment) did some experiments with a large dividing plate that makes the process somewhat easier, but it would still be far more difficult than making a non-prime number of teeth.
The other commenters are all correct, but I wanted to say something I didn't see mentioned: you can totally do it, it's trivial to imagine a working gear with 13 teeth. But you can't make two smaller gears that have a ratio of 1:13, because 13 is prime, so you literally have to make it be 1 gear. That means the 1:1151 ratio literally has to be 1 big gear, which is hard to make.
You do have a misunderstanding about the wear. Unless your gear is oscillating back and forth, it will always move in a complete circle and always wear the teeth evenly. Note that the involute tooth design leads to less wear on an individual tooth, but it doesn't have to do with how many teeth are on the gear.
You do have a misunderstanding about the wear. Unless your gear is oscillating back and forth, it will always move in a complete circle and always wear the teeth evenly. Note that the involute tooth design leads to less wear on an individual tooth, but it doesn't have to do with how many teeth are on the gear.
You can't split them up into several smaller gear pairs, so you actually need two gears with 720 and 1151 teeth. A gear with 1151 teeth is impractical to make, both in terms of size and in terms of the manufacturing capability at the time.
One way to do a ratio of 720:1151 is to construct a gear with 720 teeth, and a second gear with 1151 teeth, and mesh them together. This wouldn't be impossible, but it would be a lot of work. If it takes you 5 minutes per tooth, that would be 156 hours sitting there with a file, grinding teeth away. Plus, perhaps most importantly, they'd be enormous- you're talking gears that are like 2 feet across for 1/8" teeth. The Antikythera mechanism was a little over a foot on its long axis, and 8 inches across the other.
Let's say instead of a ratio of 720:1151, the ratio happened to be 720:1147. You construct gears with 24, 30, 31, and 37 teeth. (24x30 = 720, 31x37 = 1147) 720 and 1147 are still coprime, so you can't be reduced the way 720:1152 can be reduced to 5:8. (or more likely, 20:32) You connect the teeth of your 24 tooth gear to your 31 tooth gear, connect your 31 tooth gear to the 30 tooth gear via a common shaft, and connect the teeth of your 30 tooth gear to the 37 tooth gear. The final gear ratio of this mechanism will be 720:1147.
This only works because both 720 and 1147 can be factorized into manageable primes.
Constructing those 122 teeth will take 10 hours at 5 minutes a pop, which is a lot of work but not unmanageable. Furthermore, those four gears can be constructed by four workers, and it will take the 37 tooth worker 3 hours, but a worker working on a 1151 tooth gear will require 96 hours. The gears will be much smaller, easily fitting in your fingers.
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It's also more difficult to construct gears with prime numbers of teeth. If you need to construct a gear with 32 teeth, you bisect the angles a few times until there are 32 portions, then cut teeth there. If you need to construct a gear with 30 teeth, you split it carefully into thirds, carefully split each third into fifths, and then cut two teeth in each fifth. This would probably be a bit rough, but probably within tolerances. You split into thirds or fifths with a straight edge and compass, the way you can with bisecting, but you can wrap some string around the edges and even split string into thirds pretty easily, and fifths with some effort.
If you need to construct a gear with 31 teeth, there's not really a convenient way to do it. There's a lot of pedagogy involved; I think the best way would be to guess about how large a tooth is gonna be, add that to a string you've wrapped around the blank wheel, then repeatedly bisect the string into 32nds, then check if the 32nd tooth overlaps the 1st tooth well enough. If not, start over. But there might be a more convenient way to do it.
Let's say instead of a ratio of 720:1151, the ratio happened to be 720:1147. You construct gears with 24, 30, 31, and 37 teeth. (24x30 = 720, 31x37 = 1147) 720 and 1147 are still coprime, so you can't be reduced the way 720:1152 can be reduced to 5:8. (or more likely, 20:32) You connect the teeth of your 24 tooth gear to your 31 tooth gear, connect your 31 tooth gear to the 30 tooth gear via a common shaft, and connect the teeth of your 30 tooth gear to the 37 tooth gear. The final gear ratio of this mechanism will be 720:1147.
This only works because both 720 and 1147 can be factorized into manageable primes.
Constructing those 122 teeth will take 10 hours at 5 minutes a pop, which is a lot of work but not unmanageable. Furthermore, those four gears can be constructed by four workers, and it will take the 37 tooth worker 3 hours, but a worker working on a 1151 tooth gear will require 96 hours. The gears will be much smaller, easily fitting in your fingers.
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It's also more difficult to construct gears with prime numbers of teeth. If you need to construct a gear with 32 teeth, you bisect the angles a few times until there are 32 portions, then cut teeth there. If you need to construct a gear with 30 teeth, you split it carefully into thirds, carefully split each third into fifths, and then cut two teeth in each fifth. This would probably be a bit rough, but probably within tolerances. You split into thirds or fifths with a straight edge and compass, the way you can with bisecting, but you can wrap some string around the edges and even split string into thirds pretty easily, and fifths with some effort.
If you need to construct a gear with 31 teeth, there's not really a convenient way to do it. There's a lot of pedagogy involved; I think the best way would be to guess about how large a tooth is gonna be, add that to a string you've wrapped around the blank wheel, then repeatedly bisect the string into 32nds, then check if the 32nd tooth overlaps the 1st tooth well enough. If not, start over. But there might be a more convenient way to do it.
It's tough to make gears with that many teeth, especially if you want them to mesh with smaller gears.
Also, meshing against a 1-tooth gear is problematic, so you would need to probably increase that to >4 teeth to have it work. Then your bigger gear needs to have >4x the teeth to get the desired ratio.
Also, meshing against a 1-tooth gear is problematic, so you would need to probably increase that to >4 teeth to have it work. Then your bigger gear needs to have >4x the teeth to get the desired ratio.
1151 is too many teeth for a gear. The teeth would not be deep enough to transmit power effectively. You can't make this exact ratio using gears with fewer teeth because 1151 is prime (more generally, whenever the numerator and denominator are coprime).
Sadly or maybe only interestingly, the Clickspring folks' recent article[1] arguing that the mechanism used a lunar calendar doesn't seem to be cited in this new article.
[1] https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/
[1] https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/
Given how recent his publication is, it is quite likely that the authors of this were already in the final edit stages when they became aware of it, and so it didn't affect anything in their paper and so wasn't cited.
Forgive the naive question, but does this mean these ancient Greeks knew the world was round thousands of years ago?
Eratosthenes even measured earth's circumference with astonishing accuracy. They knew more than we think they knew...
The Greeks deduced that lunar eclipses were caused by the earth’s shadow and, from the consistent roundness of the shadow, that it was a globe.
Clickspring has been recreating the Antikythera[1] and findings[2] went into a research paper.[3]
[1] Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKgdq57uOo
[3] https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/
[1] Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKgdq57uOo
[3] https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/
Great videos. It's so fascinating that they were able to make such a device back in that time. Still wondering how they have done without the machines we have these days, though.
Thanks for posting it
Thanks for posting it
My day's schedule just got put on pause.
For added incentive for those who make the poor call to not check out the videos, he doesn't just recreate the mechanism... He invents or re-invents the tools and techniques required to make it, using only materials and technology known to be available at the time.
And that is super cool. I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do.
And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time.
I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They could go to some parts of the world and literally see the future, and other parts of the world and perhaps feel very connected to the very basics.
Meta: I sure wish this Google Voice thing would not randomly capitalized words. Sorry for the typos I just dictated this and hit send
And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time.
I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They could go to some parts of the world and literally see the future, and other parts of the world and perhaps feel very connected to the very basics.
Meta: I sure wish this Google Voice thing would not randomly capitalized words. Sorry for the typos I just dictated this and hit send
you can go to, say, India today and see the past. Same difference.
Since the Median empire at least, the post was also fairly standard. Vice versa, I am affraid I severely underestimate what pockets of real mastery exist in the world, hidden behind NDAs, paywalls and below the threshold in libraries. I'm normally pretty much satisfied with holding a telecommunication device in my hand.
This includes, hypothetically, the modern knowledge of ancient knowledge. So I don't disagree with you.
Since the Median empire at least, the post was also fairly standard. Vice versa, I am affraid I severely underestimate what pockets of real mastery exist in the world, hidden behind NDAs, paywalls and below the threshold in libraries. I'm normally pretty much satisfied with holding a telecommunication device in my hand.
This includes, hypothetically, the modern knowledge of ancient knowledge. So I don't disagree with you.
Having the ability to send letters is one thing, but that's not the same as having the kind of widespread societal/academic support system which circulates knowledge, elevates budding experts, and brings together groups interested in a common area of study.
Part of it may be that superior knowledge was highly secretive and well guarded.
That's why I'm saying it's the same as today. There is no good reason a peasant would be unable to read, except that nobody taught them, which should not take too much time for alphabetics, or that it was written in a foreign, holy language.
Heck, Runes were considered to have magical power and ritual incantations were highly formularized--as they are today: a) e.g. in fashion brands, b) e.g. in law code to the extent that it requires professional translators
Or closer to the topic, take maths, which has a highly formularized, international, often ambiguous and domain specific writing system. Indeed, it's also a good example of a science where instruction is crucial, and most information is left out in writing because the reader is expected to have it all in working memory.
Even better analogy, computing machines: Not only do write with them, but in a sense we encode information in the, well, object, just like a sine and cosine wave diagram (or animation) encodes the motion of a radius in the circle. Only the keenest reverse engineers are able to read out the fundamental principles of its working. But, for analogy, CISC was found unwieldy so the trend is going back to RISC and doing hyperscalarity via networking, to solve heat problems.
Anyhow,domain knowledge implies today as it did then where to get stuff, not just how to use it. Specifically for the Iron age this means knowledge of iron mines, geography and geology. Maths and other structural sciences are only peripheral.
Given that early Iron was meteoric, one can kind of see how a connection to the skies and gods could be drawn.
And we have to wonder about fate, too. Some resources simply deplete. It's not that the knowledge is lost, but its application. Calenders have been further developed, certainly. Currently we predict the future on the end of global climate. Yeah that's sad, but it puts the little bit of heat that I put out as background noise into perspective.
That's why I'm saying it's the same as today. There is no good reason a peasant would be unable to read, except that nobody taught them, which should not take too much time for alphabetics, or that it was written in a foreign, holy language.
Heck, Runes were considered to have magical power and ritual incantations were highly formularized--as they are today: a) e.g. in fashion brands, b) e.g. in law code to the extent that it requires professional translators
Or closer to the topic, take maths, which has a highly formularized, international, often ambiguous and domain specific writing system. Indeed, it's also a good example of a science where instruction is crucial, and most information is left out in writing because the reader is expected to have it all in working memory.
Even better analogy, computing machines: Not only do write with them, but in a sense we encode information in the, well, object, just like a sine and cosine wave diagram (or animation) encodes the motion of a radius in the circle. Only the keenest reverse engineers are able to read out the fundamental principles of its working. But, for analogy, CISC was found unwieldy so the trend is going back to RISC and doing hyperscalarity via networking, to solve heat problems.
Anyhow,domain knowledge implies today as it did then where to get stuff, not just how to use it. Specifically for the Iron age this means knowledge of iron mines, geography and geology. Maths and other structural sciences are only peripheral.
Given that early Iron was meteoric, one can kind of see how a connection to the skies and gods could be drawn.
And we have to wonder about fate, too. Some resources simply deplete. It's not that the knowledge is lost, but its application. Calenders have been further developed, certainly. Currently we predict the future on the end of global climate. Yeah that's sad, but it puts the little bit of heat that I put out as background noise into perspective.
>Part of it may be that superior knowledge was highly secretive and well guarded.
Especially when that superior knowledge went against the controling religion of the day in that mass acceptance of the knowledge would severely weaken the control that the religion had on the populace. Some of these religious governing periods set back human learning for centuries.
Especially when that superior knowledge went against the controling religion of the day in that mass acceptance of the knowledge would severely weaken the control that the religion had on the populace. Some of these religious governing periods set back human learning for centuries.
I think I see where you're coming from, but I would argue this was be much more true a few decades ago than it is today— the internet is not without its faults, but it has democratized access to a lot of what is needed to ramp up on the arcane languages of things like mathematics and law.
Obviously in-person mentorship and instruction is still ideal, but the modern internet is much more than just a virtual text book or a bunch of videos of recorded lectures— for any given topic there are a hundred communities which happily welcome novices and are willing to examine your reasoning about a particular problem and help plug the holes.
Obviously in-person mentorship and instruction is still ideal, but the modern internet is much more than just a virtual text book or a bunch of videos of recorded lectures— for any given topic there are a hundred communities which happily welcome novices and are willing to examine your reasoning about a particular problem and help plug the holes.
You can do this today: hang out with a reindeer herder in Siberia and then pop over to Shanghai. Nothing's changed.
I agree, but the experience is a little bit less fantastic just because we know more. We know that the Futures in some places and we can still see the past. That was not true for Traveller way back then
I agree. I also have had a strange feeling my last few travels though. There is a pervasive sameness. Even in more traditional parts of India, Mexico. Obviously in places like the US, Western Europe, Canada. Once I step out of the temple, or get off the horse in the remote village, there’s this familiarity. I think an example is what I now think of as “the uniform”: sneakers, jeans, a t shirt with a brand on it. 9 to 5 jobs and democratic governments. Many similar problems, relationships. Obviously there are huge differences in so many fundamental ways, even the ones I mention. But it’s the thread of truth you find in controversial books like The End of History. Globalization is real. The conquest of capitalism and the dream of liberal democracy is far reaching.
Yes I see this too. For The Travelers back in those times the world could look very different. And not that it doesn't look different now, but you're right there's a lot more of the same things were more homogenized and we know more about other places in the world than they ever could have back then
> I think we'd very significantly underestimate what our earlier brothers and sisters could actually do.
I think what happens is that we forget that you can make a heck of a lot of even complicated and precise things with simple technology if you have a lot of time, have a lot of money to pay for labor, and don't need to produce more than a handful of the thing.
Need 100000 pairs of matched gears with a very precise fit, and you need them next month and cheaply? You need modern techniques.
Need one pair, and you've got years to produce it, and plenty of money? All you need is someone with a fine file to hand file the teeth, frequently checking the fit and tweaking it.
I think what happens is that we forget that you can make a heck of a lot of even complicated and precise things with simple technology if you have a lot of time, have a lot of money to pay for labor, and don't need to produce more than a handful of the thing.
Need 100000 pairs of matched gears with a very precise fit, and you need them next month and cheaply? You need modern techniques.
Need one pair, and you've got years to produce it, and plenty of money? All you need is someone with a fine file to hand file the teeth, frequently checking the fit and tweaking it.
Related video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnE0BLEi8k
SeeManDo(2)
Wonder if there are common origins of Antikhytera and Sanskrit word for cosmos, Antariksha.
There is no connection. Antikyhtera is the name of the Greek island near where the device was found.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera
The mechanism is named after an island near to where it was found. It was found in a wrecked roman ship, the island name is contemporary Greek.
So it would be a coincidence, likely without much meaning.
So it would be a coincidence, likely without much meaning.
Antikythera is the name of the location where the archeological discovery of the mechanism was made. Its origins are unknown.
Thus the mechanism has no relation to the sanskrit word.
Thus the mechanism has no relation to the sanskrit word.
Not sure if it would be wise to dismiss the possibility so easily.
We clearly do not know all the causal elements involved, plus I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the island itself had something to do with "antariksha".
We clearly do not know all the causal elements involved, plus I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the island itself had something to do with "antariksha".
If there is a connection, it is coincidental and unrelated to the mechanism which was made elsewhere, and sank in a storm en route to somewhere else. Antikythera is a small barren island in the mediterranean.
Antikithira is a composite word: Anti (a prefix meaning opposite) + Kithira (a nearby island). So maybe it is the other way round, "antariksha" is named after the island ?
Never said it was named after antariksha. Merely pointed out the possibility of a connection. Are we considering word formation and origin retracing a settled matter?
Also just realised that I am replying to a sock puppet account. Thanks anyway.
Also just realised that I am replying to a sock puppet account. Thanks anyway.
huh? what makes you think I am a sock puppet ?
[deleted]
Great tip.
Archimedes in the Sand Reckoner cites to be solving on a problem from the "Eastern Philosophers". The problem is also in the Vajra Sutra where the numbers of sands in the cosmos is contemplated.
Archimedes Father was an astronomer.
Great parallel lives material that never maid it into the original.
The Antikytheron is written in a Corinthian dialect, from where Archimdes father is said to have come from.
My musing consiracy theory for the Roman sacking of Syracuse was for the Antikythera from which harvest and thus taxes could be better calculated - i.e. Thales.
But the Romans killed the only guy who understood how the Antikythera worked.... so it became a generals paper weight.
Archimedes in the Sand Reckoner cites to be solving on a problem from the "Eastern Philosophers". The problem is also in the Vajra Sutra where the numbers of sands in the cosmos is contemplated.
Archimedes Father was an astronomer.
Great parallel lives material that never maid it into the original.
The Antikytheron is written in a Corinthian dialect, from where Archimdes father is said to have come from.
My musing consiracy theory for the Roman sacking of Syracuse was for the Antikythera from which harvest and thus taxes could be better calculated - i.e. Thales.
But the Romans killed the only guy who understood how the Antikythera worked.... so it became a generals paper weight.
The wikipedia article suggests doubt on the Archimedes connection - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
In particular when it says "it was demonstrated in 2017 that the calendar on the Metonic Spiral is indeed of the Corinthian type but cannot be that of Syracuse," although as evidence goes that doesn't sound definitive.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Archimedes was part of an active intellectual community and is reported to have written a (now lost) manuscript on the construction of planetarium-style models ("On Sphere-Making"), so whether or not the artifact is directly from Archimedes there might be an intellectual link.
In particular when it says "it was demonstrated in 2017 that the calendar on the Metonic Spiral is indeed of the Corinthian type but cannot be that of Syracuse," although as evidence goes that doesn't sound definitive.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Archimedes was part of an active intellectual community and is reported to have written a (now lost) manuscript on the construction of planetarium-style models ("On Sphere-Making"), so whether or not the artifact is directly from Archimedes there might be an intellectual link.
Thus my "musing conspiracy"....
Thanks for posting the link. Much of my commentary comes from past research on Archimedes... so I am biased and amused.
If I recall the founding of Syracuse is by Spartans and Corinthians... Archimedes society cared enough about knowledge that he was sent to Alexandria to study. Syracuse was a melting pot of cultures from the start and the Phonecians and the roman conflicts reinforced that to the end.
Thanks for posting the link. Much of my commentary comes from past research on Archimedes... so I am biased and amused.
If I recall the founding of Syracuse is by Spartans and Corinthians... Archimedes society cared enough about knowledge that he was sent to Alexandria to study. Syracuse was a melting pot of cultures from the start and the Phonecians and the roman conflicts reinforced that to the end.
I always wonder what future archaeologists in will read into artifacts from our time when they find them in 2000 years...
We really like trash made of plastic.
I'm not so sure. A lot of trash plastic degrades over long periods of time. They might find the plumbing (which is a type of plastic that lasts longer), but that isn't trash in general.
How long will PVC pipes last? 1000 years is a long time.
I don't know. A lot depends on how they are. UV is the main degrader of plastics in general (but I'm not sure about PVC in particular), but in walls or the ground that isn't a problem. PVC is often used for vent pipes where it is allowed through the roof with no treatment - but failures in this application are not a disaster (no pressure). HDEP (black water pipe - not to be confused with ABS which is sometimes used for drains) pipe has a history of 50 years in the ground with no sign of failure. PEX is expected to last 100 years in a building, but in one month of sun exposure is enough to make it no longer able to hold water pressure.
I've named 3 types of plastic, you can't apply a blanket statement about any of them that applies to the rest.
I've named 3 types of plastic, you can't apply a blanket statement about any of them that applies to the rest.
I read someware that in 2000 years the books we managed to save from the middle ages and up to about 1850 will still be around but anything printed after that will be gone because the paper of the modern age is to fragile to last.
The cultures that dominated North and South America prior to the arrival of European explorers and the mass plague that accompanied them were absolutely vast, and we are only now starting to piece together the size and scale of some of those empires.
There are several reasons for the gap in understanding of their scale, but one is that the well-settled communities (with some exceptions primarily centered in South America) often used primarily wooden construction, as wood was extremely plentiful in the New World. When the European plagues led to 90%-plus die-offs in these cultures, the survivors couldn't maintain the scale of cities they'd built, and since wood rots relatively quickly, their permanent settlements were all but eradicated by the time any subsequent waves of European exploration arrived to write down what they saw in languages Europeans could read.
Modern archaeology techniques, by analyzing land cultivation and the few remnants a wooden building leaves of foundation, are starting to comprehend the scale of the cities built by the original settlers of North and South America.
https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-c...
There are several reasons for the gap in understanding of their scale, but one is that the well-settled communities (with some exceptions primarily centered in South America) often used primarily wooden construction, as wood was extremely plentiful in the New World. When the European plagues led to 90%-plus die-offs in these cultures, the survivors couldn't maintain the scale of cities they'd built, and since wood rots relatively quickly, their permanent settlements were all but eradicated by the time any subsequent waves of European exploration arrived to write down what they saw in languages Europeans could read.
Modern archaeology techniques, by analyzing land cultivation and the few remnants a wooden building leaves of foundation, are starting to comprehend the scale of the cities built by the original settlers of North and South America.
https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-c...
They were also about as complex and technologically advanced as their Old World counterparts. I'm consistently impressed by how well South American cultures understood the cosmos, plumbing, irrigation, materials, etc... South American civilizations would have been a source of new information, and no doubt a bunch of knowledge was lost.
We only have a few books left from thousands of years of civilizations. It makes me incredibly sad to think about the history we lost. It would be like if we only had one or two books to understand all of Roman history. Absolutely blows my mind how fragile everything we've built is.
We only have a few books left from thousands of years of civilizations. It makes me incredibly sad to think about the history we lost. It would be like if we only had one or two books to understand all of Roman history. Absolutely blows my mind how fragile everything we've built is.
They'll read digital archives. They'll be fine.
Assuming the computers and the archives and the OS'es and the standards documentation and so on and so on survive.
200 years of javascript-style churn does not a reliable storage method make.
200 years of javascript-style churn does not a reliable storage method make.
Mostly they'll be interpreting plumbing. Toilets, sinks will last for 1000 years or longer.
What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?
In the case of the Antikythera mechanism, it turns out the knowledge and technology weren't entirely lost. There's a fairly well-established throughline now from Babylonian observation-based astronomical tables to Greek philosophical views and mathematics (and craftmanship) to Arabic astrolabes (retaining some of the gear-train tech) and then back to Europe, to the monastic astronomical clocks. Then the escapement was invented and added in, and boom you got modern industrial technology.
There are a lot of loss and bottlenecks along that journey, though. And many notable locations, installations and individuals. The history of instrument-making and how it is intertwined with philosophical and religious views on the skies and the topology of the universe is quite fascinating (e.g. the motivations for observing the sky, being able to produce predictions at all, crafting models, etc).
There are a lot of loss and bottlenecks along that journey, though. And many notable locations, installations and individuals. The history of instrument-making and how it is intertwined with philosophical and religious views on the skies and the topology of the universe is quite fascinating (e.g. the motivations for observing the sky, being able to produce predictions at all, crafting models, etc).
The Roman were truly a successful agrarian civilization, but became lackluster in progress from there.
They never made an overwhelming shift to mathematical / science based civilization. They took over Syracuse with a mandate to keep Archimedes alive, but that failed. Some scholars say the only roman contribution to math was numerals.
Basically they reaped the profits of empire, and fell into the cargo cults of opulent success, abandoning the prior agricultural based common sense by never integrating new ideas in the Aristotelian domains except for to pay homage to the originating culture enough to collect taxes.
They never made an overwhelming shift to mathematical / science based civilization. They took over Syracuse with a mandate to keep Archimedes alive, but that failed. Some scholars say the only roman contribution to math was numerals.
Basically they reaped the profits of empire, and fell into the cargo cults of opulent success, abandoning the prior agricultural based common sense by never integrating new ideas in the Aristotelian domains except for to pay homage to the originating culture enough to collect taxes.
Other numeral systems existed before the Roman. Etruscan for instance.
You mean slave labor society right, if you can't expand the empire fast enough, you "human capital" stream dries up, its like taking on too much debt and not being able to keep up with paying.
I meant The Romans, started out as an agrarian culture where Ceasars were more interested in tending the farm than politics that evolved into the spectacle that Rome is now known for.
Not ready to drop a book on HN regarding the nuance of Roman evolution just yet.
Not ready to drop a book on HN regarding the nuance of Roman evolution just yet.
Everybody slaved. The Romans were just better at it (and most other things).
> The history of instrument-making and how it is intertwined with philosophical and religious views on the skies and the topology of the universe is quite fascinating (e.g. the motivations for observing the sky ...
While this is in part to be attributed to superstition and religion, this in turn was of material importance to navigation, aggriculture, and perhaps philosophy. Indeed, it is curious how those interrelated.
For one, nomads would need to know when it was time to move on, and where to.
While this is in part to be attributed to superstition and religion, this in turn was of material importance to navigation, aggriculture, and perhaps philosophy. Indeed, it is curious how those interrelated.
For one, nomads would need to know when it was time to move on, and where to.
The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations. Many ancient Greek classics, such as the works of Aristotle might have been lost forever had they not been saved by Islamic scholars.
And don't think it couldn't happen again. We've stored the entirety of our cultural knowledge on an ephemeral digital network that depends upon an intricate and vastly complex technological infrastructure. If that collapses, so does modern civilization, and we're back to horses and buggies.
And don't think it couldn't happen again. We've stored the entirety of our cultural knowledge on an ephemeral digital network that depends upon an intricate and vastly complex technological infrastructure. If that collapses, so does modern civilization, and we're back to horses and buggies.
Modern digital recordings can last for a very long time. And old USB stick dug up in hundreds of years, can be reinterpreted by a future modern civilization. They're kind of all 'saved by Islamic scholars' in that sense?
The data on that USB drive will deteriorate over a couple decades. NAND memory generally isn't an adequate format for archival purposes.
Indeed. The BBC’s Domesday book was put on a pre-CD glass based optical medium which should last forever, but they managed to lose reading equipment for it, and a huge digitization effort from the 80s would have been lost (they published a call for help, and eventually someone found a reader in their garage.... but it was a close call)
Yeah I see online empirical data that shows anywhere from years to centuries, depending on temperature. So not thousands of years.
A future civilization would need to reconstruct a compatible operating system, software and hardware first, then build something with a USB port to put the stick into.
It's not impossible but consider how many ancient human languages we still can't translate, or can only translate due to coincidence (as in the case of the Rosetta Stone with Egyptian hieroglyphics.) Translating digital information in a similar cultural vacuum would be exponentially more difficult. If that stick is encrypted, how does one even know there is information to begin with?
It's not impossible but consider how many ancient human languages we still can't translate, or can only translate due to coincidence (as in the case of the Rosetta Stone with Egyptian hieroglyphics.) Translating digital information in a similar cultural vacuum would be exponentially more difficult. If that stick is encrypted, how does one even know there is information to begin with?
> The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations.
"Halted" and "post-apocalyptic" are strong words. The Fall of Rome was a very long and drawn out event, and plenty of technological and cultural development continued after the Fall. r/AskHistorians has many good posts[1] describing why the "Dark Ages" weren't Dark and the various advances made during the post-Rome pre-Rennasiance period.
A lot of people think that technological and philosophical progress stopped after Rome, when really it just isn't talked about. In my opinion, this is probably because it's a lot more exciting to talk about Roman architecture since many buildings still exist today, rather then the three-field system and mould-board plows that kept the population alive.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/235w3l/why_a...
"Halted" and "post-apocalyptic" are strong words. The Fall of Rome was a very long and drawn out event, and plenty of technological and cultural development continued after the Fall. r/AskHistorians has many good posts[1] describing why the "Dark Ages" weren't Dark and the various advances made during the post-Rome pre-Rennasiance period.
A lot of people think that technological and philosophical progress stopped after Rome, when really it just isn't talked about. In my opinion, this is probably because it's a lot more exciting to talk about Roman architecture since many buildings still exist today, rather then the three-field system and mould-board plows that kept the population alive.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/235w3l/why_a...
Well, almost all of the work of Greek philosophers and their science and philosophy achievements were in Catholic Europe completely forgotten and actively censored for centuries. Fantastic Roman infrastructure, aqueducts, running water inside the multi-storey buildings and huge sewage systems were completely neglected - people completely lost the Antic ideas of hygiene - resulting in horrible sanitary conditions as newly built cities lacked any sanitary infrastructure. Even rich people lived like that, almost no castle even after the middle age had a sewage system, nor running water. They used wells for water and dropped sewage in front of houses, on the streets directly.
Now, they didn't return to stone age of course, practical tools and technologies that were a part of common knowledge remained in use, but many advanced engineering skills were lost. Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually.
Now, they didn't return to stone age of course, practical tools and technologies that were a part of common knowledge remained in use, but many advanced engineering skills were lost. Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually.
> Well, almost all of the work of Greek philosophers and their science and philosophy achievements were in Catholic Europe completely forgotten and actively censored for centuries.
While less available they were still known and studied and certainly not censored. Neo-Platonist and Aristotelian thought was very influential in the Post-Antiquity and Early-Medieval time periods: see the Desert Fathers and the Scholastics. And that's not even talking about the fact that the Byzantines were there the entire time; most "Renaissance" ideas had the origins in Medieval Byzantine thought.
As for hygiene, feel free to look at the Wikipedia article for it[1]: the sewers weren't that effective, people still threw rubbish in the streets, and the bathhouses were cesspools of disease. And that's not talking about that fact that Roman sewage and hygiene was just that: Roman. It's not like the Roman Empire was some golden age where every city in Europe lived like that. Most places it was just as dirty and filthy.
> Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually. It went from being under the control of an autocratic emperor to...being under the control of an autocratic feudal lord. Saying it "fell into [..] conservatism" seems a bit off when it really just traded one man for many. Religious fanaticism I won't bother talking about (why does everyone think people suddenly became more religious after Rome?). As for the term dark ages, that's just a term Petrarch alluded to the time period with, which was then later used in reference to the fewer historical records we have for the time period. It made no reference to religious fanaticism or conservatism.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome
While less available they were still known and studied and certainly not censored. Neo-Platonist and Aristotelian thought was very influential in the Post-Antiquity and Early-Medieval time periods: see the Desert Fathers and the Scholastics. And that's not even talking about the fact that the Byzantines were there the entire time; most "Renaissance" ideas had the origins in Medieval Byzantine thought.
As for hygiene, feel free to look at the Wikipedia article for it[1]: the sewers weren't that effective, people still threw rubbish in the streets, and the bathhouses were cesspools of disease. And that's not talking about that fact that Roman sewage and hygiene was just that: Roman. It's not like the Roman Empire was some golden age where every city in Europe lived like that. Most places it was just as dirty and filthy.
> Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually. It went from being under the control of an autocratic emperor to...being under the control of an autocratic feudal lord. Saying it "fell into [..] conservatism" seems a bit off when it really just traded one man for many. Religious fanaticism I won't bother talking about (why does everyone think people suddenly became more religious after Rome?). As for the term dark ages, that's just a term Petrarch alluded to the time period with, which was then later used in reference to the fewer historical records we have for the time period. It made no reference to religious fanaticism or conservatism.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_ancient_Rome
You’re not arguing against a competing view of history.
You are arguing against an ideology.
Save your breath.
This is their view of history:
Ancient Rome was enlightened. Then Christianity destroyed all the worlds great accomplishments. Then, Galileo showed everyone who was boss.
Oh yeah... a corollary to this version: Islam was as nearly enlightened as Rome and would have ushered in an age of elegant sophistication but for the no-good Crusaders.
So sad...
In reality, Ancient Rome was a brutal slave-based society where life was cheap, religious fanaticism was rampant, children were disposable, and death was glorified.
Given a choice of being an average inhabitant of the Roman Empire or an average inhabitant of medieval Europe, only the truly ignorant would choose the former.
You are arguing against an ideology.
Save your breath.
This is their view of history:
Ancient Rome was enlightened. Then Christianity destroyed all the worlds great accomplishments. Then, Galileo showed everyone who was boss.
Oh yeah... a corollary to this version: Islam was as nearly enlightened as Rome and would have ushered in an age of elegant sophistication but for the no-good Crusaders.
So sad...
In reality, Ancient Rome was a brutal slave-based society where life was cheap, religious fanaticism was rampant, children were disposable, and death was glorified.
Given a choice of being an average inhabitant of the Roman Empire or an average inhabitant of medieval Europe, only the truly ignorant would choose the former.
Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN. They're tedious and not what this site is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[deleted]
And you're not arguing for whitewashing of Christian history?
> Religious fanaticism I won't bother talking about
How would you characterize things like Children's crusades (and Crusades in general), Holy Inquisition, hard prosecution of every other religion and even other Christian fractions like e.g. Cathars?
And let's keep Byzantine out of this, I was talking about West specifically. West which experienced a significant population decline, wars, plagues, and which between 1st and 10th century produced very little of anything new. No big science discoveries, very limited architecture pieces - almost all churches, the (single) religion becoming the absolute focus of any artistic and cultural life. The remaining books and educated people were forced into self-censorship, as many philosophical ideas were considered as blasphemes, and Church positioned itself as one and only gatekeeper to knowledge.
If it was like you're claiming then West Europeans wouldn't need Arabic books to learn about ancient Greece achievements (as they had), and there wouldn't be an explosion of culture and education and book production as it was after fall of Cordoba and Toledo back into the hands of Christians. Arabic library of Cordoba is claimed to have had 400 thousands books, which was estimated to be more than what the whole Western Europe had at the time. In just a few decades the number of books in Europe multiplied many times, first Universities started to be created, things started moving. Just look at the dates when the first Universities were created in Europe: Bologna and Oxford 11th century, Paris and Salamanca 12th century, etc. It's not coincidence, they regained access to the Ancient sources that were lost before and that put them back in the saddle. If all the knowledge was preserved and readily available all the time as you've claimed, this peak would never be that drastic. And also there wouldn't be "a lack of historical records" if people were writing down the facts more - instead of concentrating on religious discussions.
And yes, Francesco Petrarca was the first known to use the term Dark Ages, and he specifically meant that because of the lack of great works and authors of the Classical period. But he wasn't talking about "the fewer historical records" - he freaking lived in that time and was talking about his own feelings that the culture of his time sucks. And great that he did, because he helped change that later.
And the term certainly wasn't used only by him, and not only in that context.
How would you characterize things like Children's crusades (and Crusades in general), Holy Inquisition, hard prosecution of every other religion and even other Christian fractions like e.g. Cathars?
And let's keep Byzantine out of this, I was talking about West specifically. West which experienced a significant population decline, wars, plagues, and which between 1st and 10th century produced very little of anything new. No big science discoveries, very limited architecture pieces - almost all churches, the (single) religion becoming the absolute focus of any artistic and cultural life. The remaining books and educated people were forced into self-censorship, as many philosophical ideas were considered as blasphemes, and Church positioned itself as one and only gatekeeper to knowledge.
If it was like you're claiming then West Europeans wouldn't need Arabic books to learn about ancient Greece achievements (as they had), and there wouldn't be an explosion of culture and education and book production as it was after fall of Cordoba and Toledo back into the hands of Christians. Arabic library of Cordoba is claimed to have had 400 thousands books, which was estimated to be more than what the whole Western Europe had at the time. In just a few decades the number of books in Europe multiplied many times, first Universities started to be created, things started moving. Just look at the dates when the first Universities were created in Europe: Bologna and Oxford 11th century, Paris and Salamanca 12th century, etc. It's not coincidence, they regained access to the Ancient sources that were lost before and that put them back in the saddle. If all the knowledge was preserved and readily available all the time as you've claimed, this peak would never be that drastic. And also there wouldn't be "a lack of historical records" if people were writing down the facts more - instead of concentrating on religious discussions.
And yes, Francesco Petrarca was the first known to use the term Dark Ages, and he specifically meant that because of the lack of great works and authors of the Classical period. But he wasn't talking about "the fewer historical records" - he freaking lived in that time and was talking about his own feelings that the culture of his time sucks. And great that he did, because he helped change that later.
And the term certainly wasn't used only by him, and not only in that context.
You mean West Romes fall. The Eastern Roman empire lasted until the 15th century. Eastern Rome was sacked in 1204 which was the actual blow that jump stated the Western Enlightenment after plundering Eastern Rome for 50 years.
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1188/1204-the-sack-of-constan...
https://www.britannica.com/place/Byzantine-Empire/Byzantine-...
https://historyofislam.com/contents/the-classical-period/con...
The Ottomans did not take over East Rome until the 15th century, where much of the plunder was already gone to the West. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/fallconstan...
While the West would term the East Romans as "Byzantines" in the 15th Century, this isn't correct to say they were not in Roman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium
The Ottomans did not take over East Rome until the 15th century, where much of the plunder was already gone to the West. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/fallconstan...
While the West would term the East Romans as "Byzantines" in the 15th Century, this isn't correct to say they were not in Roman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium
When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the various successor states didn't have enough organizational capacity / surplus / numbers to do things like arm permanent standing armies with advanced siege engines, or build aqueducts and long paved roads everywhere. But there was still technological advancement in plows, water mills, and crop rotation even shortly after the collapse.
A imperial decline mostly means a lot of chaos for a couple of decades, I think the most recent example would be the soviet union. It took Putin like almost 2 decades to recover/stabilize from the western plunder of Russia in the 90s via Russian oligarchs. Russia lost a lot of brain power in that period and lost a lot of institutional knowledge which might takes generations to rebuild again.
Also the engineers and high ranking members of society have to resources to flee to more stable regions and carry their knowledge with them. Its also the engineers that are usually given grace or offers by a opposing forces/rivals.
Also the engineers and high ranking members of society have to resources to flee to more stable regions and carry their knowledge with them. Its also the engineers that are usually given grace or offers by a opposing forces/rivals.
[deleted]
Literally the dark ages...go read up on it.
Define irony
meh the dark ages are well studied and any minor effort to find some information on it will get someone more and more accurate information on it than asking on HN. It's the kind of question that has a short but useless answer that fits on hackernews 'fall of rome bad for progress' but the answer you should get is to go put in some basic effort and look it up - its easy to find information on using the terms 'dark ages'.
You assessment is fair, but there is a lot of data out there that you simply won't find by using Google search. One exemple is the "A collection of unmitigated pedantry" blog which I found after someone used it in a comment when replying to me.
If you google "Iron processing in the middle ages" you won't find Bret Devereaux' excellent series[1], yet it is a much better read than the Wikipedia page.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
If you google "Iron processing in the middle ages" you won't find Bret Devereaux' excellent series[1], yet it is a much better read than the Wikipedia page.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
Rome was the fiber internet of those days. When west rome collapsed europe went back to dial-up.
That's basically correct. Rome organized things on a very large scale with high productivity. Its replacement by less-organized tiny local systems cratered productivity, and the resulting systems couldn't afford to do the things Rome had done.
I came by this analogy by Dan Carlin. He was talking about "Germania" but the same applies to Sweden. When Sweden was christianized around 1000 AD this was basically equivalent to "being connected to the internet". Suddenly the vast resources (intellectual and communicational) of the catholic church where available to the (now christian) elite, giving them a huge advantage.
Expanding on the theme a little bit, here's the opening from East Asia Before the West ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231153198/ ):
> In 1592, the Japanese general Hideyoshi invaded Korea, transporting over 160,000 troops on approximately seven hundred ships. He eventually mobilized half a million troops, intending to continue on to conquer China. Over sixty thousand Korean soldiers, eventually supported by over one hundred thousand Ming Chinese forces, defended the Korean peninsula. After six years of war, the Japanese retreated, and Hideyoshi died, having failed spectacularly in his quest.
> The Imjin War "easily dwarfed those of their European contemporaries" and involved men and material five to ten times the scale of the Spanish Armada of 1588, which has been described as "the greatest military force ever assembled" in Renaissance Europe. [2]
> [2] The Spanish armada consisted of thirty thousand troops on 130 ships and was defeated by twenty thousand English troops.
The Korean peninsula is about 86,000 square miles. Japan is about 146,000. (Modern) Spain is 195,000 square miles.
The fragmentation of Europe had really severe effects on the resources it was able to muster.
> In 1592, the Japanese general Hideyoshi invaded Korea, transporting over 160,000 troops on approximately seven hundred ships. He eventually mobilized half a million troops, intending to continue on to conquer China. Over sixty thousand Korean soldiers, eventually supported by over one hundred thousand Ming Chinese forces, defended the Korean peninsula. After six years of war, the Japanese retreated, and Hideyoshi died, having failed spectacularly in his quest.
> The Imjin War "easily dwarfed those of their European contemporaries" and involved men and material five to ten times the scale of the Spanish Armada of 1588, which has been described as "the greatest military force ever assembled" in Renaissance Europe. [2]
> [2] The Spanish armada consisted of thirty thousand troops on 130 ships and was defeated by twenty thousand English troops.
The Korean peninsula is about 86,000 square miles. Japan is about 146,000. (Modern) Spain is 195,000 square miles.
The fragmentation of Europe had really severe effects on the resources it was able to muster.
Very broadly speaking we tend to now think of history or time as being fairly linear with progress being made while ancients tended to think of history as cyclical and those before them as random.
The Antikythera mechanism or the somewhat inexplicable late bronze age collapse and the unidentifiable "sea people" that caused it are good examples to indicate there's some degree of cyclicality, wherein people stumble across ruins more advanced than their own civilization and wonder where they could have gone.[1]
Getting to the "why" part, Peter Turchin's work expanding on Ibn Khaldun's concept of Asabiyyah seems the most compelling to me.
[1]https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
The Antikythera mechanism or the somewhat inexplicable late bronze age collapse and the unidentifiable "sea people" that caused it are good examples to indicate there's some degree of cyclicality, wherein people stumble across ruins more advanced than their own civilization and wonder where they could have gone.[1]
Getting to the "why" part, Peter Turchin's work expanding on Ibn Khaldun's concept of Asabiyyah seems the most compelling to me.
[1]https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
Regarding the “Bronze Age collapse”, there’s some thinking that it might be much less of an inexplicable cataclysm than it usually appears. Here’s a really interesting r/askhistorians thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fm3vs1/how_d...
Peter Turchin is not a professional historian. He's a hack whose theories have been debunked.
People throw around "debunked" like it's final. In reality, it's just a lazy dismissal without substance.
You want to say he's wrong about something, say what it is and give a reason. Otherwise you're just avoiding actual critical thought.
(Also, I have no idea who Peter Turchin is. I just don't like it when people inflict their defective thinking on others.)
You want to say he's wrong about something, say what it is and give a reason. Otherwise you're just avoiding actual critical thought.
(Also, I have no idea who Peter Turchin is. I just don't like it when people inflict their defective thinking on others.)
The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse.
His own description from a decade ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a A large project he directs and uses to study this: http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ And has produced some interesting descriptive work such as: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/E144.full
Some of his group's work [0] has been criticized on methodological grounds [1]. While some of his work may produce overdetermined models (trying to model history, considering all of the possible variables, can be tricky), the sorts of things he is interested in have been developed a fair bit, of late [2].
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 [1] https://github.com/babeheim/moralizing-gods-reanalysis [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.full
His own description from a decade ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a A large project he directs and uses to study this: http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ And has produced some interesting descriptive work such as: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/E144.full
Some of his group's work [0] has been criticized on methodological grounds [1]. While some of his work may produce overdetermined models (trying to model history, considering all of the possible variables, can be tricky), the sorts of things he is interested in have been developed a fair bit, of late [2].
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 [1] https://github.com/babeheim/moralizing-gods-reanalysis [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.full
That is cool stuff. Thanks for the links, I'll be reading those later.
>> The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse.
I seem to remember that cliodynamics is really Asimov's psychohistory, but pursued in ernest, no?
I seem to remember that cliodynamics is really Asimov's psychohistory, but pursued in ernest, no?
Pretty much, he wrote an article comparing the two a while ago.
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/psychohistory-and-cliod...
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/psychohistory-and-cliod...
One of my covid projects was to look into economic theories of "long cycles", which... go back a long time. I haven't got up to Turchin, but here's some notes for anyone who's interested... (sorry not well cited, but I think direct searches will yield supports for all claims).
There's an idea of "saecula" for the ancients: that humans go through cycles because we collectively forget lessons learned, most commonly after the last who witnessed the actual events dies, ~100yrs. The word meaning changed to mean knowledge caught up in an age, that which does not transcend like God's. Hence the modern usage of secular.
For the moderns, there's an economic idea like this that I think matriculates in German Empire/1850s-WWI...
(aside: I'm astonished the more I learn about what was a super-fecund school of thought centered 1850ish at Germany/U. Humboldt, Berlin and near schools, with many well-known names in politics and the humanities: Bismark, Hegel, Marx, Bauer, Stirner, Nietzsche. And the beginning of modern physics: Plank, Einstein, Helmholtz, Boltzman, Ernst, the list basically just goes on and on; and also the beginning of the modern practice of standard doctoral/masterly degrees in the academy.)
The reason for the context is that I think it's this combo of humanities and sciences that leads to an important development: "Kathedersozialisten" (armchair social philosophers) who were very concerned with the engineering/mechanism of _society_. i.e. They are the beginning of who we know as modern economists: heavy on math and data and they begin to notice patterns...
(aside: Marx is half in this tradition: Kapital reflects Smith's eye to data, but then he bails on this in preference for his linear history as, I think, it enables his revolutionary goals.)
What they got out of an early statistical analysis of historical wealth (equity, prices, interest rates) and social dynamics (like invention, booms, busts, unrest/warfare) is that there are regular cycles. Measurable in the data. This begins to be described by Schumpeter, esp the short ~10yr "business cycle" of boom/recession, tho he also comments on the longer cycles and their international character. I think maybe this is part of Austrian economics, and that there are some political-economic reasons on the way to the world wars to explain why the American/British/French traditions don't accept this knowledge until recently.
It's picked up by Kondatriev in 1950s Stalinist Russia, who pays more attention to the long cycles as a lens into Capital analysis and development of the capitalist state. As noted, Stalin (after Marx) wanted a linear end-of-history development/confrontation with "the old modes" of capitalist thought; but Kondatriev managed to keep an open mind, learned from the data, and came up with his "K-waves" theory of 50/100/150 year long economic cycles. (He paid for his open mind with his life.)
Since, Josh Goldstein's thesis (MIT/Stanford '89) is a great recap and update for the American empire and more rigorous statistical analysis of ~500 years of price/interest/invention/war data.
Today, Ray Dalio is the CO of Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund: he has a blog series on long-cycles on LinkedIn (tho unfortunately doesn't cite any of this there) and basically says we're in the falling part of a 150 year hegemonic cycle and that it's gonna get grim. And all these other guys would agree! Goldstein has been commenting on the 2020s since the 1980s.
Could it really be that our current pandemic and economic recession/depression were somehow caused together? Should we expect major wars soon? How unlikely is it that this all happened 100 years ago, and 100 years before that? (the exceptionally large cholera epidemic in 1830s Europe in the aftermath of Napoleonic wars)
In this light, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that these four: economic hardship/famine, disease, war and death; do indeed travel together, caused by people forgetting to take them seriously and therefore suffering a terrible judgement. Ofc, that's just the ancient idea of apocalypse at the end of an age.
There's an idea of "saecula" for the ancients: that humans go through cycles because we collectively forget lessons learned, most commonly after the last who witnessed the actual events dies, ~100yrs. The word meaning changed to mean knowledge caught up in an age, that which does not transcend like God's. Hence the modern usage of secular.
For the moderns, there's an economic idea like this that I think matriculates in German Empire/1850s-WWI...
(aside: I'm astonished the more I learn about what was a super-fecund school of thought centered 1850ish at Germany/U. Humboldt, Berlin and near schools, with many well-known names in politics and the humanities: Bismark, Hegel, Marx, Bauer, Stirner, Nietzsche. And the beginning of modern physics: Plank, Einstein, Helmholtz, Boltzman, Ernst, the list basically just goes on and on; and also the beginning of the modern practice of standard doctoral/masterly degrees in the academy.)
The reason for the context is that I think it's this combo of humanities and sciences that leads to an important development: "Kathedersozialisten" (armchair social philosophers) who were very concerned with the engineering/mechanism of _society_. i.e. They are the beginning of who we know as modern economists: heavy on math and data and they begin to notice patterns...
(aside: Marx is half in this tradition: Kapital reflects Smith's eye to data, but then he bails on this in preference for his linear history as, I think, it enables his revolutionary goals.)
What they got out of an early statistical analysis of historical wealth (equity, prices, interest rates) and social dynamics (like invention, booms, busts, unrest/warfare) is that there are regular cycles. Measurable in the data. This begins to be described by Schumpeter, esp the short ~10yr "business cycle" of boom/recession, tho he also comments on the longer cycles and their international character. I think maybe this is part of Austrian economics, and that there are some political-economic reasons on the way to the world wars to explain why the American/British/French traditions don't accept this knowledge until recently.
It's picked up by Kondatriev in 1950s Stalinist Russia, who pays more attention to the long cycles as a lens into Capital analysis and development of the capitalist state. As noted, Stalin (after Marx) wanted a linear end-of-history development/confrontation with "the old modes" of capitalist thought; but Kondatriev managed to keep an open mind, learned from the data, and came up with his "K-waves" theory of 50/100/150 year long economic cycles. (He paid for his open mind with his life.)
Since, Josh Goldstein's thesis (MIT/Stanford '89) is a great recap and update for the American empire and more rigorous statistical analysis of ~500 years of price/interest/invention/war data.
Today, Ray Dalio is the CO of Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund: he has a blog series on long-cycles on LinkedIn (tho unfortunately doesn't cite any of this there) and basically says we're in the falling part of a 150 year hegemonic cycle and that it's gonna get grim. And all these other guys would agree! Goldstein has been commenting on the 2020s since the 1980s.
Could it really be that our current pandemic and economic recession/depression were somehow caused together? Should we expect major wars soon? How unlikely is it that this all happened 100 years ago, and 100 years before that? (the exceptionally large cholera epidemic in 1830s Europe in the aftermath of Napoleonic wars)
In this light, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that these four: economic hardship/famine, disease, war and death; do indeed travel together, caused by people forgetting to take them seriously and therefore suffering a terrible judgement. Ofc, that's just the ancient idea of apocalypse at the end of an age.
Assuming you're referring to [1] or [2] or [3], it doesn't look like a debunking to me so much as healthy scientific debate, specifically between the Seshat and DRH projects who are both competing for limited resources-The John Templeton Foundation funds both for example.
In such a case the criticism of not being a professional historian seem odd, as the credentials of Edward Slingerland and Bret Beheim, the lead authors of the critical papers, seem to be fairly comparable to Turchin's.
[1]https://psyarxiv.com/jwa2n/
[2]https://eslingerland.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/09/Historia...
[3]http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/what-came-first-big-god...
In such a case the criticism of not being a professional historian seem odd, as the credentials of Edward Slingerland and Bret Beheim, the lead authors of the critical papers, seem to be fairly comparable to Turchin's.
[1]https://psyarxiv.com/jwa2n/
[2]https://eslingerland.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2019/09/Historia...
[3]http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/what-came-first-big-god...
You're right, he's not a professional historian. And that's a good thing, because History the academic field is hopelessly sick and outdated.
Turchin may not be right about everything (or most things), but the kind of thing he's trying to do is the path forward. The really interesting action in history (broadly construed) is all being done by people doing history within analytic paradigms, like Turchin. Look for work by people who call themselves economic historians.
Turchin may not be right about everything (or most things), but the kind of thing he's trying to do is the path forward. The really interesting action in history (broadly construed) is all being done by people doing history within analytic paradigms, like Turchin. Look for work by people who call themselves economic historians.
Knowledge is passed on from master to apprentice. Nearly-universal literacy helped to alleviate this issue somewhat, but even today most practical knowledge is passed on by people working together.
The result is that even a gap of a single generation is enough for some knowledge to be lost. That's why Roman concrete was forgotten, why we can't build a Saturn V anymore, why you can't just start a chip-fab with enough money, and why it's so hard to maintain code without access to someone that designed the code-base.
Most things, even if they're written down, are more accurately modelled in someone's brain.
The result is that even a gap of a single generation is enough for some knowledge to be lost. That's why Roman concrete was forgotten, why we can't build a Saturn V anymore, why you can't just start a chip-fab with enough money, and why it's so hard to maintain code without access to someone that designed the code-base.
Most things, even if they're written down, are more accurately modelled in someone's brain.
That's why odd gaps appear. Like an article about how China can't manufacture the balls for ball-point pens, or critical parts for jet engines.
Maybe a few missing pieces are why Intel cant seem to figure out EUV lithography.
None of these things are trivial and probably not documented in a way where a noob could pick them up.
Maybe a few missing pieces are why Intel cant seem to figure out EUV lithography.
None of these things are trivial and probably not documented in a way where a noob could pick them up.
Even just the specific knowledge of building a house is probably a generation removed from most people these days. It scares me to think of just how fragile we really are.
This is absolutely perfect and is exactly the type of knowledge that I'm so afraid we'll lose with even one generation of major civil disruption.
Sure, but what is forgotten makes room for novel ideas which are hopefully sometimes improvements. Plus, now we have computers to write and share this knowledge so it doesn't always have to be memorized.
> which are hopefully sometimes improvements
The death of Latin is very upsetting.
The death of Latin is very upsetting.
Technically, there are more Latin speakers alive today than cumulatively during the Roman Empire. However, I think negligibly few are _native_ speakers.
Exponential population growth is weird.
Exponential population growth is weird.
Why is that out of curiosity?
Reading the English for Catullus 16 (pretty dirty) and feeling jealous that they could put it so succinctly in their own language. Also this TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shape....
It was the common language of the time.
Can you elaborate on the Saturn V a bit more?
This came up when people started looking sideways at the ballooning costs of the Space Launch System. Even though we have extensive blueprints and even parts left over from Saturn V rockets, the institutional knowledge to use any of those things simply doesn't exist anymore, and would have to be re-created at exceptional cost of you wanted to build another one.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6281/why-not-build...
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6281/why-not-build...
IIRC, even if we could, we can do better. For example a Saturn V engine is around 5,000 parts, though we've lost the knowledge to assemble them. However, a contemporary study of that found that, with modern manufacturing techniques, you can build an equivalent today with just 40 parts.
oops
This isn't really historically correct. There was no single burning of the Great Library of Alexandria that completely destroyed it. Like many libraries of antiquity it suffered several fires and recovered, but eventually fell into decline and disfavor as other academia centers sprang up.
Jonathan Blow has an excellent talk on this topic in relation to software.
https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
As I understand it this idea of the dark ages isn't supported by modern historians.
The "dark ages" is a good description of what happened throughout most of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The nuance is that the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire survived much longer, and that somewhat well organized kingdoms remained in parts of the West for a time.
But there was a remarkable economic and cultural collapse in most of the former Western Roman Empire. Large cities mostly disappeared. Literacy nearly disappeared, and was only really preserved by the Church. The extensive Roman system of taxation and the public goods it paid for (roads, aqueducts, baths, theaters, security) nearly disappeared. Without large cities, roads and security, long-distance trade collapsed and the economy became much simpler. Skilled trades that existed in the highly complex Roman economy were forgotten. Classical literature and philosophy were largely lost in the West. Essentially, urbanized classical civilization disappeared.
There's a tendency to talk nowadays about the "transformation of the Roman Empire," rather than its fall, but I find that a bit too euphemistic.
But there was a remarkable economic and cultural collapse in most of the former Western Roman Empire. Large cities mostly disappeared. Literacy nearly disappeared, and was only really preserved by the Church. The extensive Roman system of taxation and the public goods it paid for (roads, aqueducts, baths, theaters, security) nearly disappeared. Without large cities, roads and security, long-distance trade collapsed and the economy became much simpler. Skilled trades that existed in the highly complex Roman economy were forgotten. Classical literature and philosophy were largely lost in the West. Essentially, urbanized classical civilization disappeared.
There's a tendency to talk nowadays about the "transformation of the Roman Empire," rather than its fall, but I find that a bit too euphemistic.
> Large cities mostly disappeared. Literacy nearly disappeared, and was only really preserved by the Church.
Neither of those were wide-spread in Western Europe during the Roman empire either. If you take a look at the major cities of the Roman Empire they're generally in either Italy, Byzantium, or North Africa[0]. All of which continued past the fall of Rome. Literacy rates were also questionable [1].
> Without large cities, roads and security, long-distance trade collapsed and the economy became much simpler.
Long-distance trade certainly did not collapse after the fall. While it did decrease to certain extent in the near time period, it rebound within a century or two [2].
[0] https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=4db977...!
[1] https://www.quora.com/Was-literacy-common-in-the-Roman-Empir...
[2] https://oxfordre.com/economics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190...
Neither of those were wide-spread in Western Europe during the Roman empire either. If you take a look at the major cities of the Roman Empire they're generally in either Italy, Byzantium, or North Africa[0]. All of which continued past the fall of Rome. Literacy rates were also questionable [1].
> Without large cities, roads and security, long-distance trade collapsed and the economy became much simpler.
Long-distance trade certainly did not collapse after the fall. While it did decrease to certain extent in the near time period, it rebound within a century or two [2].
[0] https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=4db977...!
[1] https://www.quora.com/Was-literacy-common-in-the-Roman-Empir...
[2] https://oxfordre.com/economics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190...
> Neither of those were wide-spread in Western Europe during the Roman empire either.
Literacy was much more widespread in the Roman Empire than during the Dark Ages. If you go to archaeological sites like Vindolanda, you can see letters written by fairly ordinary people to one another. There was an entire literate culture that disappeared. The reason why they're called the "Dark Ages" in the first place is because of the paucity of written records.
> If you take a look at the major cities of the Roman Empire they're generally in either Italy, Byzantium, or North Africa
First of all, Italy and North Africa were part of the Western Roman Empire. Italy fared better than Gaul and Britain until the mid-6th Century, but Rome eventually declined from several hundred thousand inhabitants in the late Empire to a few tens of thousands.
There were major cities in Gaul, the German provinces and Britain, though: Augusta Treverorum, Londinium, Lugdunum, Narbo and Rheims all had tens of thousands of inhabitants during the Empire, but during the Dark Age shrank to a small fraction of their former size.
> Long-distance trade certainly did not collapse after the fall. While it did decrease to certain extent in the near time period, it rebound within a century or two [2].
The source you cite only notes that trade "never ceased." That doesn't mean there wasn't a massive collapse. The article notes that trade continued to decline for centuries after the fall of the Empire, into the 9th Century AD. The economy of Western Europe probably did not reach a similar level of development as in the Empire until the High Middle Ages.
What I'm pointing out is that the magnitude of the declines in literacy, trade, urbanization, etc. in most of the former Western Roman Empire were striking, and that they really can be characterized as a "collapse."
Literacy was much more widespread in the Roman Empire than during the Dark Ages. If you go to archaeological sites like Vindolanda, you can see letters written by fairly ordinary people to one another. There was an entire literate culture that disappeared. The reason why they're called the "Dark Ages" in the first place is because of the paucity of written records.
> If you take a look at the major cities of the Roman Empire they're generally in either Italy, Byzantium, or North Africa
First of all, Italy and North Africa were part of the Western Roman Empire. Italy fared better than Gaul and Britain until the mid-6th Century, but Rome eventually declined from several hundred thousand inhabitants in the late Empire to a few tens of thousands.
There were major cities in Gaul, the German provinces and Britain, though: Augusta Treverorum, Londinium, Lugdunum, Narbo and Rheims all had tens of thousands of inhabitants during the Empire, but during the Dark Age shrank to a small fraction of their former size.
> Long-distance trade certainly did not collapse after the fall. While it did decrease to certain extent in the near time period, it rebound within a century or two [2].
The source you cite only notes that trade "never ceased." That doesn't mean there wasn't a massive collapse. The article notes that trade continued to decline for centuries after the fall of the Empire, into the 9th Century AD. The economy of Western Europe probably did not reach a similar level of development as in the Empire until the High Middle Ages.
What I'm pointing out is that the magnitude of the declines in literacy, trade, urbanization, etc. in most of the former Western Roman Empire were striking, and that they really can be characterized as a "collapse."
Is that King's Landing?
Sometimes I think the Antikythera Mechanism is more of an ancient Greek Rorschach blot: what people are certain it was supposed to do may reveal more about what is important to them than it does about the mechanism and its maker's intent.
If you want to go deeper, I can recommend Jo Marchant's book on the device as a lovely summary of what it does, the research history and how it all relates to the rest of world history.
This cites Price's "Gears from the Greeks" (1974), one of the major papers on the Antikythera Mechanism. I read through it once for a university assignment. It's fascinating and well worth checking out if you're interested in the device.
I wonder if we'll ever discover another.