You may enjoy this article:
https://www.scientificamerican...reveals-new-secrets/

quote:

Originally posted by sigamt:
You may enjoy this article:
https://www.scientificamerican...reveals-new-secrets/

Fascinating!

flashguy

It's so amazing they were able to figure out what that thing does. Especially the pin-and-slot thing. Now if they could decode the Voynich manuscript, I'll die happy.

Histories Greatest Mysteries with Lawrence Fishburne was just on last night speaking of this very device.
I like his show very interesting subjects.

It's one of the great fascinating pieces of human ingenuity ever or, at least that's survived. As a history major, it's always fun to ponder and discuss the what-if's of time-
What was lost during the Bronze Age collapse...would Iron have evolved to prominance as it did?
Same occurred after the collapse of the Roman Empire: cement making, engineering methods, glass making, would the Silk Road and trade between China & Rome have been fully developed?
Would moveable type mechanical printing have migrated from Asia to Europe well before Gutenburg's invention?
The Middle Ages heralded in religious and monarchical dominance, does democracy take hold much earlier if there's no Middle Age as we know of it?
Does Martin Luther's Reformation even happen?
Does the Great Schism even happen?
Do medicines like antibiotics get understood and developed faster than its emergence in the late 19th century.

^^^^

With that in mind, this jumps out about 23:40 in --

"The night sky was the ancient Greeks' television, what else are you going to look at?"


The same sky available to people across the planet, more or less. Only so much to ponder on a sunny day, but nighttime, holy cow.

The Greeks took what they saw, gave it some thought and gave birth to Western culture. And OK, we don't live in a vacuum, there's some sharing and crossover along the way, but there's reason and value living in the world created by those who came before. I bear no shame.

Our night sky is nothing like what the ancients saw. Light pollution has seriously degraded the view. True dark sky sites are something to see. Parts of West Virginia and the middle of the Great Lakes are some of the few places East of the Mississippi that are like the pre-industrial revolution night skies.

For those of you that live in rural places out West, you must know what it’s like.

One of the better videos I’ve seen in a long while. Fascinating is an understatement.

quote:

Originally posted by clang:
Our night sky is nothing like what the ancients saw. Light pollution has seriously degraded the view. True dark sky sites are something to see. Parts of West Virginia and the middle of the Great Lakes are some of the few places East of the Mississippi that are like the pre-industrial revolution night skies.

For those of you that live in rural places out West, you must know what it’s like.

That is a cool video. Quite a puzzle to piece together and some very cool engineering.

As for the sky, I was at Big Bend national park last year, and I can say without any hesitation that the night sky was stunning. Being able to clearly see the milky way is kind of a religious experience.

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Morgan:
Histories Greatest Mysteries with Lawrence Fishburne was just on last night speaking of this very device.
I like his show very interesting subjects.

I watched this episode twice (it repeats again several hours into the night).

The Scientific American article was the best at explaining things, though.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by clang:
Our night sky is nothing like what the ancients saw. Light pollution has seriously degraded the view. True dark sky sites are something to see. Parts of West Virginia and the middle of the Great Lakes are some of the few places East of the Mississippi that are like the pre-industrial revolution night skies.

For those of you that live in rural places out West, you must know what it’s like.

Try being in the desert in the Middle East at night, that’s quite a sight. Virtually no light pollution whatsoever and the night sky is lit up brilliantly with billions of stars. It really is something to behold and it makes the Bible verse about God talking to Abraham about his descendants all the more real.

quote:

Originally posted by clang:
Our night sky is nothing like what the ancients saw. Light pollution has seriously degraded the view. True dark sky sites are something to see. Parts of West Virginia and the middle of the Great Lakes are some of the few places East of the Mississippi that are like the pre-industrial revolution night skies.

For those of you that live in rural places out West, you must know what it’s like.

Being on board ship in the South Pacific was a sight to behold

quote:

Originally posted by clang:
For those of you that live in rural places out West, you must know what it’s like.

In the town I grew up in, even in town with the street lights on we could see the Milky Way clearly. As kids, we used to sleep out in the yard in the summertime and I remember looking up at all of those stars.... That was 50+ years ago and those days are long gone since we were discovered. Where I live now, though, 90 miles away from there, it's darker than the inside of Toby's cow and all I have to do is walk out into the yard and look up. I'll be dead before that changes.

Someone once told me what if there were advanced civilizations that once existed on Earth, perhaps as advanced as we are today, that lived so long ago that any evidence has since completely decayed into nothingness via age and folded into the depths of various tectonic plate subductions. Makes you wonder. Personally I don't consider previous civilizations primitive to us, particularly when you consider that technological progression is only one metric that makes up the civility, so to speak, of a civilization. When I see all the left and woke shit happening all over the US and in Europe, those stupid people are in fact regressed to the worst types of human beings that ever existed since the dawn of mankind. In that regard we haven't really advanced at all in the grand scheme of things.

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
Someone once told me what if there were advanced civilizations that once existed on Earth, perhaps as advanced as we are today, that lived so long ago that any evidence has since completely decayed into nothingness via age and folded into the depths of various tectonic plate subductions.

Easy there, Carl Sagan.

There is evidence of our ancestors, and it's nothing like what you're suggesting. Let's not let this remarkable device cause us to go off into Atlantis-type fantasies.

Civilization began less than 10,000 years ago. Before that, our ancestors were nomads and hunter-gatherers and there is plenty of evidence of such.

And please keep politics out of this. You know better.

I know that. What this person was saying was the possiblity of civilizations before all that, before land creatures, before the cephalapods and earlier life. Civilization so old it predates the fossils known as the beginning of multi-cell life on earth. Yes that would be older than dirt, and unlikely, but could it be reasonably ruled out by other means. Unlikely for sure, but impossible ? Regarding the politics, not sure what you're meaning there.

Correction, I see where you thought I was politicing. Bad choice of words on my part, but that's why I said, "In light of that...", the woke stuff. I was denigrating woke stuff as not very advanced in terms of better civilizations.

Cephalopods? Man you're talking about a period before 500 million years ago.

Please stop

No mention of the Ballchinians?

Good question in Scientific American. Why was there only one especially it was that important to make?

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Morgan:
Good question in Scientific American. Why was there only one especially it was that important to make?

The writing on the device is embossed(?) backwards, implying it was created by a piece with normal figures, punched on the soft bronze. That would seem to indicate a kind of production line for the mechanism. Here's hoping others are found in our lifetimes.