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  1. trackpad Oct 6, 2017

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    I enjoyed learning about this.
    Anyone continuously awestruck by what we as humans are able to imagine, engineer, and create will enjoy this. A little slow to start, but some nice presentations here...and some total characters as well. Aside from being brilliant, you also have to be a little odd to dedicate swaths of your life to understanding this.



    Memorable:
     
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  2. Lexm Oct 6, 2017

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  3. Kwijibo Oct 6, 2017

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    the reproduction
    unnamed.jpg
     
  4. Wryfox Oct 6, 2017

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    It really is an amazing tool but there is no reason to think they're weren't super smart people back then. There were countless things accomplished in antiquity which still defy understanding, only because it was so long ago. But why not?

    The knowledge of both the Romans and Greeks was encyclopedic but ultimately lost due to war, famine, disease and natural disasters. Much of what was known was transferred human to human, and the rest via recordings of various types. Unfortunately both humans and records are fragile, more so than today but still fragile (you don't think that hard drive will keep your data forever do you? Think again). It was the transfer of this knowledge that was widely interrupted in the early middle ages. Such a shame really, imagine where we would be today if humans had continued to build on that knowledge for the last 1500yrs.
     
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  5. Greatoldone Oct 6, 2017

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  6. Archer Omega Qualified Watchmaker Oct 6, 2017

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    The primary thing preventing that continuation was religion and the people who used it to control others by limiting the spread of real knowledge and promoting "special ways of knowing" rather than factual information. Unfortunately it is a trait that we have not yet outgrown as a species...
     
  7. trackpad Oct 7, 2017

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    Fantastic series!
     
  8. michael22 Oct 7, 2017

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    Examples of lost technology like this illustrate to me that ancient humans were just as intelligent as modern humans. It is easy to presume that primitive & ancient people were somehow inferior to us. In reality we were & are all the same. Just a bit of an educational difference.

    Literature about human society is a different example. Machiavelli's "Prince" & Sun Tsu's "Art of War" are still applicable to human society centuries after being written.
     
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  9. trackpad Oct 7, 2017

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    Great comments.

    Not so much a shocker that super smart people lived in ancient times, but that supersmart makers had the tools to execute within these sorts of tolerances – that surprised me. It’s remarkable what they could actually build and create...and not just dream of or conceive (I’m looking at you, Leonardo). To borrow a popular tech parlance: the Greeks shipped.

    So the story of the device (as the video @Greatoldone posted pointed out) is as much about the tools and techniques used to make it as it is about the device itself.

    Oh...and it’s also just crazy that this was found on the sea floor! That we didn’t know about it prior to that. Truly an astounding find.

    Spot on. On a personal side note, I don’t assume my hard drive will keep my data past lunchtime. That puts me at odds with most of the public. But, to your point, and more broadly – what could an unanticipated solar or thermonuclear event do to our collective human knowledge? It’s terrible to comprehend. I can use backblaze.com and Amazon’s S3 for my documents and photos. But what can the world use? Our world has no backup.

    Fun to consider. With the caveat that while 1500 years without resets or interruptions in knowledge might *seem* like a good idea, counterfactuals can be problematic. Against all that went wrong in the Middle Ages, we reacted vigorously with the Renaissance, etc, and so on.

    So maybe today, in a world without these interruptions and resets, we would just be flying around (very contented!) in da Vinci helicopters? ...and without even the notion of an app or a device with which to summon them. The horror! ;)
     
    Edited Oct 7, 2017
  10. JimInOz Melbourne Australia Oct 7, 2017

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    Ditto.

    I've been subscribing to Chris and his projects for some time now. Not only is his engineering work awe inspiring but his video photography and compilation is absolutely first class. My only bitch is that they don't come often enough, but I can imagine the time it takes to produce an episode.

    And he's an Aussie, so that really makes it top notch in my eyes.
     
  11. trackpad Oct 7, 2017

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    High production values. The technique he employs with a 3D overlay of the object or part he is working on, rendered into the context of the scene with the correct perspective – very nice. Yes, he is putting some time into these!
     
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  12. panaitchrono Oct 8, 2017

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    I saw on discovery that if you can rise a child who was born 3000 years ago and educate in our days it will be no difference to a present child..so with all about school and learning which make us better now..in my opinion.
     
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