Thursday, December 16, 2010

Fucking Gears, How do They work?

The Ancients were geniuses. I'm talking about people like, the Ancients Greeks who had a better grasp of physics than most, the Chinese who managed to map out North America before Columbus in a larger boat, even areas of Middle East had batteries while most other cultures were figuring out basic sanitation.

I don't even know what a lightbulb is!

And then we find something this in the ocean:


This, is the Antikythera mechanism. Well, part of it anyways. Now, it doesn't look like much but the thing is, it's over 2000 year old. Take a look and see how intricate those gears are, in fact, go ahead and find pictures of the other pieces. It's unbelievable that 2000 years ago people were making something so complex and then suddenly everyone goes retarded during the middle ages.

Derp

The sad thing is that we only recently figured out what this thing does: It predicted solar eclipses.



It's hard to believe that mankind had this kind of knowledge and it's just scary how far we regressed and only recently have we somewhat recovered.

But still, this is pretty awesome and impressive. Can't wait till 2024.

21 comments:

  1. amazing. wonder what else was lost in the middle ages. (thanks religion!)

    and you're right - scary to think culture and technology can backslide so far and for so long.

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  2. Amazing, but if you think about it, technology includes everything. Even things like a slab, it doesn't have to be electronic like it is now. Obviuosly, having already invented the slab, now we concentrate on iPads. Such progress.

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  3. man there might be a lost history like in "one piece" manga. this is crazy

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  4. This remidns me of those ancient batteries they found made out of terra cotta pots. My theory is people thought that it was the devil or something, power, technology like that, and killed whoever knew about it.

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  5. It was all going so well till the Romans invented the SUV.

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  6. We know so much but magnets are still such miracles

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  7. that lego clip absolutley blew my mind

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  8. What if it's not a gear? What if it's a magnet?

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  9. Whoa I never built lego like that when I was young =P

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  10. That was...LEGO?! Holy mother of balls!

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  11. Holy shit, that video was crazy. I'd like to know how large the actual mechanism was, and why they chose to find the times of Solar Eclipses, of all things.

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  12. gears be working yo, we don't know how they just be gearin'

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  13. I don't know about the middle ages but why'd they spend so much time nowadays to build something thats function is redundant today out of legos. I guess it just shows that we liek to waste time

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  15. now what was the cause of this dark age .... holy(cough)

    jaw dropping video

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  17. When I hear about regression and the middle ages, the first thing that comes to mind is the dark ages. The dark ages and its underlying cause have greatly harmed progress for humanity.

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