I haven’t read the paper under current discussion yet. I wonder how it relates to Budiselic & al.’s work. For anyone curious, the new paper is https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84310-w (as far as I can tell, not linked by the posted article)
While he does use some modern tools and techniques, he also spends time doing things the same way the craftsmen of the time did them.
The ancients weren't stupid or primitive people. They were quite capable of quite subtle and ingenious engineering, and it is a shame that much of that has been lost over time.
It was more likely inspired by the pythagorian numerical model of the universe. Who is to say that Pythagoras was wrong? For example, all of modern chemistry is explainable in those terms.
* 200 AD: the industrial revolution.
* 300 AD: cars, the radio.
* 350 AD: the first electronic, programmable computer.
* 370 AD: live TV, first human steps on the moon.
* 380 AD: the internet, satellite communication.
* 400 AD: smartphones, laptops, social media.
* 450 AD: (good) immersive VR, CBDCs, a GPT type of AI wins a Nobel prize, space tourism.
* 500 AD: nuclear fusion, personal quantum computers, humanoid robots, simulation VR a la The Matrix.
* 2021 AD: we’ve probably solved the Fermi Paradox — humanity died out long ago.
I'm pretty sure they did, at least the ones that were aware of it- otherwise, why would they make it?
>> * 200 AD: the industrial revolution.
>> * 300 AD: cars, the radio.
>> etc.
Yes, but why? Why would the ancients want to start the industrial revolution in their time, and what tells us that cars and the radio would inevitably follow suit? Maybe the fact that they didn't start an industrial revolution should tell us that their goals did not align with the goals of the era of the industrial revolution.
As to technological discoveries taking a predetermined path, one after the other, exactly in the order in which they happened in our times, there's no reason to assume this. How do we know what obvious things we haven't invented yet that are well within our technological capabilities but we simply haven't thought of? Everything is pretty obvious with hindsight and with enough obviousness everything looks inevitable, but in reality nothing is.
Here's my favourite example: the Australian aborigines invented the airfoil many millennia befor the Wright brothers. They could have at least made gliders to swoop down upon prey from above. They never did. Why?
Because who knows how ancient people thought? All we know is that they thought not exactly as we do, and so they did things different than us. There's every reason to suspect that the ancients would have done things differently: they did.
Edit: Oh. Wait. Was that a "whoosh" sound far above my head?
He was one of Michael Wright's collaborators and wrote a lot about it .. unfortunately he died in 2002, cutting short his research.
http://fsoso.free.fr/antikythera/DOCS/TheAntikytheraMechanis...
https://researchdata.edu.au/allan-bromely-collection/935576
(maybe it doesn't help that researchdata misspells his name!)
