What are some Ancient Technologies that we have only just figured out or still can't?
Here's 2.
>Roman Concrete
>Greek Fire
True damascus steel for swords. The sruff we have is just a good replica at best
>>300391
I'm interested in Archimedes heat ray.
They think it was some giant mirror used to set ships on fire.
>>300432
We don't really know, and none of the experimental archaeology projects worked.
>>301631
Also, the Archimedes' ship hook is not entirely figured out.
Also etruscan jewellery. They made tiny golden balls (0.2 mm / 0.007 in) that we can't reproduce without the use of modern technology.
>>301648
also this picture shows an earring. Yes, the spheres in the middle are tiny.
>>300391
/his/ sorry for the silly question, but why some of those coins have the emperor face looking left and others looking right?
There is some meaning behind it?
Not technology, but we lost a good chunk of philosophy.
Chrysippus was supposedly one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity. None of his 700 works survived.
>>301672
The explanation is still largely unknown, but sometimes it is to show some rupture (after a harsh civil war, or a false emperor, for example)
The huge rotating dining room of Nero was figured out recently.
It was only recently that we knew for sure that some roman ballistas were gigantic and very complex.
>>300391
>Roman Concrete
The likeliest explanation for this is survivor bias. Most cementium buildings crumbled over the ages leaving a select few that had by freak coincidence all factors right to survive the ages.
Roman crossbows.
This thing was measuring distances
>>301709
>It was only recently that we knew for sure that some roman ballistas were gigantic and very complex.
Not really. We know their sizes for quite a long time thanks to the fact that the Greeks (who invented those) named the weights & measurements of the *ammo* they used
>>300391
Tyrian dye
Only a century ago some breakthrough was found
Also the antikythera mechanism, that was really studied since 1976 even though they found it in 1902
>>301631
I reckon he just blinded the crews and set the sails on fire, which over time got exaggerated into setting them alight.
>>301720
Roman crossbows (actually invented by the Syracusans and named gastraphetes) are pretty well understood actually.
>>301671
They're literally edgy fuckers.
Far more ancient, the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site. This religious complex was dug out in 1996, and is dated from the 10th millenium BC, which is 6000 years before the first civilized city, Uruk.
This was built in a time where men were hunters-gatherers, and the huge construction site may have brought the agricultural revolution, since they could not go hunt too far away from the site.
Also, during the 8th millenium, the covered it entirely with dust then forget about it until today, which is unexplained and spooky.
Bump. Very interesting thread. Any more unknown shit, even if it's not technologies? The Gobekli Tepe site is astonishing.
>>301672
And none of it was aped? Only 7 (I think) of 40 of Polybius' writings survived, but we know a lot of what he wrote beyond those seven because Livy ripped so much of it.
Byzantine and Arab automata, from water clocks to moving statues to rising thrones.
Wasn't Roman Concrete just concrete that utilizes the volcanic rock of the area?
>>303355
Yeah.
Pozzolan.
It's not bad, but Portland cement is a lot stronger.
The hydraulis : a Roman water organ we have pictures of but no idea about how did it work or sound.
>>301672
I think this is one of the more fascinating aspects of Greek philosophy. Plato and Aristotle, while being certainly of utmost importance, are important partly because most of their works survived, contrary to others.
The Telharmonium.
>Often recognized as the world’s first electronic musical instrument, the Telharmonium was a large organ-like device that used tonewheels to creative synthetic musical notes that were then transmitted by wires to a series of loudspeakers. The Telharmonium was developed by the inventor Thaddeus Cahill in 1897, and at the time it was one of the biggest instruments ever built. Cahill would eventually construct three versions of it, one of which was said to weigh some 200 tons and take up enough space to fill an entire room. Its set up consisted of a collection of keyboards and foot pedals, which the user could manipulate to reproduce the sounds of other instruments, particularly woodwinds like flutes, bassoons, and clarinets. The first public exhibitions of the Telharmonium were met with great success. People came in droves to hear public performances of the primitive synthesizer, which was said to produce a clear, round sound that resembled a sine wave.
>Unfortunately, the device proved to be too far ahead of its time. Its massive energy consumption strained early power grids, and at a price tag of a whopping $200,000, the instrument was just too pricey to build on a large scale. What’s more, early experiments in broadcasting its music over the telephone proved disastrous, as its sound would often bleed over into private phone conversations. After a while, the public’s fascination with the device waned, and the different versions of it were eventually scrapped. Today, nothing remains of the original three Telharmoniums—not even sound recordings.
The Apollo and Gemini Space Program Technology:
>The Apollo and Gemini programs aren’t truly lost. There are still one or two Saturn V rockets lying around, and there are plenty of parts from the spacecraft capsules still available. But just because modern scientists have the parts doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to understand how or why they worked the way they did. In fact, very few schematics or records from the original programs are still around. This lack of record keeping is a byproduct of the frenetic pace at which the American space program progressed. Because NASA was in a space race with the USSR, the planning, design, and building process of the Apollo and Gemini programs was always rushed. Not only that, but in most cases private contractors were brought in to work on every individual part of the spacecraft. Once the programs ended, these engineers—along with all their records—moved on. None of this would be a problem, but now that NASA is planning a return trip to the moon, a lot of the information about how the engineers of the 1960s made the voyages work is invaluable. Amazingly, the records remain so disorganized and incomplete that NASA has resorted to reverse engineering existing spacecraft parts that they have lying around in junkyards as a way of understanding just how the Gemini and Apollo programs managed to work so well.
>>301709
Holy shit they're huge.
I mean, I've played Rome; Total War but that thing is massive.
>>301803
Is Göbekli Tepe the oldest settlement we have known?
>>300391
I'm pretty sure we figured out that the Romans produced concrete using a very specific ash. It's still really neat, but not viable/unecessary for our needs.
>>305862
I've heard that, or Jericho
I watched a documentary about the Hagia Sophia. Apparently those who built it created it with earthquake resistant cement foundations.
>>303611
>Lost works of Aristotle. It is believed that we have about one third of his original works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work
>>305862
I think gobleki tepi was a religious site from our transition into sedentary life so it's the oldest documented human settlement but Jericho is the oldest continuously settled patch of land. It has existed as at least a village since mankind took up agriculture. Not sure if anyone lived at gobleki tepi but it was the oldest site set up by people.
