Re: Antikythera computer Message #5 Posted by Dusan Zivkovic on 19 Dec 2008, 6:43 a.m., in response to message #4 by designnut
How about Eratosthenes, the guy who calculated Earth's distance from the sun, the tilt of the Earth's axis, circumference of the Earth and a few other things?
We were told that the ancients thought the world was flat and the centre of the universe and were generally a bunch of blood-thirsty narrow-minded barbarians... I am not sure that what we were told and taught wasn't a bit "biased" to make us believe that 20th century was the best of all times in the human history. Yes, the 20th century humans reached the Moon and made the HP 41C. But wasn't that scientific/engineering success built on generations and generations of knowledge? And wasn't it the progressive 20th century humankind who created two world wars, amongst a few other horrors? Do we really live in a totally enlightened humanistic world? Or have the ancients in other times and places had better environments for the development of human thought (albeit without the 41C)?
Antikythera appears to be an oddity, but it never really came as a surprise to me.
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