The little things.

Conditions: Weird. Hot one day, cold the next.


The new computer, you'll no doubt be pleased to know, is working correctly. All that's really left is the little things, the myriad details, the huge quantities of tiny little adjustments and things that the old computer had been set perfectly to over the years, that a new one just doesn't have. I assume it's much the same in any enterprise where you trade one thing in for another, there's a breaking-in period where the new won't fit right and doesn't sit right, from clothes to toothbrushes to wives. It's annoying, but this is the price you pay for progress. Anyway, it's fast and grunty and has a big screen, so I'm not complaining. Much.


Ancient Civilisations.

A hobby of sorts, I was struck by two separate articles in todays New York Times that dealt with new findings from ancient civilisations. Two separate articles, two separate authors, two separate civilisations, in the same newspaper. Here begins the lesson:

Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids

In new research on the Great Pyramids of Giza, a scientist says he has found more to their construction than cut natural limestone. Some original parts of the massive structures appear to be made of concrete blocks.

If true, historians say, this would be the earliest known application of concrete technology, some 2,500 years before the Romans started using it widely in harbors, amphitheaters and other architecture.

Reporting the results of his study, Michel W. Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, concluded that the use of limestone concrete could explain in part how the Egyptians were able to complete such massive monuments, beginning around 2550 B. C. They used concrete blocks, he said, on the outer and inner casings and probably on the upper levels, where it would have been difficult to hoist carved stone.

“The sophistication and endurance of this ancient concrete technology is simply astounding,” Dr. Barsoum wrote in a report in the December issue of The Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Dr. Barsoum and his co-workers analyzed the mineralogy of samples from several parts of the Khufu pyramid, and said they found mineral ratios that do not exist in any of the known limestone sources. From the geochemical mix of lime, sand and clay, they concluded, “the simplest explanation” is that it was cast concrete.

(Reference)

There's long been speculation about how the walls of the Pyramids could hold the massive weight of the rock used to build it. If true, and Egyptian official Zahi Hawass does say it could be concrete from a recent restoration, it could be a clue to the real way that the Egyptians built these monuments.

Now, to Greece:

Early Astronomical ‘Computer’ Found to Be Technically Complex

A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone. But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

The instrument, the Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period,” it said.

The researchers, led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth and the astronomer Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting their results today in the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

The Roman ship carrying the artifacts sank off the island of Antikythera about 65 B.C. Some evidence suggests it had sailed from Rhodes. The researchers said that Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes, might have had a hand in designing the device.
[...]

Dr. Charette noted that more than 1,000 years elapsed before instruments of such complexity are known to have re-emerged. A few artifacts and some Arabic texts suggest that simpler geared calendrical devices had existed, particularly in Baghdad around A.D. 900.

It seems clear, he said, that “much of the mind-boggling technological sophistication available in some parts of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world was simply not transmitted further.”

“The gear-wheel, in this case,” he added, “had to be reinvented.”

(Reference)

Isn't that cool? An ancient computing device that civilisation just forgot about, and re-invented centuries later. This fits nicely into the theory that human civilisation progressed in giant fits and starts, rather than a smooth progression of knowledge. Anyway, it beats talking about Iraq, another ancient civilisation that's been pounded into the sand.


Peace out.