View Full Version : Ancient technologies vs modern
I was just watching a History Channel presentation on ancient technologies. One item discussed was an ancient cast bronze spear tip. Evidently, modern workshops attempted to duplicate this speartip and were having difficulty matching the quality of the original item.
Interesting. With our modern CNC and MIM techniques we can't duplicate a weapon made by some craftsman 3000 years ago? I realize that over the millennia some technologies/techniques have probably been lost to time, but this particular weapon seems like something that we could easily duplicate with our current methods. Thoughts?
I was just watching a History Channel presentation on ancient technologies. One item discussed was an ancient cast bronze spear tip. Evidently, modern workshops attempted to duplicate this speartip and were having difficulty matching the quality of the original item.
Interesting. With our modern CNC and MIM techniques we can't duplicate a weapon made by some craftsman 3000 years ago? I realize that over the millennia some technologies/techniques have probably been lost to time, but this particular weapon seems like something that we could easily duplicate with our current methods. Thoughts?
I haven't seen the particular show you're referring to, but almost any ancient technology they say "can't be reproduced" is a twisting of words.
Generally, if it can't be done, it's:
It can't be done (using what we think is their method and raw materials because we don't have the benefit if generations of craftsmen refining the process)
It can't be done (because we don't know what their method is, thus it can't be done... but we can make one much better without restrictions)
It can't be done (because one particular guy that's currently alive isn't as much of an expert as he claims before going on the TV show)
etc
This is true about Damascus steel, greek fire, the pyramids, etc.
I haven't seen the particular show you're referring to, but almost any ancient technology they say "can't be reproduced" is a twisting of words.
Generally, if it can't be done, it's:
It can't be done (using what we think is their method and raw materials because we don't have the benefit if generations of craftsmen refining the process)
It can't be done (because we don't know what their method is, thus it can't be done... but we can make one much better without restrictions)
It can't be done (because one particular guy that's currently alive isn't as much of an expert as he claims before going on the TV show)
etc
This is true about Damascus steel, greek fire, the pyramids, etc.
Yep. You can add Bizen province Japanese swords to that list. While we can't factory produce a sword with the same properties, a person can devote 10 years to the craft and get pretty close. Japan hasn't been knocking out "Masamune" quality blades but a lot of that is due to the restrictions placed on sword making.
Remember crop circles? Experts claimed it had to be Space Aliens because there was no earthly technology that could reproduce them with such accuracy. Until it was revealed the technology used was a piece of plywood and a rope that the operator used to press the crops flat by pressing the plywood with a foot.
What gets lost is tribal knowledge, the knowledge the workman gained from the experience of doing a job over and over again, knowledge that never get written down in books. Knowledge that even if it were written down, wouldn't make sense to anyone having no experience doing the task. I laugh when scientists claim they cannot figure out how ancient man did something because they can't do it themselves, because scientists are so focused figuring out how the job got done, they forget that the job must get done. Pyramid builders didn't figure out how to build pyramids before they built them. They figured out how to build pyramids because they had to get built and learned by building.
There is no secret, ancient technique. There is just the doing. You don't learn how to shoot an AR by reading a forum or watching a video. You might learn some basics to try, but you won't know what works or how to make it work until you actually get down to shooting
ColtSeavers
01-23-16, 17:57
...I laugh when scientists claim they cannot figure out how ancient man did something because they can't do it themselves, because scientists are so focused figuring out how the job got done, they forget that the job must get done. Pyramid builders didn't figure out how to build pyramids before they built them. They figured out how to build pyramids because they had to get built and learned by building.
There is no secret, ancient technique. There is just the doing. You don't learn how to shoot an AR by reading a forum or watching a video. You might learn some basics to try, but you won't know what works or how to make it work until you actually get down to shooting
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kRWudy2q5Nk/VX2ESIp_BiI/AAAAAAAABfE/4HJrHzITH08/s640/Yoda-There-Is-No-Try1.png
Sorry, in a 'silly' mood at the moment.
FromMyColdDeadHand
01-23-16, 19:29
I was just watching a History Channel presentation on ancient technologies. One item discussed was an ancient cast bronze spear tip. Evidently, modern workshops attempted to duplicate this speartip and were having difficulty matching the quality of the original item.
Interesting. With our modern CNC and MIM techniques we can't duplicate a weapon made by some craftsman 3000 years ago? I realize that over the millennia some technologies/techniques have probably been lost to time, but this particular weapon seems like something that we could easily duplicate with our current methods. Thoughts?
I've been reading about bronze versus iron in pre-history and is really fascinating. Bronze, especially versus early iron and alloys, was not inferior, and was actually superior in many ways. People think stainless steel versus bronze and there is no comparison. Early iron tools were inferior to bronze- but bronze needed non-universal and scarce tin metal with copper to make bronze. Tin has to be mined and the deposits aren't everywhere. Some of the earliest trade was to get tin from places like Britain to the Mediterranean.
So tin is scarce and hard to source. Iron is a lot more common. While Bronze is better than a lot of the early iron weapons and tools, iron eventually wins out since it is more economical. Plus, if the 'global trade' system fails and the tin supply dries up, you are SOL. So iron gets more and more work done with it and you end up with the steels that we have today that are much higher performance than bronze in most applications.
A really interesting blend of resources, trade and technology.
On the accomplishments of the ancients- dude, it's all aliens....
Seriously though. Given enough time and enough man power, you can pretty much do anything. Plus with out youtube with the ball-wracking and cat videos, they had plenty of time to get work done.
Well, those guys seriously kicked ass at PumaPunku. Even modern stonecutters are amazed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku
mkmckinley
01-23-16, 20:57
I seem to recall something about ancient (or was it medieval) sword making techniques that ended up putting something akin to carbon nano tubes into the steel structure. If that's true then it's pretty impressive that someone could accidentally create some pretty modern materials science through tradition methods.
I seem to recall something about ancient (or was it medieval) sword making techniques that ended up putting something akin to carbon nano tubes into the steel structure. If that's true then it's pretty impressive that someone could accidentally create some pretty modern materials science through tradition methods.
You get thousands of blacksmiths making swords on a daily basis for generations. You reward the good ones with money and orders while the bad ones go out of business. The good ones take apprentices and hire workers to expand. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually someone will stumble upon a method that works really well and continue refining that method, often by accidental discoveries or random experimentation.
This is how a lot of things were discovered or invented and ancient weapons are no different. It's not like someone decided one day to make carbon nanotubes into a sword or something. And it's not like they knew why this method works better than others, only that it does.
Moose-Knuckle
01-24-16, 02:41
Well, those guys seriously kicked ass at PumaPunku. Even modern stonecutters are amazed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku
Thank you.
So many ancient structures we couldn't begin to duplicate, hell we can't even figure out how many of them were even built.
Averageman
01-24-16, 09:05
You get thousands of blacksmiths making swords on a daily basis for generations. You reward the good ones with money and orders while the bad ones go out of business. The good ones take apprentices and hire workers to expand. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually someone will stumble upon a method that works really well and continue refining that method, often by accidental discoveries or random experimentation.
This is how a lot of things were discovered or invented and ancient weapons are no different. It's not like someone decided one day to make carbon nanotubes into a sword or something. And it's not like they knew why this method works better than others, only that it does.
Remember at the time a invention or ancient technological advance was secret an kept close within a tribe or a region. The written word may or may not have existed.
A single virus could wipe out a technology or advancement in a process and we would have been set back generations in that area.
It wasn't until these men set the things they were doing in to written words that we could possibly keep these technologies safe for future generations.
Averageman
01-24-16, 12:47
Ten Secrets that were taken to the grave.
http://www.mandatory.com/2016/01/22/10-awesome-secrets-these-people-took-to-the-grave/
And that is how technologies are discovered/invented and then lost.
Our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are...and infinitely more patient.
Plus aliens. Never forget the aliens.
Our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are...and infinitely more patient.
Plus aliens. Never forget the aliens.
Anddddd right on cue.
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160124/365a1bef9938c095a3f76c8fb097c8f2.jpg
Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk
MountainRaven
01-24-16, 14:51
Ten Secrets that were taken to the grave.
http://www.mandatory.com/2016/01/22/10-awesome-secrets-these-people-took-to-the-grave/
And that is how technologies are discovered/invented and then lost.
Funny story about the Stradivarius: We're now making instruments that sound as good or better, per musical experts in blind tests. It's only when people are told which one is the Stradivarius that they begin to unanimously agree that the Strad sounds better than the modern instrument.
IOW, with a Strad, you're just paying for the name.
Funny story about the Stradivarius: We're now making instruments that sound as good or better, per musical experts in blind tests. It's only when people are told which one is the Stradivarius that they begin to unanimously agree that the Strad sounds better than the modern instrument.
IOW, with a Strad, you're just paying for the name.
I saw that too.
SomeOtherGuy
01-24-16, 19:33
I was just watching a History Channel presentation on ancient technologies. One item discussed was an ancient cast bronze spear tip. Evidently, modern workshops attempted to duplicate this speartip and were having difficulty matching the quality of the original item.
As others have said, most things are possible if you throw enough money at it. What's sometimes neglected is the raw materials that were once available and aren't now. Extreme northern Michigan once had the world's best deposits of copper, much of which was chemically pure, and the rest typically contaminated only with silver. Compared to what Michigan produced in the late 19th Century, you don't generally see such pure copper today, because the Michigan lode is mostly played out and no longer being mined, and all other deposits are less pure. I'm sure you an recreate equally pure copper with a vacuum furnace, but outside of specific uses, no one does.
Likewise, some types of instruments - generally for measuring radiation - are made from pre-1945 steel recovered from shipwrecks, because the atom bomb and testing threw so much radioactive junk in the atmosphere that any steel made since 1945 is contaminated and very slightly radioactive. We didn't lose any technology, we just had a change in circumstances.
Concrete is a prime example of a technology that has existed for thousands of years that we still do not make as good as the Romans did during their time period.
The History Channel should rename itself the Crackpot Channel.
http://www.cracked.com/funny-5720-the-history-channel/
Concrete is a prime example of a technology that has existed for thousands of years that we still do not make as good as the Romans did during their time period.
If memory serves me right, the concrete used in the Hagia Sophia contains volcanic ash from a pyroclastic flow. I was told this made the concrete exceptionally strong and durable.
Moose-Knuckle
01-24-16, 23:49
Our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are...and infinitely more patient.
Not really, toilet paper has been around for less than two hundred years. As for patience, depending on the era, life expectancy is not what it is today. For a looooong time the lucky ones only lived into their 40's if that.
Moose-Knuckle
01-24-16, 23:51
Concrete is a prime example of a technology that has existed for thousands of years that we still do not make as good as the Romans did during their time period.
The Pantheon is widely regarded as the greatest structure built by man that is still standing, we could not begin to duplicate it with modern methods much lest ancient tools.
BoringGuy45
01-25-16, 00:14
Not really, toilet paper has been around for less than two hundred years. As for patience, depending on the era, life expectancy is not what it is today. For a looooong time the lucky ones only lived into their 40's if that.
I think because of that, the ancients had more survival instincts than your average person does today, and the ancient societies had to be more clever in order to survive the harsh world. Life was harsh and brutal for even the richest, most pampered kings and queens. You couldn't just be book smart back then and survive.
Moose-Knuckle
01-25-16, 00:56
I think because of that, the ancients had more survival instincts than your average person does today, and the ancient societies had to be more clever in order to survive the harsh world. Life was harsh and brutal for even the richest, most pampered kings and queens. You couldn't just be book smart back then and survive.
Absolutely.
But you don't have to look back that far. Before the internal combustion engine was built and mass produced after the discovery of oil we could barely keep our tiny populations fed. During the depression here in the US 2.5 million people starved to death, back then the population was WAY smaller and most folks knew how to plant, cultivate, harvest their own food. Not so much now, we as a species have become dependent upon the convenience of technology . . .
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-06-14/ancient-roman-concrete-is-about-to-revolutionize-modern-architecture
The Pantheon is widely regarded as the greatest structure built by man that is still standing, we could not begin to duplicate it with modern methods much lest ancient tools.
We could duplicate it with modern methods. With an adequate (i.e. very large) budget it could be as durable as the original. Now days we build 100 year buildings & even 20 year buildings. Sometimes the 20 year buildings are demolished before they start to deteriorate.
http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/chapt01/chapt01.htm
Moose-Knuckle
01-25-16, 15:37
Great articles Pi3 on the discovery of the Roman concrete recipe.
There are several documentary shows on History/NatGEO/etc. that have series where modern day professors who teach construction tech./engineering etc. go and look at abandoned buildings in places like Detroit and old mining towns out West. They show how are modern techniques just don't last the rages of time like ancient stone structures do. Interesting subject matter for sure.
The Romans built some stuff to last & we see the remnants of it. Other roman stuff wasn't built to last & there is no trace of it now. Most modern buildings are constructed on a budget. When abandoned, they start to fall apart once the roof fails. Abandoned buildings are often demolished for their materials. The romans also had lots of cheap slave labor.
http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/slaves_freemen.html
MountainRaven
01-25-16, 19:18
The Romans built some stuff to last & we see the remnants of it. Other roman stuff wasn't built to last & there is no trace of it now. Most modern buildings are constructed on a budget. When abandoned, they start to fall apart once the roof fails. Abandoned buildings are often demolished for their materials. The romans also had lots of cheap slave labor.
http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/slaves_freemen.html
A lot of the stuff the Romans built hasn't made it because it was taken apart by later generations to be used to build other things. I believe that the Forum and many Roman temples fall into this category.
Exactly. Historic preservation is a fairly recent movement. The limestone was torn away from the faces of the pyramids and used in the construction of buildings in Cairo. The Eiffel Tower was almost torn down and scrapped in 1909.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_preservation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Menkaure
Moose-Knuckle
01-26-16, 02:16
A lot of the stuff the Romans built hasn't made it because it was taken apart by later generations to be used to build other things. I believe that the Forum and many Roman temples fall into this category.
After the fall of the Western Empire, the Colosseum was used for a time as a landfill of all things.
The Mayans seemd to do pretty well with their structures.
titsonritz
01-26-16, 12:50
Lost art/skill is probably more accurate.
It is quite possible that ancient peoples had high technology similar to our own- but all of the evidence has been destroyed due to the ravages of time and weathering. Hell- it's possible there were ancient peoples that were more technologically advanced than us and they just took off into the cosmos long ago. Pretty much anything is possible- probable, not so much but possible.
In which case we would never know about them- unless time travel was achieved.
With how long the planet has been inhabitable and our relative short time on it (Even shorter time keeping historical records)- anything is possible to have come and gone before us with out our knowledge.
Is it likely? Depends on your point of view and opinions.
One thing that has always been an enigma to me is the understanding of the universe by ancient peoples- specifically parts of the universe that would have been impossible for them to observe with the naked eye or rudimentary optics.
There seems to be a lot we do not understand and can't explain. I''m not talking Ancient Aliens- I'm talking about the potential power of the human mind and the possibility of tapping into the collective non-local knowledge of the universe by induced states of consciousness through meditation, herbs/drugs, etc.
Looking back in time- it was very common for ancient peoples to use different substances to connect/tap in to a deeper/non-local well of knowledge.
Look at the ancient Greek- they used to hot box themselves with several mixtures of intoxicating herbs before discussing philosophy, politics, science, etc. They seemed to have used substances to induce states of consciousness that literally opened their minds quite well. They accomplished a lot- architecturally, politically, philosophically, militarily, and so on.
Probably the most interesting and complex accomplishment being the antikythera mechanism. Which is quite amazing for the time it was conceived.
The more we seem to learn- the less we seem to really know as new questions and ideas that arise from greater understanding of our universe and ourselves often vastly increases our perception of the unknown. Each new door of knowledge we open potentially leads to a million more doors to open.
Moose-Knuckle
01-26-16, 15:39
It is quite possible that ancient peoples had high technology similar to our own- but all of the evidence has been destroyed due to the ravages of time and weathering. Hell- it's possible there were ancient peoples that were more technologically advanced than us and they just took off into the cosmos long ago. Pretty much anything is possible- probable, not so much but possible.
In which case we would never know about them- unless time travel was achieved.
With how long the planet has been inhabitable and our relative short time on it (Even shorter time keeping historical records)- anything is possible to have come and gone before us with out our knowledge.
Is it likely? Depends on your point of view and opinions.
One thing that has always been an enigma to me is the understanding of the universe by ancient peoples- specifically parts of the universe that would have been impossible for them to observe with the naked eye or rudimentary optics.
There seems to be a lot we do not understand and can't explain. I''m not talking Ancient Aliens- I'm talking about the potential power of the human mind and the possibility of tapping into the collective non-local knowledge of the universe by induced states of consciousness through meditation, herbs/drugs, etc.
Looking back in time- it was very common for ancient peoples to use different substances to connect/tap in to a deeper/non-local well of knowledge.
Look at the ancient Greek- they used to hot box themselves with several mixtures of intoxicating herbs before discussing philosophy, politics, science, etc. They seemed to have used substances to induce states of consciousness that literally opened their minds quite well. They accomplished a lot- architecturally, politically, philosophically, militarily, and so on.
Probably the most interesting and complex accomplishment being the antikythera mechanism. Which is quite amazing for the time it was conceived.
The more we seem to learn- the less we seem to really know as new questions and ideas that arise from greater understanding of our universe and ourselves often vastly increases our perception of the unknown. Each new door of knowledge we open potentially leads to a million more doors to open.
You said it better than I ever could.
Your thoughts on the matter mirror that of my own.
We still can't even figure out how Coral Castle was built lol.
http://www.rense.com/general39/coral.htm
They are starting to piece together what it took to construct the great pyramids.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/
Coral Castle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOoCuDnmtyM
Moose-Knuckle
01-26-16, 23:53
They are starting to piece together what it took to construct the great pyramids.
Pyramids are pretty simple design of stacking stones found all over the globe in one variation or another, sites like Pumapunku and Machu Picchu not so much.
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