Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Our Distorted View of The Ancient World

We, who live in 21st century tends to view the ancient past as less advanced civilization. The long held view of superiority of present technology compared to ancient times, for example ancient Egypt or ancient Greek is now challenged by the discovery of several remnants from the old times.
The Antikythera Mechanism (http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/) is one of them. The precision of this instrument is a silent proof of the ingenuity of our "ancient" predecessors. Perhaps we shouldn't call whoever invent the machine as "ancient" but rather as advanced predecessors.
Perhaps, reinvention is a feature of any advanced civilization, be it human or not. Maybe, very far in the future when a global catasthrope happens and then reinvention happens let's say to our present day radio technology, human living in that time would call us the ancient as well :-).