Technology of the Ancients

of the ancients. Because the theory involves vedic nuclear war. We're talking here right right, We're talking um atomic warfare in uh the first millennium BC, which is a crazy idea. And let's let me just get to get it out before I go into the details. Here. We do not buy into this at all. No, but I see a movie here, like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Well it's interesting.

I actually was looking around and Grant Morrison, who's a graphic novel comics sky brilliant, brilliant and weird Scottish dude. He's apparently doing some sort of like sci fi adaptation of the you know, the ancient Vedic epic, the Mahabarata, and so so some people were thinking along these lines. But but yeah, this this theory which you'll find if you do a search for Mahabarata and uh, we're just

for nuclear warfare ancient India. You'll find just tons and tons of websites, all of them saying that, hey, um, they're like radio There are these you know, the remains of these ancient cities and their radioactive and there's a big crater and it's because there was nuclear warfare going on way back in the days, because the ancient ancients had all this advanced technology that it took us centuries millennia to to catch up with again after their fall

all and they point to the Mahaparata as showing proof of this. Yeah, and I should mention too that if you go on such a quest on the internet, you may find yourself in some very odd places down the rabbit hole without like a rope. So yeah, we should just warn people of that, and certainly without a scientific rope.

So so then, just to give a little background on the Mahaparata, this is a is an epic of ancient India written in Sanskrit, and it's full of imagery of warring kings using utilizing like flying machines, terrifying energy weapons

and and magic and gods. It's um it's the story of a great rivalry between two royal houses, the Kurus and the Pandavas and uh and it it kind of has its genesis in the first millennium BC in the form of just popular stories about gods and kings and so forth, UH and the But then it eventually gets written down and their additional date for the war uh that it's that's the central event of this epic is a thirteen O two PC, but most historians as signed

it actually a later date. So you'll find a lot of these web these crazy websites UM citing the Mahaparata. But they'll but they'll do this really annoying thing where they'll have like they'll have like a particular um, you know, section of texts here and here where they're where it sounds you know, it's like, hey, it sounds like they're talking about, you know, somebody using some crazy advanced technology to blow up the city. And they're talking about people

fleeing burning cities and food becoming contaminated. That's great. And then you go and then you know, I'm looking at that, I'm thinking, hey, let me look up the original on that, because I just want to be sure since this is a crazy website. And then it's bund is green against that black background. I'm like, well, let me let me research this. But and then you look down to where they site it, and they just put site the Mahaparata. The mob Haaparata is one is a one hundred thousand

verses long. See, you can't just say, oh, it's like me saying God is love, dude, quote the Bible. It just doesn't, you know, give me a little specific to go on. I found somewhere they'd actually say, oh, this is from the drown up Purva section of the Mahaparata. But that section in and of itself has over two hundred subsections of text. So, um, the best I could find, like find just I'm on my own time when without just killing days trying to track down what sources these

guys may or may not be quoting from. Um, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna read like a real quick bit no no, because I think again it captures your imagination is this idea, is of this ancient warfare and kings and flying saucerers. Even perhaps I don't know. So here's here's a little bit from section thirty four of book eight the Karna, and uh it goes a little something like this, I'm gonna use the kind of

the door. I'm not gonna wrap, but I'm gonna I'm gonna do a voice, you know, kind of like um. Then he called Nila Rohita, that terrible deity, robed in skins, looking like ten thousand suns enshrouded by the fire of superabundant energy, blazed up with splendor that discomforter of even

him that is difficult of being discomforted. That victor, that slayer of all haters of Brahma, called also Horror, the rescuer of the righteous and destroyer of the unrighteous, the illustrious Fanu, accompanied by many beings of terrible might and terrible forms that were endued with the speed of the mind, and capable of agitating and crushing all foes, as if with all fourteen faculties of the soul awake about him,

looked exceedingly resplendent. So it's yeah, so it's like lots of that and that's that's awesome, and you can made even better by your Charleton Heston like voice. By the way, I could have handed up even more. But but some of the some of the words are a bit uh bit out there. Yeah, the names and all. But okay, but you know there's an example of yeah, there's all

sorts of crazy stuff going on in here. There are these references to these like these different ostras, which are some people think are weapons, and then there are these jantras,

which people think are machines. And if you go to some of these websites, they'll even get real detailed with it and say, this is referring to a flying machine, this is talking about nuclear weapons, this is talking about a TV screen or a heat ray or a holographic device, and uh, these are interpretations of this text, right yeah.

And then and then to the ruins there there we do have ruins of the ancient cities of Harappa and Mahineodaro and these were once give great metropolises of the Indus Valley civil civilization, some of the earliest urban centers in the world. And you know now they're gone. But you see these references talking about radio radiation in these sites,

and there's just no I could not find a single source. Actually, I applaud you for for looking into it so intently, because I have to admit that when I was looking into it and I started to see some talk of anti matter, I started back away because I knew that, like right around the corner, aliens were hanging out there. So I was like, it is is a very intriguing thing.

And I think what's so intriguing about it is because people were thinking about warfare and technology UM in a very complex way much before they could even actually put it into use. Right, We've seen this over and over again. We see we've seen this with da Vinci and drawings with all sorts of ideas of how to create stuff that he just was way too ahead of his time

to put into motion. Yeah, it drives some the real examples we're going to look at here, the ones that are actually that we can actually say, yes, this happened or this probably happened, and are not related to atomic wars between demigods and in a primal age um. These are these are all examples of that did really show how how much the human mind can accomplish even if it does and have the same tools that minds have today.

Like I kind of like to think of it as imagine you give one guy a sheet of paper and one guy a poster board, and then both of them are artists, and you say, fill it up with some art for me, you know, give me some art and uh, and if they're they both have the same amount of skill, one guy is gonna be able to fill up one uh, you know, sheet of papers worth of art they have. The guy's gonna fill up one poster boards worth of art.

And today we can fill up more of a poster board size because we have the science we were able to stand on the backs of giants. We uh, we we have a much much more advanced technology to aid the human mind and developing these things. But still given the limited, um, you know, restraints of the time. Uh. Some of these guys you know in the you know, for common era back but you know, in BC time, they were accomplishing amazing things with their technology and and

in their understanding of the visible universe. Yeah, which became a pretty nuanced understanding for for that time. In those capabilities. As you mentioned, Um, I did want to talk about really quickly. A couple of things that I came across which are kind of low fi um tech. Uh, I guess you could say inventions of warfare. And this is

from the Christian Science Monitor. It's called articles called early weapons of mass destruction and they cite a king and Asia minor of the second century b C. Who was defeated when Hannibal quote catapulted live snakes on two ships, which I thought. It's creative, right, yeah, it's the sort of warfare. It's the kind of thing you would more expect from ancient times as opposed to dazzling weapons of light. Yeah yeah, yeah, you see, like you know, flamethrowers, snakes.

I mean, the snakes thing I do have to say kind of reminds me of Pee Wee Herman a little bit, like if he catapulted snakes. No, I mean he he uh, he released some snakes of going from a pet store, but if he were to go into warfare, I'm pretty sure that's how he would do it. Um. And then there's sort of an example of early bio warfare and the the Hittite sent plague victims into the land of

their enemies, and this is from the same article. They basically say in this article quote, the principle of summoning plague for self defense maybe related to the reality that invaders are immunologically naive and therefore more vulnerable to epidemic diseases in foreign lands than the local population. So there was some sort of understanding about disease and other cultures perhaps not having or being vulnerable to it. Yeah, you know, this is this is a bit of an extrapolation of

the idea. But again there's this idea that that humans are sitting around saying, how is how can I best my enemy? I've got snakes at my disposition, I've got a couple of plague victims. You know, what else can we do here? Yeah, it's a lot more nuanced than saying, all right, guys, we really want to take uh these other this other tribes the stuff. So let's go pokem with sharp sticks. Everybody get a sharp stick. Let's go, let's do it. Yeah. Yeah, that sharp stick I di

didn't work out so well last time? What else can we do? Um? So this has kind of brought us to actually what we were talking about before, just these much more complex mechanisms that people began to look into to better understand the world and can navigate it. And in particular, there's something called the Islamic astrolabe. Very cool thing. Yes,

the astrolabe is pretty amazing. And I'm gonna I'm gonna put together, as usual, a blog post to accompany this, and I'll be sure to have an image of an astrolabe because it's you've probably seen it before and uh, and you know what I'm talking about here, But but you have to look at them because they're just be beautiful art um. As was common in those days. When you're creating an artifact um that's going to aid you in anything, you're also going to g's you know, it's

like illuminated manuscripts. It's descightful, but let's make it beautiful as well. And it's the same. I was trying to think about how to best describe it, and it's obviously it's this disk that has these different inlays on it, and with inlay a sort of like carvings too, and all sorts of um information and symbols on it and so on and so forth. But it reminds me of something that like that you would create now as a steampunk piece. Of jewelry. Yeah, it does have that kind

of look to it. It's basically it's a small circular device usually made of wood or brass, sometimes paper, um varying degrees of like we said, artistic embellishment. And essentially it's a model of the stars in the sky and you can move them to show where the stars would be at any time in the year. And then you flip it over and you and there's like a gear and you can in this site concerns the sun and

the moon, and it's uh, the basic idea. The concepts originate around three b C. And the the Arabs of the ninth century were the ones to perfect it. And and this is what's crazy. After they perfected it in the ninth century, it was the basic astronomer's tool for the next seven hundred years. That's how much staying power this device goes. Nowadays, my my iPad or my my pod or iPhone or any kind of technological device I have, it has like what a shelf life of of maybe

a year before a new version comes along. And granted they were you know, and a lot of this time they were adding little features apps, if you will, to the astro labor astrolabe and uh, but but still the basic concept was just held strong, right, And we should probably mention too that it's the design and the execution of the design is credited with Appollonius and two fifty BC,

So that'll just kind of ground everybody. And and what we're talking about here in this timeline, and again you talked about the actual idea of it being around around three and that, yeah, and that's that's because people had to hold on a concept called stereographic projection, which is used in this device. Um. The ironic thing to me about this is that, yes, this app that if you know how to use it, you've got like thousand different

choices on different data that you can access. But if you were to put it and you are its hands today, it would be like putting up in nana our hands and being like, hey, you used just to find out what time it is? Yeah, we'd have we'd just be like, oh, this is pretty Yeah, it would it would be as lost in our hands as my iPhone would be in the hands of somebody from well, probably we would be more lost because I think that I would just say

it's so intuitive. I think they'd start doing you know, oh the screen moves, okay, and then that individual would rule the world inside a week with that. With that, well, now we probably wouldn't be able to get three g if you travel back. And it's true, but but no, an astrolabe can let you tell the day and time,

calculate distances determined prayer times. Uh. You know this is especially drawing to its uh, its origins in in the Middle East, and it's perfection in the Middle East is that people U Muslims were able to use this to

make sure they knew what times they needed to pray. Likewise, it could be used to determine the direction of Mecca, so you know which direction to pray, and can determine building heights, can be used in surveying longitude, latitude, altitude, horoscopes, um position of the planets, various occult usages that are tied in with with the position of the heavens. Well, and there's the astrological events that correspond to the Islamic faith too, right, So um, that was important for them

to know as well. Yeah, so I mean it was. I mean for a long time, if you were a learned individual, uh, you probably had an astrolabe Yeah. And this is the cool thing too about this is that Islamic astronomists they really did work on this for centuries

and centuries, as you say, perfecting it. Uh. And this is not something that we've seen in the past with other mechanisms or technology that you know, a group of people would um or a faith even would work on something so diligently to try to make it the best

that it could be. Usually what happens is that technology is created and then someone somewhere over on the other side of the world, you know, reinvents the wheel um or you know, the technology itself may fall away or become distorted, but yes, you know, these scholars kept it um alive for so many years that by the time that it became used in the Age of Discovery, it was just sort of poised to actually usher in the Age of discovery, right because all of a sudden, we

have this, this incredible instrument that you could navigate with, and that just kind of opened up the whole world, right. Yeah, I mean I was looking through um. One of James Brooke's books, i think was Connections, talking about the way different inventions sort of timeline to each other and the astrolabe is one of these like you look it up in the index and it shows up just dozens of times because it was it's an important step in our technological,

uh and its scientific evolution. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say that if it wasn't the place that it was at the time, then the just discovery would not have happened. We'd be living in a very different world most likely. Well, hey, we're gonna take a quick right here, and when we come back, we're going to talk about a little something called the Antiquathera mechanism. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of

tomorrow and we're back the So the Antiqathera mechanism. I did want to mention something really quickly, is this is just one of those like cool fact things about the astrolabe. The first technical manual on it. Oh yes, yes, it was actually written by Jeffrey Chaucer for his eleven year old son so he could understand how it worked. Great writer, one of the greatest writers of all time, as technical

manual for a device, possibly the first code monkey. Maybe, I don't know, it's kind of like her kind of a loose use of the term. But that's like kind of like how stuff works own Tracy V. Wilson, she used to do technical technical manuals. I think, yes, that's what I've heard anyway. And I'm pretty sure that she has an astro lebe Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I've seen her. I've seen her on Marta pull it out

and yeah, yeah, train is running late again. That was before she got the she upgraded to an iPhone, but now she's in the fold. So um, let's look at this anti Cathera mechanism. Now, this you may recognize from if you've seen images of it. It kind of looks like a rusted gear, kind of green looking gear embedded in a big lump of stone. Yeah, and I love the idea that these divers found it, right yeah. Yeah, they're um sponge divers and they spotted it, and you

think that there it was probably covered in barnacles. Yeah, and they're probably like, what is this hunk of junks sitting here at the bottom of the sea. Like I wouldn't have thought to pick it up and bring it with me. If I saw on somebody's garden, I might be like, Oh, that's that's the neat use of an old gear looking rock, but I wouldn't have thought it

was amazing. Yeah, all that I was thinking about in the context of that period of time where there was so much archaeological discovery that I'm sure that divers all the time we're probably looking for ship breckx um. And this was in fact part of a shipwreck that was off the island of Anti Cathera so so named for that island. Yeah, and it it turns out, as best

we can, we can understand it. It was very much like the astrolabe, and it was an astronomical device representing the movements of the heavens, which to the ancient Greeks was five planets, because that's all they knew of. Again, think to that, you know, the whole paper versus poster board painting. You know, they were working within the limits of their their understanding. But but it had a really alarmingly,

you know, complete understanding of it. Um studies of the wreck and the cargo it carries it up to the ships that sailing around sixty five b C. And it was heading west from Asia Minor. It was a Roman ship and it was carrying Greek loot back to Rome. I love it the rogue part of it, right, Yeah, almost like it was cursed, like you know, they took it and then the vessel. But um, there's no evidence

for them. Just fun to think about. Yeah, though it did uh you know, it did have Greek inscriptions on it, which is another key, you know, way that we're able to to try and understand what it was. And these inscriptions the device dated back you know, U two around one hundred BC, and it suggests that it was already a few decades old when the ship sank. So now it seems more likely that it was actually made in Syracuse and then then it was taken east to show

off to the scholars at Rhodes. So what we're now where Syracuse gets interesting is that Syracuse was the hometown of Archimedes, the the ancient mad genius mathematician, and now he lived He lived a century before this mechanism was made, so there's no way he could have made it. Uh, he couldn't have created it, but he pioneered the use of gear wheels to achieve different force ratios with weights things like that. So um, based you know, based on what we know, Um, it's it seems he a lot

of his ideas may have wound up in this device. Yeah. Yeah, it's very likely that that he may be even held onto one himself, m giving given his sort of penchant for stuff and gears and um, I guess you could say that he was a gear head of yesteryear. Yeah. This is from the Anti Cathera mechanism research project. Is a question that says, does does the mechanism favor a heliocentric or a geocentric universe? So is the Sun at the center of the university depicts or is the Earth

at the center of the university depicts? Yeah, which is a really interesting question. You and I have talked about this both wrong but right. But still they represent a drastic change in our thinking about the cosmos. Yeah, and this gives us a little bit of a clue to of how well they understood the world. And uh So, the the answer um from this organization is, in a word, neither.

The purpose of the mechanism is clearly to position heavenly bodies with respect to the celestial sphere with reference to the observer's position on the surface of the Earth. In order to achieve this, this mechanism has to use a geocentric model However, this does not imply that the manufacturer

favored a geocentric model the universe. In fact, it was Aristarchos of Samos around who first proposed a heliocentric solar system in two Unfortunately, proponents of the helocentric universe were increasingly persecuted for the beliefs in ancient Greece and in later times. It is highly probable that the maker of the mechanism was aware of the heliocentric universe, but it

does not imply he favored it. So I think it's really just interesting to know that maybe they were politics going on at that time, that if you were creating this instrument, that you might not necessarily talk about what the implications of it might be in terms of understanding the world or even understanding religion or society with this mechanism. Um. Of course we've talked about then in another podcasts uh, in much more detail. But we should probably get to arguments,

because again, this guy mad genius. I mean, I feel like he's the Byron of his time. Yeah, minus the pet bear and the skull full of wine? Right, yes? Yeah? Or is it the moose? You know? I got confused with ta Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, I get drunk animals people like at those confused. But this guy, he had something called death ray. Yes, Now did you ever have it or do you just have the plans for it? Well,

we all have plans for death rays. This is in debate, right right, right, he had his drawings, We know that for sure, but we think that it's it's let's just say that it's up for debate, but it's highly probable. And um, this is from Josh Clark's article what was our Committee's Death Ray? Basically, it's a series of mirrors that reflected sunlight onto Roman enemy ships that were moored

in the Arc Committee's hometime of Syracuse. The ships were earned by the collective condensed sunlight and cause the entire fleet to catch fire. So this was the idea. So this guy is sitting around thinking, okay, we're about to be attacked. What it was my what sort of tools do I have laying around here? The sun? Um? And this is someone again who when you go back to uh, creativity, humans and and trying to figure out a better way to well, in this case, exact revenge. But that that's

what happens throughout our history of science. Yeah, It's true. It's true. Um. I mean this guy was thinking about it, you know he was. He was sitting at home in his hammock if he had a hammock. Um, I thinking how can I utilize the Sun's energy best? Which is pretty amazing for this time period. Right we're talking about eight MNBC. Yeah, we're talking about just you know, thinking about advanced usage of optics and mirrors and uh yeah.

What I like best from this article is the quote that is ascribed to him to Arcumentives, which is, and I'll try my best with Charlton husband. Here, give me a lover long enough in a place to stand, and I will move the world. Okay that got n at the end, Yeah it did. But I love that this is a guy who was again just no holds barred. Yeah, it's like, hey, you get something for me to do,

you know. I mean that's the way. He was technically a freelancer, you know, so you've got to when you're in a freelancing situation, you gotta put yourself out there like that. You you know, you're like, what, you need me to write an article about this? Yeah, give me a pen. I can write it. You know what I like givebot. This guy t is that he just did not like go gently into and you know, into the world. There.

I mean, at the end of his life at seventy five years old, a Roman soldier came to get him and he was giving a calculation and he was he was basically saying, step off, I'm in the middle of something. Yeah. It was completely ignoring the fact that this guy was his doom and uh you know, and so he died doing math. I can imagine being like carry the one and then hey, I almost had it. Yeah, this dangerous

work math. Yeah. So that leads us to another interesting possible past technology, if not an actual technology, then again people thinking about the technology, and that is robots. Yes, I know when people are gonna be like, no, really, you guys found a way to go back to robots. Yeah, yeah we did. Yeah, but these are different robots and these are not This isn't you know, as much joke. Can we make a robot that can lie to people? Or can we make a robot that can fall in

love with people? I mean these were these were you know, back to like the thirteenth century, even guys looking at the human form and saying, well, you know, the human body is basically a machine, and I'm pretty good with machines. Um, I'm gonna take you go a building one, see what happens, you know, Yeah, what their idea of a machine could be. Or even if you were trying to replicate a human at that time. So we're talking about a lot of wood here and screws, um, and these stories are there.

The kind of things were like if you were making a even if you're just making basically a mannequin with with moving parts, Uh, that would be kind of outrageous. And that's gonna cause stories. If I did that, people would say, I don't know what he's doing. He's he's got a mannequin in his house and it it moves. There's something fishy going on. So even more real, girl, and you've got like this wooden mechanical, life size thing next to Yeah, people are gonna talk. So our stories

of these are often a little elaborated. Um Like, for instance, there's a thirteenth century Albertus magnus Um, you know, great thinker um later candonized by the church. Um. But he was he worked on this automaton uh that he supposedly had given quote the powers of speech and thought. Um it was. It was said to be composed of metals and unknown substances chosen according to the stars, and uh endowed with the spiritual qualities of magical formulas and so forth.

I mean, this is a time of alchemy, um and a which in in in some ways was a crude science and was sort of science mixed in with a little um magic and and and folk ideas. It was just kind of unformed. It's kind of like sciences in the oven cooking. It's a pie, but if you were to take it out and eat it as alchemy, it would be a bit gut shot and running, like you still needed a little while to actually cook before it

became early science. Yeah, I think if it is like the the wood chips in your backyard, they're supposed to become strawberries in that pie. They never became strawberries. It was a wood chip pie. Yeah. And that that's the problem with alchemy, right. It was a great idea, but not based in anything actually scientific. Yeah. So supposedly this thing could walk, it could speak, it could perform domestic chores.

Now this we're just gonna go ahead and cast away the idea that this thing was walking around like a human. But it's easy to imagine this guy that was interested in the way the human body works creating something that that could move when you pulled on some pulleys or something. Or supposedly there was like a like a brass head that could speak, you know, So I mean it could have basically been a puppet he and he may may

have had a sense of humor. You know, it's like, hey, look at the press head talk and it's freaking out. But well see that, I'm thinking all Magnus was sitting there doing some ventriloquism maybe, but it worked on his disciple, Thomas Aquinas, because he allegedly decided that the device was diabolical and destroyed it with a hammer. That's because he just got annoyed with ventriloquism. Yeah, that could have been he was just he was tired of it. So there's

that story. Like I said, there's not a lot to go on there, but it's it's one that I love to think about. Um And then in the fifteenth century, of course, Leonardo da Vinci, right, yeah, yeah, we have a great article that's called Top ten Leonardo da Vinci Inventions UM by Christopher Lampton, and he actually wrote about da Vinci built actually built this, because most of the times he would just create plans for your drawings. But he had a plan for a robotic night that was

based on his working knowledge of anatomy and mechanics. And um, he built it right, this life size night and it uh it did not survive, unfortunately, and no one is exactly sure of what it was capable of doing. But apparently it could walk, sit down, and it could even work its jaw. So again we're seeing the ventriloquism here. Um. It was frequently brought out at parties thrown wealthy Leonardo Patron, load up, you take it, viz. Yeah, you're better with

the Italian I think so. Yeah, it's probably awful, but better than mind. But anyway, the mere fact that the robot is making appearances at drunken parties. Uh so I think into the idea that that it it wasn't actually a you know, too elaborator a thing, that it was that it had a certain comic element to it, that it was maybe kind of a big puppet. I'm seeing some sort of thread here with becoming an icon, right, if you're going to be Tico bra Hay or Da

Vinci or you're going to be Byron. You've got to have something that you roll out at parties that involved drinking, right, And I mean it's a moose or a drunk dog, a bear bear and then your robotic night Yeah yeah, yeah, you know you had to had to stay kind of crazy, kind of dangerous. Yeah. So I mean, just I'm just noting that for anybody he wants who's going for icon status, yea, that's something that you probably want to work into your stick. But um, but yeah, I mean this is still a

really cool thing. And it was used or driven by a system of pulleys and gears, so back in the damn sure that it was absolutely shocking. Yeah. And then in the seventeenth century here's a there's another notice when there's not a lot to really go on here, But

I still find it amusing. Uh. There was the notion that French philosopher and at Cards so allegedly had I should probably say allegedly allegedly like use it twice just to drive home, had a beautiful automaton named Francine which he built to replaces de cease daughter, and he would take on when he had to sail somewhere. Um, he would have the the the androids stored in a crate under under deck. But many things wrong with that, Yeah, they're just there are a lot of things wrong, especially

the felidity of it. Um. I don't think there's anything to it. But according to Alison Murray in her book The Enlightenment Cyborgs, she makes the case that this was a time where and you see roots of this with da Vinci and Magnus, We're we're learning more and more that the human body and many um in many ways is a machine. We're coming to grips with the mechanical nature of humanity, and it it leads to this kind

of weird identity crisis of what are we? You know, we're not this well, you know, we're not quite this magical divine creation where something else and we're not even this, you know, spark of life and meat were some sort of some sort of machine and we're so it leads to questions like, well, then can we make a machine? And it's and to a certain extent, we're still we're still troubling over that today, except in in fields such as genetics and and and other related films and to

start to a larg extent still in robotics. Yeah, I mean actually robotics, um, as you say, in biology and neo evolution, this is a big topic that's coming up, right and how we can or can we actually use the question influence our evolution? Um, should we, should we stop? So on and so forth, and um, I don't know,

it's all, it's just all a very fascinating question. And well, also the Blue Brain project, right, we've talked about this before about there are people who are trying to reverse engineer the human brain so we can actually put a blue print together. So you're saying all these different things converge. So actually, it's what's really interesting about this is that there is a thread between the you know, ancient technology

and future technology. And you look at robotics expert Mark Rusham, who used da Vinci's notes to build a working model of a Da Vinci robotic night and then some of those concepts were actually used for design a planetary exploratory robots by NASA. So you see that blueprint back in time being used the well, because these guys were basically trying to do what roboticists today continue to try and do um or some roboticists working on how do you

make a machine that moves like a person? Um, And part of you know, there's a little bit of human vanity is still tied up and there can I make the thing that I am. But also as we try to make robots that can navigate a human environment and and live alongside humans, it becomes, you know, ideal to have a machine that moves like us and can manipulate the same objects that we manipulate, so that you know that a human can use the same screwdriver as a

robot and vice versa. Yeah, it's the Geppetto conundrum, what I'm gonna call it? And uh yeah, so let's see, I don't I guess we're beginning to run out of time of bit in this I wanted to touch real quick on the idea of ancient mathematics. UM. I have a blog post about this that I did a while I'm back that I'll probably linked to in the accompanying blog post for this podcast. There's a really good neat idea that was put forth by Mark A. Peterson in

the Geometry of Paradise and uh. He points out that that Dante um Uh fourteenth century author of Inferno. You know the Divine Comedy, Um, there's a lot if you ever read the Divine Comedy, there's there's a lot of math thrown there, a lot of science. Like Dante was interested in everything, and you see him throwing math and science into his imagining of this, uh, these different afterworlds.

And so Peterson points out that Dante could have easily excelled as a mathematician had he been born into a time when geometry was more fashionable, but instead he lived in an age of languishing mathematics between the Hellenistic period in the seventeenth century. So here's a quick quote he's Peterson says, medieval cultures were in the particular peculiar condition of being being unmathematical cultures in possession of sophisticated mathematics.

They possessed in it the sense of having the books, studying them and translating him and even doing some mathematics, but they had no clear indication where this rich subject had come from or what it would be good for. They did not know, in our terms at least, what it was. So I go into that a bit more

of the block post. But but I love the idea, you know, because I think that's what's what's fascinating about about concepts such as the crazy idea that there was a vedic nuclear war and then then they had this advanced technology in the old days. Is the idea that we could forget it. It's the reason we love the idea of of a post apocalyptic scenarios where we have

to re understand past technologies. Um the idea that that that math would had kind of been forgotten for a while, and then it was this thing that you know, it was like us picking up a an astrolabe and saying, what is it? How does it work? I don't know, it's pretty let's put it up there on the on the wall. Yeah. And and the fact that we're going through a similar period just because we have such advanced technology that we no longer need the basic fundamentals I'm

wanting to say fundamentals. I mean, it's some of the more complex um aspects of math we just don't need to master anymore because we simplified our existence. Yeah, I could not build an iPhone obviously, But to your point about um Dante, what I think is really interesting is that during that time period, I mean, those were the scholars that were that they it was the scholars that were sort of keeping this alive right to a certain extent, and it was in the real house, not necessarily, um,

something practiced by the public at large. And if Dante, who wrote in Italian rather than Latin because he wanted to reach more people, want to reach the people, right, if he had a better understanding of that would be very interesting to see how that might have influenced the masses during that time. Yeah. But of course if Dante had gone into map we would have we might have missed out on one of the greatest pieces of literature the world has ever seen. So here here well, hey,

so advanced technology of the ancients. It's a great subject. I really love it. Um, but let's get some listener mail in here before Garry drives us out of here. Yeah. Um, First we have one from Jackie. Jackie right fan, and she says hello. First of all, thanks for the podcast on meditation. I've recently begun meditating, and just as I started wondering what was happening in my brain, you show up with the here. Hey, I'm actually writing with a

request that I'm sure you've received before. How will the zombie apocalypse work? After all, we have an official emergency plan and the zombie proof House. H Yeah, both of those I think have showed that. We've discussed the the emergency plan from the CDC in a blog post last week, and the zombie proof House I can get shown up on our Facebook feed. Um blow the minds quote? Anyway, Jackie goes on to say, anyway, thanks for a great podcast,

keep up the good work. Um. Yeah, the zombie apocalypse is an interesting scenario and just trying to figure out, you know, how we respond to um, two scenarios of a pandemic disease. The CDC, of course, has jumped on it recently as easy as a way to to sort of get the message out about emergency preparedness, because the emergency preparedness kit that you might have for the zombie apocalypse is more or less like what you would have, you know, in case there was an energy crisis or

disease or fire or earthquake or any number of things. Yeah. I thought it was a brilliant way to to bring attention to that, just to you know, basically parallel it

with the zombie apo apocalypse. Yeah, and I highly recommend anybody who's interested in zombies if you haven't already read Max Brooks World War Z. This is a really fun read, not only because it concerns zombies and people you know, in a post apocalyptic environment trying to figure out what they're doing, but he does a great job of taking the idea of the zombie apocalypse and applying it to different regions of the planet, different situations, and asking like, hey,

how would the zombie apocalypse UH affect relations between Indian Pakistan and UH? And there's a really thought provoking way of looking at it. So so I would recommend that to any listeners out there who are into zombies. We also have a quick email from Chris with a K Chris with a K right, and it says thanks for

having such a great show. While listening to the prolonged lifespan episode that's Birthday Candles, I immediately began to wonder if suicide rates would jump along with the increased lifespan. Even though people could be healthy physically, the mental toll of such longevity would be extreme. Trying to find purpose in life may be difficult, and I don't want to work until I'm sixt five now What would I feel like if I had to work until I was six

hundred and fifty years old before I could retire? That alone, Uh makes a person prompt suicide? Um, major societal changes would have to occur before I want to live to be a thousand if we were if we lived at that aide, we'd be in school until we were two hundred years old. UM wouldn't have children or get married until we were three hundred, and that would bring up the point of marriage. The thought of spending a lifetime

with the same person seems astronomical in these terms. Anyway, Thanks for having such a great podcast and keep up the good work. Indeed, these are you know, all the different things you have to think about. We have human life lifespan. Was to jump from less than a century to more than nine centuries, how would that effect the flow in the basic definition of what it is to be human? Right? Can you up mode another person's brain to your own? Brighton? Could you have a different experience?

Could you completely start over at two D and become a different person? And all sorts of questions? Could you go from being a TV starting the movie starting back to being a TV star again? Um? Career I don't know. I don't know. I mean Tom Hanks, we don't You don't see him going back to t v D No,

not yet. So hey, um, if you have anything to add about the technology of the ancients, be it a really cool corner from history that we missed or a really out there theory about how you know the ancient Babylonians had submarines or something, then hit us up with it, share it with us on Facebook again, we are blow the Mind there and you can also find us on Twitter also Blow the Mind, and we update both those feeds with stuff all day long, different different links here

on this one and on the other, so that there's a little diversification. Yeah, and also make sure that you check out the article what was Archimedes Death Ray give us a little bit more into Kamedes and all the coolness that he created, and you can just pop that into our search bar, or perhaps it will be on our homepage on the day that you come to how stuff works dot com. In the meantime, you can send us an email and blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new

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