[Dalaran1991]

I've been reviewing the history of the fall of the Roman empire and of great civilizations in general, and it is astounding just how much technology has been lost.

We all knew that the Roman invented steam bath and heated floor while European ancestors are still hut dwellers. This knowledge was lost to the middle ages, as well as some water-transporting system and pumping.

We still don't know how they built the pyramids, and what surprises me is that, for a literate people, why didn't they document something like this?

Military, greek fire was the napalm of the Byzantine, and we still dont know how exactly they made it.

It baffles me just how a technology, once taken for granted by its people, can eventually be lost.

Which leads me to thinking: in nowadays, is this possible for a modern technology to be lost again? What with all the massive amount of records and data we have produced.

Would also love to hear more about "lost" tech stories if you have some.

[RexImperator]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Quote:

The Antikythera mechanism (/ˌæntᵻkᵻˈθɪərə/ ant-i-ki-theer-ə or /ˌæntᵻˈkɪθərə/ ant-i-kith-ə-rə) is an ancient analog computer designed to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes, as well as the Olympiads, the cycles of the ancient Olympic Games.

Found housed in a 340 mm × 180 mm × 90 mm wooden box, the device is a complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. Its remains were found as 82 separate fragments, of which only seven contain any gears or significant inscriptions.The largest gear (clearly visible in Fragment A at right) is approximately 140 mm in diameter and originally had 223 teeth.

The artifact was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.Believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists, the instrument has been dated either between 150 and 100 BC,or, according to a more recent view, at 205 BC.

Analog mechanical computers were still widely used in the 20th century for things like bombsights and battleship gunnery (target solutions), among other things.

[The Beast1]

Or the fact that the earth was known to most people during Roman times as being round.

We have the oldest fragment of the book of Enoch from 300 BC basically saying that the Earth is round.

For all we know, there has been quite a lot of technology and general knowledge lost through out the ages.

[Dantes]

One of the most famous events was the burning of the library of Alexandria. Many of the most important books of the ancient world were destroyed and knowledge lost.

[thoughtgypsy]

Not only is history lost, but often intentionally destroyed or hidden.

Dantes astutely pointed out the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Additionally, there was the destruction of Troy, reputed to be merely legend, but confirmed in the 1870s to be true. There was also the destruction of Nineveh in the 7th century BC, which was reputed to be mythical until a chance discovery in the 1840s. When recovering the thousands of clay tablets containing many details of early human history, the European museum workers mishandled the tablets so that they could not be readily deciphered.

Gobekli Tepe, an advanced megalithic structure dated to 9500BC or later was intentionally buried and only discovered by chance.

Today we are seeing the destruction of Palmyra, an ancient city, by ISIS (a western funded asset).

[Fortis]

I was reading something that said something to effect of 98% of anything that has ever been written has been lost.

They said the way we should view human knowledge as though it were a vast and dark room that we can only peer into through keyhole.

Interesting, eh?

[samsamsam]

What I find disturbing is the knowledge that was lost to convert a Deloreon into a time machine. I kmow it happened because I have seen it in use. But sadly, it was one of a kind I guess.




On a serious note, interesting topic OP.

[Saweeep]

One doesn't have to go that far back into history to find lost technologies and skills in particular.

Much handcrafted work could not be repeated that was commonplace even 50 years ago.

If you're interested in the "lost advanced civilisation" thing, check out Graham Hancock's books Magicians/Fingerprints of the Gods. It is fascinating and quite compelling.

A great place to start is Joe rogan's podcast:

EDIT: Just seen this thread lower down the forum on this topic thread-55245.html

[MiscBrah]

(04-19-2016 08:06 AM)Dantes Wrote:  

One of the most famous events was the burning of the library of Alexandria. Many of the most important books of the ancient world were destroyed and knowledge lost.

The loss of the library was so devastating that no one bothered to definitively record when it was destroyed and Alexandria was only able to remain one of the premier intellectual hotbeds of the Mediterranean world for the next 700 years.

(04-19-2016 08:31 AM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  

Not only is history lost, but often intentionally destroyed or hidden.

As a guy that absolutely loves history, I always find this to be incredibly disappointing.

[EDantes]

Not sure about technology, but one thing we've definitely lost is ancient wisdom:

*Create a diagnosis for every psychological or emotional ailment even simple ailments that have existed throughout history which can be treated with diet and exercise and healthy lifestyle simply so we can sell people drugs and feed their victim complex.

*Condition people to be dependent on modern technology and the government; pretending that everyone throughout history was secretly miserable before the advent of modern science and technology; despite modern day hunter-gatherers using stone age technology having longer lifespans than obese Americans.

*Cut physical education actual life skills out of the public schooling system, while brainwashing kids into thinking that studying English literature in HS, or pursuing a degree in Liberal arts is somehow all they need to succeed in life; in which people graduate HS, college, or even find a mediocre office job while still lacking basic social skills or intuition needed to succeed in any relationships or any personal ambitions

*Training people to rely on material things or frivolous 'causes' such as the latest social justice fad to secure a false sense of purpose in life, instead of real wisdom and values

*Feeding a false "Disney movie" view of the world, in which every guy is entitled to "find his princess" and getting married and having kids is the be all end all of life; while decrying any advice on how to actually be a man as somehow "insensitive", and ignoring the fact that traditionally men's primary purpose in life was not simply "to find a woman", but that she was rather an asset to his life

*Encouraging women to act like hos while calling it "female empowerment" while decrying any advice for men as misogynistic which doesn't feed a politically correct narrative

*Selling sex to kids in the form of mediocre pop music and videos which are basically softcore porn; with individuals like Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry being marketed as "role models" for young girls by the likes of Ellen Degeneres and Sesame Street.

[WestIndianArchie]

Totally not on topic.

WIA

[debeguiled]

(04-19-2016 06:19 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  

I've been reviewing the history of the fall of the Roman empire and of great civilizations in general, and it is astounding just how much technology has been lost.

We all knew that the Roman invented steam bath and heated floor while European ancestors are still hut dwellers. This knowledge was lost to the middle ages, as well as some water-transporting system and pumping.

We still don't know how they built the pyramids, and what surprises me is that, for a literate people, why didn't they document something like this?

Military, greek fire was the napalm of the Byzantine, and we still dont know how exactly they made it.

It baffles me just how a technology, once taken for granted by its people, can eventually be lost.

Which leads me to thinking: in nowadays, is this possible for a modern technology to be lost again? What with all the massive amount of records and data we have produced.

Would also love to hear more about "lost" tech stories if you have some.

A lot of the Permaculture people are trying to rediscover this stuff, and I have read fascinating discussions about how Roman cement, for example, is superior to today's Portland Cement, and if you don't believe me, then why is this still standing:



And our modern concrete, spalling away from the rebar that contracts and expands at a different rate, and rusts, does this:



There used to be a Native American dude who was a Timberwright and former Marine, who posted over at permies.com, don't know what happened to him, named Jay C. White Cloud, who argued intelligently and persuasively that not only were a lot of these old techniques valuable, but were superior in many cases to modern ones.

Most of the things he talked about were in the area of building, so he could argue how the centuries old foundations for Minka farmhouses in Japan were better than today's concrete slabs, or that modern insulation was a joke, and natural ways actually worked better.

Here are a couple of threads he started, but everything he posts is a defense of time tested methods passed down by generations through family or craft, and it is fascinating reading even if you don't agree with him:

On Insulation for Homes

On Home Foundations

Ancient Korean Under Floor Heating

Another thing people are looking into is the relearning of the use of geopolymers, which, and I am no expert, is kind of like a cross between cement and actual stone, in other words, cast stone, the details of which have been lost.

Geopolymer Building Blog:

https://geopolymerhouses.wordpress.com/

Geopolymer Institute:

http://www.geopolymer.org/

Youtube video arguing that the stones of the pyramid were cast geopolymers, not carved stones:

The thing I like about these sources, particularly the permaculture people, is that they are actually trying to put this stuff into practice.

[EDantes]

(04-19-2016 11:46 AM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

Totally not on topic.

WIA

Agree was a slight derail, though a lot of principles of classical wisdom were also lost along with technology after the fall of the Roman Empire

[JacksonRev]

The loss of knowledge and technology is fast and usually unnoticed.

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

[GlobalMan]

^We still can do that, it's just there's little reason to at this point when the budget could (and should) be used elsewhere. Going to the moon was mostly a symbol anyway.

The only other significant places humans could physically set foot on are Mars and maybe the poles of Mercury for a short stay. Both are very far away and pose significant challenges.

On the other hand, I had a 1986 Toyota Corolla that drove the distance to the moon. It's close. That was the 'easy' one, and we've done it.

And, so much of what we used to have physically measure can now be analyzed without a machine or human touching down on a surface.

[thoughtgypsy]

(04-19-2016 12:49 PM)JacksonRev Wrote:  

The loss of knowledge and technology is fast and usually unnoticed.

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

I worked at a NASA center during the development of the Ares-V and Ares-I-X under the Constellation program before it was cancelled. I asked my superior, who had worked at the organization for decades, why they didn't just re-use the technology from the Saturn V era.

Their response was that 1) most of the work done was not documented, so they failed to preserve the technology for posterity and 2) the design and fitting of the propellant storage, delivery piping, and rocket machinery was more of an art than a science, and the precise way of doing it vanished when those who worked on it retired.

Edit: The NASA budget peaked at 7% of the national budget at the time, where as now NASA is lucky to muster more than 1%. The moon race was also largely a public justification for the ICBM technological arms race.

[Perfect Stranger]

To be fair, aren't we still buying rides from the Russians up to (mostly) our billion dollar investment in low earth orbit? We can't even get into low earth orbit anymore. I loved our American space program, but I think it peaked with Skylab and then the early days of the shuttle program. I think there were 135 shuttle flights, of which 2 ended with complete loss of crew and vehicle. Those are some pretty damn bad numbers. An almost 1.5% failure rate!

My rant aside, I believe something that contributes to general loss of knowledge over time is how overly specialized everyone is becoming these days. How many people can even begin to do basic things for themselves like tune up a car, fix their lawnmower, wire in a new circuit in their house, etc? This was commonplace even 40 years ago, not so much today.

[Going strong]

(04-19-2016 12:49 PM)JacksonRev Wrote:  

The loss of knowledge and technology is fast and usually unnoticed.

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

But were you?

I mean... do you know that most Russians think that Americans never set foot on the moon... just saying...

In any case, if you were, and still are, able to make a flag undulate on a planet without atmosphere, it'd be impressive. The wind coming from??...

[Going strong]

One lost (or say, undecipherable) technology is, that of the Inca's events-recording device, the Quipus.

"Some have argued that far more than numeric information is present and that quipua are a writing system. This would be an especially important discovery as there is no surviving record of written Quechua predating the Spanish invasion"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

[Paracelsus]

(04-19-2016 12:49 PM)JacksonRev Wrote:  

The loss of knowledge and technology is fast and usually unnoticed.

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

Using a computer which had 64K of memory. Yes, friends, we went to the Moon and back with a Commodore 64. Fifty years later, they're still trying to find the correct amount of memory upon which a copy of Windows will run without crashing.

On something of a tangent: this is why the work of the Monuments Men in World War Two was so important. As they said in the movie, you can kill people or destroy building, and the people will return and survive. Destroy their art and their history and it's like they never existed.

They didn't just go out to try and save works of art, they also tried hard to preserve notable pieces of architecture: Monte Cassino, one of the oldest (built 529 AD) and most beautiful monasteries in Italy, was reduced to rubble because a slackarse British officer didn't read a translation right. Not only did they destroy one of the oldest monasteries in Europe, they killed 250 noncombatant men, women and children in the process and created a superb defensive position for the Germans to hole up and hold against the Allies.

I watched the Monuments Men film recently. It struck me as poorly-made, too diffuse, too much a collection of anecdotes, but it wasn't until roughly the final third of the movie that I realised exactly what its problem was: the moviemakers and the actors didn't believe European culture was actually worth saving. Let's remember, every work of art they were risking their lives to save were all European: French, English, German, Italian, Polish, both from public museums and stolen from private collections. Unless you got to the predictable "We find shit that relates to the Holocaust" scenes, I didn't get a sense that the moviemakers really thought any of the works' loss would be a tragedy; they'd only be a tragedy if they were lost when a Jew had previously owned it or if it was a piece of art one of the dead members of the team had always wanted to get back.

That aside, the biggest risk for the preservation of knowledge these days is the Internet. In a very real way, the relentless advance of technology is the biggest risk to preservation of older (and possibly better) technology. So much of our shit is online these days that if a website goes down, there's a good chance even with a Wayback archive that you won't necessarily recover it. And that's before you start getting to the problems of data retention as filetypes and file storage media advance: remember how NASA went to the public begging people for 5.25" floppy disks, because they were running out of them and the Space Shuttle still needed them?

[911]

(04-19-2016 04:38 PM)Going strong Wrote:  

(04-19-2016 12:49 PM)JacksonRev Wrote:  

The loss of knowledge and technology is fast and usually unnoticed.

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

But were you?

I mean... do you know that most Russians think that Americans never set foot on the moon... just saying...

In any case, if you were, and still are, able to make a flag undulate on a planet without atmosphere, it'd be impressive. The wind coming from??...

I also have my doubts about this. Though I am not completely convinced (more research needed), I lean heavily towards the lunar hoax. I don't have much of an expertise in photography (much of the debunking has come from experts who have pointed out NASA photographic blunders), but I am an engineer. Just to name two issues, and without going on a too big a tangent here:

-On the surface of the moon, a fully loaded astronaut weighs about 58lb (26kg). He should be able to jump 4-5ft with relatively little risk (due to the slower travel speeds), and little effort. Think how high you are able to fling a 26kg weight on earth...

-The Lunar Module weighs nearly 3 tons on the moon (17T on earth), and all its vertical thrust is concentrated on the main central nozzle, which stands very low to the ground. Given the fine, loose dust on the moon, and the slow, prolonged landing with the engine thrust fully focused on the landing spot, there should have been one massive dust cloud that would have submerged the whole area, made a small crater and covered the sides of the module with dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrA42Js8Zg

/lunar tangent

I think the loss of ancient wisdom is far more centered on works in philosophy, literature and arts than on technology. The problem with ancient technology is that they had to get things done with far bigger constraints, and they had a lot of time to accomplish them (generations). For example, the fact that the Romans used concrete without rebar meant that it had to be stronger (and by default lighter).

There is the aspect of suppressed technological breakthroughs, which some have brought up above. There might have been a lot of this going on in the field of energy, with more efficient combustion engines or power generation methods that were sidelined by energy interests.

[samsamsam]

(04-19-2016 01:40 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  

I worked at a NASA center during the development of the Ares-V and Ares-I-X under the Constellation program before it was cancelled.

Holy crap, an actual rocket scientist!

[911]

Now we have to figure out who is the forum brain surgeon.

[Paracelsus]

(04-19-2016 10:02 PM)911 Wrote:  

-On the surface of the moon, a fully loaded astronaut weighs about 58lb (26kg). He should be able to jump 4-5ft with relatively little risk (due to the slower travel speeds), and little effort. Think how high you are able to fling a 26kg weight on earth...

According to Armstrong they could and did, but since their suits weren't exactly the most robust things in the world they weren't going to screw around with it. Neil Armstrong reported that he was able to jump to the third step of the lunar module ladder, which he estimated to be five or six feet from the lunar surface "I did some fairly high jumps," said Armstrong, "and found that there was a tendency to tip over backward on a high jump. One time I came close to falling and decided that was enough of that". Falling over backward would risk damaging the PLSS. There are frames from the Apollo 11 EVA which are consistent with that jump. They just didn't want to fuck up their suits.

(04-19-2016 10:02 PM)911 Wrote:  

-The Lunar Module weighs nearly 3 tons on the moon (17T on earth), and all its vertical thrust is concentrated on the main central nozzle, which stands very low to the ground. Given the fine, loose dust on the moon, and the slow, prolonged landing with the engine thrust fully focused on the landing spot, there should have been one massive dust cloud that would have submerged the whole area, made a small crater and covered the sides of the module with dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrA42Js8Zg

Four things:

(1) Dust clouds form in an atmosphere, where the mass of the air itself creates resisting force to dust particles falling. It's why despite Galileo's theoretical calculations, a feather and a bowling ball dropped at the same time from the top of a building don't hit the ground at the same time -- because the air and friction provide resistant force, enough to slipslide the feather around in the air. But there isn't any atmosphere on the Moon, meaning that any dust displaced falls back to the Moon's surface at one-sixth the speed it does in Earth's gravity, but it falls nonetheless.

(2) The LM is standing on solid rock. The layer of dust on the Moon is quite thin and thus any dust blown away from the impact then resettles away from the lander. No blast crater forms.

(3) The lunar module (LM) descent stage engine had a maximum thrust of 9870 ft-lb, but this was throttleable back to a minimum of 1050 ft-lb. Sounds like a lot. But, the diameter of the nozzle was 63 inches, which is an area of about 3120 in2. Dividing this into the force (thrust) and you have a pressure range of 0.4-3.2 ft-lb/in2, otherwise known as psi. This is equivalent to the metric 2760-22,100 N/m2. But let’s stick with psi.

Anyone who owns a car probably knows that this is already significantly less than your tire pressure … by a factor of 10-100. When Apollo 11 landed, the thrust was down to about 1/3 of max, so down to around 1 psi.

Now let’s look at the average adult footstep: The average non-American weighs around 150 lbs. The average human footprint is around 50 in2 (don’t believe me? do the math yourself!). Divide the first into the second and you have the average human footstep exerting a simple 3 psi.

This is 3x larger than Apollo’s engines.

The very fact that the astronauts walking on the moon did not create “blast craters” underneath them should be explanation enough as to why the engine did not create a blast crater under it — the pressure was simply too low.

(4) Saying "the lander weighs 3T on the Moon" is unintentionally misleading. Newton's Second Law tells us that what counts is the amount of force required to bring the lander to a halt, consequent on Newton's First Law of inertia in a perfect vacuum.

Force = mass x acceleration.

Mass does not change (well, in the case of the LM it reduces over time as fuel mass is expended). The LM on Earth is exerting a force that causes our scales to assess its weight as 17 tons. On Earth, acceleration is at least 9.8 m/s squared, which is Earth's gravitational force. Consequently the force required to escape Earth's gravity is at least mass x 9.8 m/s squared (not counting for air pressure or friction).

On the Moon, however, acceleration is 9.8 m/s squared divided by 6, because the Moon's gravity is one sixth that of Earth. Mass does not change - it's still an object that would weigh 17T on Earth - but the force required to counter the Moon's gravity, change the object's velocity, and thus bring it to the ground safely is much, much less, meaning that the fuel and intensity of the burn is also much less than would be required on Earth. (Not that you could see the LM's engine burning anyway - the fuel mix they had was colourless and lightless.)

[weambulance]

(04-19-2016 10:02 PM)911 Wrote:  

I also have my doubts about this. Though I am not completely convinced (more research needed), I lean heavily towards the lunar hoax. I don't have much of an expertise in photography (much of the debunking has come from experts who have pointed out NASA photographic blunders), but I am an engineer. Just to name two issues, and without going on a too big a tangent here:

-On the surface of the moon, a fully loaded astronaut weighs about 58lb (26kg). He should be able to jump 4-5ft with relatively little risk (due to the slower travel speeds), and little effort. Think how high you are able to fling a 26kg weight on earth...

-The Lunar Module weighs nearly 3 tons on the moon (17T on earth), and all its vertical thrust is concentrated on the main central nozzle, which stands very low to the ground. Given the fine, loose dust on the moon, and the slow, prolonged landing with the engine thrust fully focused on the landing spot, there should have been one massive dust cloud that would have submerged the whole area, made a small crater and covered the sides of the module with dust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrA42Js8Zg

/lunar tangent

Watching the 1969 lunar landing video, it's pretty clear they are moving around very easily in terms of effort. But one of the astronauts comments that, essentially, his proprioception is off and he has a poor sense of where his center of mass is. It would probably take a relatively long time to become sufficiently accustomed to the conditions on the moon to start jumping around like a jackrabbit, and it's not worth the risk of injury anyway. They still have the same mass, and jumping high, landing wrong and breaking something could be deadly in that environment.

As to the dust issue, well, it's a vacuum. Any dust that was kicked up would fall immediately back the surface because there's no atmosphere full of energetic gas molecules to keep the dust afloat or even local to the lander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7uWK0Smq4U < Dust in a vacuum video

My biggest issue with the idea of a moon landing hoax is it would require the complicity of untold thousands of people who are notably not intelligence agents for almost 50 years. That's simply unbelievable.

...In preview I see Paracelsus beat me to it, but that's alright.

-----------

As to the point of the thread...

I think there's a tendency to romanticize ancient works and knowledge and make it sound like the ancients knew all kinds of things that we don't. I don't think that's true at all.

There are many things we don't know the specifics of, like we don't know for sure exactly what Greek fire was, but it's not like we can't make waterproof, floating incendiary weapons with period materials. We don't know exactly how the pyramids were built, but it's not difficult to come up with valid theories for how they might have been built with the available resources. Scientists have replicated moving Easter Island statues without powered equipment. I'm sure if someone wanted to donate enough money to the effort, historians and engineers could build a small pyramid with nothing but muscle power.

Many ancient structures were better built than modern things because, I suspect, they operated on a longer time horizon than we do. And of course the structures that weren't well built aren't around anymore, so we're seeing only the best now. It's absurd to imagine that if we wanted to, we couldn't build structures that would last several thousand years*. But we don't want or need to. The world changes too fast and most people don't think beyond their own lifetimes, if they manage to think even that far ahead.

Everything is on a budget, built by the lowest bidder who will probably cut corners, and few things are expected to last more than a handful of decades. Why build a bridge that will last 100 years when odds are its traffic or weight capacity will be exceeded by the local community in only 20 years? Why do the roads in most of the US suck? I assure you it's not because we don't know how to build better roads.

I'm not saying knowledge hasn't been lost or that humans didn't experience civilizational setbacks because of it, I just think claims that ancient civilizations actually knew more than we do--and such claims are common enough--are sensationalist. We might not do things exactly the same way, but I've never heard of anything ancients could do that we literally cannot do anymore by any method, unless you count "look at species in nature that are extinct now".

I do lament the general lack of craftsmanship in the things I see around me, though.

*If you replicated the Parthenon in solid aluminum on quartzite bedrock in a geologically stable region, it would probably last longer than our species.

-----------------------

Now allow me to make my own sensationalist prediction. I think there's a real danger that humanity will be permanently technologically crippled in the next couple centuries.

We're in what I think of as the easy energy window (readily available dinosaur squeezings), and eventually (150 years?) that easy energy will run out. When it does, we're not just losing easy energy. Oil is used in virtually everything. That's okay as long as we have loads of available energy when oil runs out, to power the alternate processes we develop, but if humanity suffers a societal collapse the materials required to rebuild might simply be unavailable because we already used them.

The idea is somewhat explored in the novel The Mote in God's Eye, if anyone is curious. Good book.

If we did have a societal, and thus technological collapse, we'd likely lose most of our accumulated knowledge. It's almost all stored on computers or non-archival paper in books. All it would take is a few decades of low tech and that's all she wrote: most of what we know would be gone.

Another possibility is we'll run out the clock. We'll dither around like retards trying to make the wind blow and the sun shine on command, fail to develop nuclear power, and slowly backslide as energy gets more and more expensive. The rich would keep their toys for awhile, but innovation would halt. I think that is unlikely because Russia or China will say fuck the environmental concerns and develop nuclear power to maturity if we don't.

Some sort of correction will be applied by mother nature before too long (<1000 years, I'd guess), though. We cannot perpetually grow our population. Maybe it will be war, maybe disease, maybe a terrible natural disaster. Maybe Skynet will awake, or we'll all sink into VR and stop living in the real world. Who knows? I just hope humans have built a robust enough civilization, one way or another, to weather the storm when it comes.

Personally, I'd like us to get off planet and establish a colony elsewhere as soon as possible. I don't expect it in my lifetime, but now's the time to get cracking. Wait too long, and we might lose the ability to do it at all.