How much technology has been lost throughout history?

[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

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 https://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-55245.html

 

[Endurance]

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.

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]

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]

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:

[img=650x450]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4vx5PRtim...00/Moon+Landing+1920x1200+wallpaper.jpg[/img]

 

[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]

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]

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

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

[img=650x450]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4vx5PRtim...00/Moon+Landing+1920x1200+wallpaper.jpg[/img]

But were you?

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

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]

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

Remember when we used to be able to do this:

[img=650x450]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4vx5PRtim...00/Moon+Landing+1920x1200+wallpaper.jpg[/img]

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?