Whitechocolatekrispies
Banned
Article is a bit liberal with the term 'nanotechnology'.
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1,600-year-old goblet shows that the Romans were nanotechnology pioneers
- Thread starter Espresso
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Freshmaker
I am Korean.
I'm positive there was a craftsman somewhere gloating over how he'd mastered nanotechnology.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
I always knew geometry and mathematics weren't just for measuring the shape of the world and scaling structures in their time.
dat pedestrian knowledge is gonna cost you (toga isn't their common attire)
And sure if it was purely for aesthetics, they still know what they were doing.
dat pedestrian knowledge is gonna cost you (toga isn't their common attire)
And sure if it was purely for aesthetics, they still know what they were doing.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
The only time someone called me pedestrian, I was in a crosswalk. I'm seriously offended.
ChubbyHuggs
Member
Even if it had no practical usage, it's still amazing that they knew how to do it.
Yep probably the biggest tragedy in human history. If I ever could do a Marty McFly I would go to a time where the library was still standing.
User 100115
Banned
That is incredible.
Partial Gamification
Banned
I can't resist, but for the record -I love your username.
Coming from the guy wearing a flag as a toga in his avatar. I was going to shop a golden laurel on your head but it came out looking like a halo.
Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
First episode of Cosmos blew my fucking mind. All of that knowledge that had (and still does need) to be rediscovered.
So could this cup also have been used as an early pregnancy test?
A Gauntlet's a glove, I believe you mean Goblet.
And no, they never got the 'historical shit' out of the country in the first place.
Cow Mengde
Banned
Nanomachines!
I'm pretty sure you mean Roma, the Latin name for the Italian province of Rome. Romania is a currently existing country mostly known for Vlad Tepes (Dracula) and amazing gymnasts.
.....You know the Roman Empire was all up in Britain right?
PJV3
Member
We were part of the empire too, Londinium, britannia etc.
I feel guilty about having half of the Acropolis in the country I must admit.
My guess is that artisans perfected techniques in grinding scarce materials to ultra fine powders so that they'd stretch further and perhaps to coat things evenly and consistently. Once some cool optical properties from something was stumbled upon they probably went nuts trying it on everything.
MisterHero
Super Member
pffft modern society would've figured it out eventually
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
dont procreate, like, ever.
A good example of how over-used the term "nanotechnology" has become.
Amazing.
They also made better concrete than us. We are close to figure it out.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
This is basically the same way that stained glass is created in case you didn't know.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
What really gets me about this story is why did they have to lump the pregnancy stick in with this Roman mug. It's not even remotely the same thing.
Really intriguing. As an above poster said, the burning of Alexandria continues to hide so many great mysteries of years past.
Good I'll be sure to visit Reddit more; the site that never, ever, re-posts anything. I'm certain Reddit's top scientists are, as we speak, coming up with new findings on world history for the Smithsonian to convey to us. After all, no one else could have possibly read this article in the public domain. All discussion will hence forth be forwarded to reddit, so as not to accidentally post any stories second in the future; lest we cause any outrage. I will also ensure to not speak of this to my friends, as our conversation would not take place on Reddit and thus be a heinous crime against the internet.
Lagspike_exe
Member
A good example of how over-used the term "nanotechnology" has become.
I laughed so hard.
Charles Foster Kane
Rosebud
Besides the awesome properties it has, it is beautiful. So cool it survived this long.
DiscoJer
Member
Stuff like this is why I hate all that recent revisionism about how the "Dark Ages" weren't really dark.
Maybe compared to cavemen they weren't, but sure as heck were compared to the Romans (and other old cultures).
Like they (and the Celts) had a reaping machine, pushed by an Ox. Instead of peasants using scythes, they just had an ox push it along. Yet that wasn't rediscovered for more than a thousand years.
Maybe compared to cavemen they weren't, but sure as heck were compared to the Romans (and other old cultures).
Like they (and the Celts) had a reaping machine, pushed by an Ox. Instead of peasants using scythes, they just had an ox push it along. Yet that wasn't rediscovered for more than a thousand years.
You could be right even if you are joking. The steam engine is a huge invention. Too bad people became stupid over religion.
SlickShoesRUCrazy
Member
Came for this
This was built much later than the burning of the library of Alexandria, but of course we still lost so much history and knowledge there. A bit off topic but an interesting bit of history that I didn't know about until i visited Pergamum was that much of the collection at the library of Alexandria came from the library at Pergamum when Mark Antony gifted it to Cleopatra when he married her. Until then, Pergamum and Alexandria had competed for the biggest libraries. The competition was so thick that Alexandria refused to export papyrus to Pergamum in an attempt to prevent them from compiling books. This is what led to the development of Parchment, created at Pergamum. If this library wouldn't have been gifted over, we might have will had a good chunk of what was lost at Alexandria. The second biggest loss was the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols. There was a great library there as well called the House of Wisdom which contained the largest collection of books at the time.
Yeah these ancient societies definitely weren't religious.
You can tell from all the stuff the invented.
Well, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (known as the "Father of History") was apparently entirely unaware of the Sumerians, or if he did know about them, never said anything about them and merely regarded it as a legend more ancient to him than he is to us. The Babylonian historian Berosus, writing about 250 B.C. knew of them only as a legend of a race of people coming out of the Persian Gulf, lead by "Oannes", and introducing civilization.
It puts the scale of human existence into perspective.
Another interesting thing about Herodotus - when he went to the pyramids at Giza and wrote his famous account of them, he made no mention of the Sphinx at all. That's because at this time, it was buried beneath the sands. Crazy stuff.
But speaking of the Sumerians and what earlier peoples knew of pre-history, their education included some form of anthropology. I remember reading about a child's lesson from a clay tablet that reads "Mankind when created did not know of bread for eating or garments for wearing. The people walked with limbs on the ground, they ate herbs with their mouths like sheep, they drank ditch-water."
And this is around 6000 years ago.
It's certainly an interesting topic.
A good example of how over-used the term "nanotechnology" has become.
It's more accurately described as nanophysics, since they are manipulating physical phenomena that occur on a nano scale. "Technology" is a poor choice of words, this is more in the realm of particle physics although they probably would have approached it from an optics perspective.
Love that picture though.
PJV3
Member
If they had known how to harness it the world now would be vastly different I agree.
Inventing the steam turbine and using it as an ornament was a wasted opportunity.
I always love when stuff like this comes up so I can show people that our recent ancestors where every bit the same as us intellectually minus technological advantages, not just barbarians.
I think it makes the miracle of life more beautiful through the greater range of relatability it allows.
I think it makes the miracle of life more beautiful through the greater range of relatability it allows.
Partial Gamification
Banned
That's a stretch, we probably all have the same potential but it was a different world. Barbarian comes from the Greeks thinking the Germanic and Slavic peoples had this "bar-bar" language. πᾶς μὴ Ἕλλην βάρβαρος "whoever is not Greek is a barbarian."
The ancient Athenians were some of the most racist people EVER to inhabit the Earth. Again, it was a different world but they were full of themselves. Its not like this ancient knowledge was widespread or intentionally disseminated among peoples.
This will always bother me. I wish we knew what was in the library.
It had rare books...RARE Books in that era!
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