memes

I believe it's coming to light that this ancient device was both not that accurate, and not entirely unique and "out of time" and that there was a lot of detailed bronze-working being done at the time with gears and clockwork, it's just that very few of them would have survived, as they usually got sunk in shipwrecks or looted and melted down over the centuries.

I mean, it only makes sense that the tools and mechanisms already existed to manufacture something like this. They didn't learn how to make gears and solder bronze plates JUST ONE TIME. This was an art and many people have experimented with engineering over the ages, it's just that we tend to forget just how vast the scale of time is and how much it buries. If we all disappeared tomorrow, in a few thousand years it would be a huge challenge figuring out a lot of our technology remnants. Metals oxidize, valuable parts are recycled over and over. People repurpose things, and over long enough scales in history, you can think of the surface of the earth like a rolling ocean. Waves of earth's crust lap at the shores of ruined cities and artifacts drown into the mire.

The most interesting thing about the antikythera mechanism to me is that it survived at all, that we somehow found it and it hadn't completely oxidized. Because it offers a unique window in the lost arts and artifacts that we probably will never know about. (No "ancient technology conspiracy historians" you're not invited. Don't make me point to the sign.)