While some technologies are truly lost, others fall out of use but are later rediscovered. The document discusses several examples of technologies that originated earlier than traditionally thought, such as palace coinage in Minoan Crete rather than Lydia, and compasses, aqueducts, and lenses being used by Minoans rather than later civilizations. Archaeological evidence and references in Greek mythology support that these technologies were in use for the Minoans before the Bronze Age collapse led to their loss of knowledge for a time.
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Original Title
6.) is There Such Thing as Lost Technology, Or is That a Myth
While some technologies are truly lost, others fall out of use but are later rediscovered. The document discusses several examples of technologies that originated earlier than traditionally thought, such as palace coinage in Minoan Crete rather than Lydia, and compasses, aqueducts, and lenses being used by Minoans rather than later civilizations. Archaeological evidence and references in Greek mythology support that these technologies were in use for the Minoans before the Bronze Age collapse led to their loss of knowledge for a time.
While some technologies are truly lost, others fall out of use but are later rediscovered. The document discusses several examples of technologies that originated earlier than traditionally thought, such as palace coinage in Minoan Crete rather than Lydia, and compasses, aqueducts, and lenses being used by Minoans rather than later civilizations. Archaeological evidence and references in Greek mythology support that these technologies were in use for the Minoans before the Bronze Age collapse led to their loss of knowledge for a time.
Is there such thing as "Lost Technology," or is that a
myth?
Not really, if something is lost we don’t know about
it. There are technologies which fall out of use and are rediscovered sometimes by later civilisations and in a few cases only came to light due to more modern-day archaeology.
Roman concrete is an example, strickly speaking its
novel, they used a slightly different formula to that used today; based on portland cement, that was created by a light-fingered brickie (bricklayer) in Leeds, Joseph Aspdin.
I’m interested in the Minoans, there is a lot of their
technology which falls out of use around Bronze Age collapse. Some examples include Palace coinage (1800 BCE) assumed to be invented in the 7th century in Lydia (actually by the same priest(ess) of Potnia Theron); Lodestone compasses (1800 BCE) assumed to be a Chinese invention; Aqueducts, plumbing, central heating, and sewers, are generally attested to the Romans but can be shown to be used well before this, dividing callipers (ca 1450 BCE) and Lenses (1400 BCE) which is generally attested to Babylon 7th century BCE.
There is hard archaeological evidence which shows
these artefacts were created and used in Minoan times. The odd thing is, when you look into Greek mythology (oral tradition) recorded from around 800 BCE, there are often specific references to these devices. By example, the Lodestone is accredited to the Dactyls of Crete.