Ancient Technology

So how old are computers? And what were the original computers designed for? According to Mary Bellis, About Guide to Inventors, it was Konrad Zuse, in 1936, who became the unofficial father of the modern day computer. “Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of WWII.Konrad Zuse earned the semiofficial title of "inventor of the modern computer" for his series of automatic calculators, which he invented to help him with his lengthy engineering calculations. Zuse has modestly dismissed the title while praising many of the inventions of his contemporaries and successors as beingequally if not more important than his own.”Sure...

we all know about the rapid development of modern computers in the 20th century. And - frankly - if you have a computer that's anything over five years old, then you probably think of it as being "ancient." But humor me for just a moment. Let’s step back a wee bit further in time than 1936 AD, shall we? Let’s step back - to say - over 2000 years ago and the lands of ancient Greece. It's here, in ancient Greece, we discover that perhaps the very first ancient ancestor of the modern computer was an astronomical mechanism designed to locate the zodiacal positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Yep! The ancient ancestor of your modern computer was a Greek device - now called the AntikytheraMechanism - designed for the purpose of casting astrological horoscopes.

Six Greek Sponge Divers How do we know about this ancient astrologer's tool, you might rightly ask? Well... according to Dr. John H. Lienhard, PhD Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston, in 1900, six Greek sponge divers and their crew were much by chance blown off course in the Mediterranean between the islands of Kythera and Crete. Dropping anchor by the tiny Aegean island, Antikythera, these sponge divers decided to make the most of their misfortune and dove into the unfamiliar waters of Antikythera to see if they could find any sponges. What they found, however, was a badly decomposed ancient trading ship that had sunk around 80 BC. According to Lienhard, due to this being thefir......

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon...The archaeological expedition, which carried out excavations near the Indian settlement of Mohenjo-Daro in the beginning of the 1900s, uncovered the ruins of a big ancient town. The town belonged to one of the most developed civilizations in the world. The ancient civilization existed for two or three thousand years. However, scientists were a lot more interested in the death of the town, rather than in its prosperity.Researchers tried to explain the reason of the town's destruction with various theories. However, scientists did not find any indicationsof a monstrous flood, skeletons were not numerous, there were no fragments of weapons, or anything else that could testify either to a natural disaster or a war. Archaeologists were perplexed: according to their analysis the catastrophe in the town had occurred very unexpectedly and it did hot last long. Scientists Davneport and Vincenti put forward an amazing theory.

They stated the ancient town had been ruined with a nuclear blast. They found big stratums of clay and green glass. Apparently, archaeologists supposed, high temperature melted clay and sand and they hardened immediately afterwards. Similar stratums of green glass can also found in Nevada deserts after every nuclear explosion. A hundred years have passed since the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. The modern analysis showed, the fragments of the ancient town hadbeen melted with extremely high temperature – not less than 1,500 degrees centigrade. Researchers also found the strictly outlined epicenter, where all houses were leveled. Destructions lessened towards the outskirts. Dozens of skeletons were found in the area of Mohenjo-Daro – their radioactivity exceeded the norm almost 50 times. The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon. One of the chapters tells of a shell, which sparkled like fire, but had no smoke. “When the shell hit the ground, the darkness covered the sky, twisters and storms leveled the towns. A horrible blast burnt thousands of animals and people to ashes. Peasants, townspeople and warriors dived in the river to wash away the poisonous dust.” Astounding mysteries of India'sancien......

2003© Copyright Dan Sewell Ward

The absolute destruction and total obliteration of two cities to the point where there is minimal evidence that they ever existed, is a singular point in the story of Genesis. Much is made of the alleged decadence of these two cities (but in comparison to New York or Los Angeles... who knows?). All of it does seem to be a bit overwrought. It is, unless one is attempting to justify the wholesale destruction of two or more cities, complete with their complement of human inhabitants (accept for Lot and his daughters who managed to escape the alleged wrath of God). Modern history revisionists have even used the Sodom example to name the act of sodomy (sexual intercourse involving anal or oral copulation) as a means of identifying the latter as the most heinous of crimes. In the context of history, however, Sodom and Gomorrah, were not wholly different from Minneapolis and St. Paul. (6/6/05) Laurence Gardner [6], for example, has noted that based on writings from the Nag Hammadi Library, codices (copies of much older Greek works) included tracts of various texts (including previously unknown gospels): "The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, are not presented as centres of wickedness and debauchery, but as cities of great wisdom and learning." [Okay, then maybe Minneapolis and St. Paul are different.]

The only difficulty, apparently, for Sodom and Gomorrah was that both cities chose the wrong side in a much wider conflict. The error of their ways was less debauchery and more the wounds of war, but nevertheless resulted in their becoming the precursors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Basically, Sodom and Gomorrah were bombed into oblivion with the use of nuclear or atomic weaponry. The evidence is both Biblical and via the ancient Sumerian texts, as well as modern data which relates to a dramatic and stunning increase in windborne dust and what-not, the latter which apparently led to the end of the Akkadian Civilization. The latter is presented in the paper, "Climate change and the collapse of the Akkadian Empire: Evidence from the Deep-Sea" by Heide M. Cullen, et al. Their results docummented a "very abrupt increase in eolian dust and Mesopotamian aridity which is AMA radiocarbon dated to 4025 (plus or minus 125) cal. years BP [Before Present] and which persisted for approximately 300 years."...

In August of 1986, Voyager Two, a U.S. interstellar probe launched in 1977, began sending to Earth the first close-ups of planet Neptune. Scientists at a laboratory of jet propulsion in Pasadena, California, found a lot of amazing data while studying the pictures. First, a color scheme of Neptune surprised the researchers. It was bright blue with a few spots of white clouds. Second, a wide inclination angle of the rotation axis of the planet, which indicated a strong magnetic field, ample resources of internal heat, and a liquid core. Given the data and pictures sent by Voyager from the vicinity of Uranus in 1986, and information on Jupiter and Saturn sent by the probe some time earlier, the latest achievements of the spacecraft enabled us to take a closer look at the solar system the way we never did before.

Were we the first ones who managed to observe most distant planets of our solar system? Linguist and historian Zachariah Sychin believes that data from Voyager merely confirms his predictions first published in a book titled The Twelfth Planet. The book was published in 1976. Sychin also believes that data obtained by the probe agree with the writings of the ancient Sumerians, the writings made 6,000 years ago. The civilization of the Sumerians emerged in Mesopotamia (now a part of Iraq) around 4000 B.C. According to Sychin, the Sumerians invented a wheel, a furnace for roasting earthenware, and an irrigation system. More importantly, they invented the basic concepts of astrology. They used cuneiform writing for putting down their discoveries on clay tablets, statuettes and stone cylinders with mirror engravings of the symbols and drawings. Positive images were produced by rolling the cylinders over the soft clay. Sychin had been studying articles of the Sumerian civilization for more than 30 years. One day he found a rare stone cylinder in a museum of West Berlin. Apart from the image of a god giving a plow to humankind, the cylinder also had a startling chart of the heavens showing the planets with the Sun in the center. In total, the chart contained 12 planets, the Sun and Moon inclusive...