Starship Asterisk*

RocketRon wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:42 pm I'm a bit surprised that an astrolabe didn't get a mention here.

This one in an Oxford museum (?) is described as a medieval navigation instrument.


You can still buy all sorts of designs and layouts as decorative items and clocks even.
Maybe the knowledge has survived/been revived ?

RocketRon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 12:19 am

Perhaps we should also return to the main topic here - The Antikythera Mechanism When archaeology turned this up, all knowledge of them would seem to have been lost, long lost. Not a word in print anywhere. Definitely lost knowledge?

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:27 am You've got one of the most rose-tinted glasses view of English history I've ever come across.
May I ask what propaganda book it came out of ? It seems to bear no relationship to reality or history.
Maybe you could quote some sources. !

S'funny, when I do those 'cursory searches' I get this -

"ANGLO SAXON ARCHITECTURE.
Anglo-Saxon architecture was a period in the history of architecture in England, and parts of Wales, from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Anglo-Saxon secular buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. No universally accepted example survives above ground. "

Reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon royal palace at Cheddar around 1000 AD.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... heddar.jpg
No stone visible there ! And this was a ROYAL PALACE.

VIKING VILLAGE
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d6/ba/48 ... c5168c.jpg
No stone there either

So, NAME EVEN A SINGLE ANGLO SAXON 'world class' BUILDING like ye claim to exist ???

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:52 am Not only did the Saxons not build in stone, the 'British' have a fabulous record of dismantling
about every Roman building in Britain
ie. There is not a single surviving complete Roman building in Britain.

Now this is not uncommon throughout the remains of the Roman Empire, since building materials
were often hard to come by without a huge industrial effort like the Romans could muster,
but few other countries have such a thorough record of erasing everything down to ground level.

RocketRon wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:35 am It was of course the Normans - 1066 and all that - that reintroduced stone buildings back into Britain.
Bringing stonemasons and even stone in some cases with them from France.
There's yer 'world class buildings' in the making.

After the Romans had left in 410AD, the locals had largely discarded all the trappings of Roman civilization,
and returned to almost entirely building their houses and churches and monasteries and fortifications in timber.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F5MPE0/anglo- ... F5MPE0.jpg

Bricks didn't make a comeback for a few more centuries yet.

'Cultural change' neatly disguises the fundamental steps (backwards) in technology, science, the arts and society.
Being a total shift in the goalposts ...

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:44 am You seen to be making up the history ???
Quote a few sources for your info on where all these skills survived. !!

Lets work through a few specifics then.

When the Romans left, building in stone about stopped in its tracks.
It maybe lingered on for a while, but the net result is about the same.
Where do you think all the masons who were cutting and installing stone went. ?
What happened to all the brick making skills. ? (the Romans loved their bricks too).
Name one British built building made from bricks - for the next 1000 years ??
All the specialists making mosaic tile floors ??
All the plasterers doing plastered and painted walls.
All the folks making and installing tiled roofs.
All the skills in making hypocaust heated floors and buildings

They sure didn't hang around in Britain.
There was none of that for the next 400 or 500 years. !
And even then the Normans didn't have much of that stuff,
they had cold drafty old castles.
Albeit with a few huge fireplaces in some rooms.

We could go on and on here.
Britain post-Roman era was quite a degraded agricultural society, if we can call it that,
given the mish mash of Angles Saxon Jutes and Viking raiders/'invaders'.
Who were limited to building huts in timber...

Thats not really skills and knowledge surviving, is it. ?

As soon as you see a mosaic floor, you KNOW the brits didn't do it... !
There is some debate about this, but the evidence sure is scanty....
And gets scantier as the centuries roll on post-Roman.
[imghttps://www.romanobritain.org/1-arc/arc_images/ ... mosaic.jpg[/img]

We diverge from the The Antikythera Mechanism.
Can you imagine if this had been discovered in Britain.
It would have turned history/archaeology on its veritable head. !!
Or maybe thats a serious NO

RocketRon wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:12 am And there is no history of astronomy in those years in Britain whatsoever ...
Medicine, engineering, mathematics time keeping etc etc etc all seem absent too ?
Unless you have a stash of such history/knowledge that you'd like to share ?

A few stray snippets remained in some of the monasteries.
But such were barely British, they were almost to a man imports.

RocketRon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:44 am Indeed, I would have thought the Tower of Babylon might have been somewhere near Babylon !

Name a single notable building in stone in Britain after the Romans left ?
Or road, bridge or aquaduct for that matter.
(A few religious orders brought some masons from France etc to build a few stray early monasteries.).
Until the Normans arrived, and precipitated a building frenzy of cathedrals and castles. In stone.

You keep saying the rate of progress slowed.
Isn't that a euphemism for that Britain became a cultural backwater ?

"Technology and science in England advanced considerably during the Middle Ages, driven in part by the Greek and
Islamic thinking that reached England from the 12th century onwards. Many advances were made in scientific ideas,
including the introduction of Arabic numerals and a sequence of improvements in the units used for measuring time."