Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

Minoan guard against pirates in the form of three watches which sent out patrols. The poet Robert Graves has suggested that Talos's single vein belongs to the mystery of early bronze casting by the cire-perdue (lost wax) method, which involves the sculptor producing a model in clay that is then coated with wax. This model is then covered with a perforated clay mold. When heated, the mold will lose the wax (hence the name of the method) as it runs out of the holes in the plaster. The metal in liquid form is then poured into the space formerly occupied by the wax.

A religious/ritual interpretation has been suggested by the discovery of Minoan seal stones dating from c. 1500 B.C., showing a goddess or priestess paddling a boat to seaside shrines, indicating a similar divine circumnavigation of the island to that of the bronze giant. As Talos is the Cretan word for

the sun, Robert Graves has suggested that he would, as the sun, have circled Crete originally only once a day. And because Talos, a bronze image of the sun, was also called Taurus (the bull) and the Cretan year was divided into three seasons, his thrice-yearly visit to the villages could have been a royal progress of the Sun King, wearing his ritual bull mask.

Another theory is that Talos represents the first fully operational robot in history. It has been calculated that if Talos could circuit Crete three times a day, it would mean that he had an average speed of 155 miles per hour. Proponents of this view point out that when the giant was wounded in the ankle, what poured out seems similar to molten lead. In general, the Greeks were fascinated with automata of all kinds, often using them in theater productions and religious ceremonies. There is some history of ancient robotics, albeit in primitive form. In 350 B.C. the brilliant Greek mathematician Archytas built a mechanical bird, dubbed The Pigeon, that was propelled by steam. It was one of histories earliest studies of flight, as well as possibly the first model airplane. In 322 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, perhaps foreseeing the development of robots, wrote "If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it...then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords." In the late third century B.C. the Greek inventor and physicist Ctesibius of Alexandria designed water clocks with movable figures on them, which kept more accurate time than any clock invented until the 17th century.

More than 1,600 years later, around the year A.D. 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed (and perhaps even built) a mechanical armored knight, probably the first humanoid robot in history. The machinery inside da Vinci's robot, a cable-and-pulley-driven artificial man, was designed to create the illusion that a real person was inside. This robot could sit up, wave its arms, and move its head while opening and closing an anatomically correct jaw. It may even have emitted sounds to the accompaniment of automated musical instruments, such as drums. In fact, there were quite a few inventors in medieval times who built machines similar to this to entertain royalty. Da Vinci's robot was dressed in a typical, late-15th century German-Italian suit of armor. From da Vinci's designs, it appears that all the joints moved in unison, powered and controlled by a mechanical, ana- logue-programable controller located within the chest. The legs were powered separately by an external crank assembly driving the cable, which was

connected to important locations in the ankle, knee, and hip.

In 2005, the Biochemical Engineering Faculty at the University of Connecticut began a recreation of the basic structure of da Vinci's original robot. Their design will incorporate 21st century technology including "vision, speech recognition, and voice command, computer-integrated movements, and a more advanced body structure." The robot will also possess a mobile neck and have the capacity to follow moving objects with its eyes. The recreation will operate in two modes, one which will respond to computer commands and the other to spoken commands. Da Vinci's original pulleys and gears will be utilized in conjunction with muscle models to imitate natural human movements.

It all seems a very long way from ancient Greece. Nevertheless, even though Talos was probably a figure of myth, the giant bronze man of Crete was perhaps the prototype of all modern robots.

The Baghdad BaI±ery

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The Baghdad Battery in the Baghdad Museum.

Some researchers have seen in ancient Egyptian wall carvings or in ancient texts evidence for ancient electricity. Though these claims generally lack physical proof, there is one particular ancient artifact that is believed by some scientists to be an example of an electrical power source. Despite its plain appearance, this small, undecorated jar may change the accepted view of the history of scientific discovery.

The object, thought to be a 2,000year-old electric battery, was found in 1936 by workers moving earth for a

new railway in the area of Khujut Rabu, southeast of Baghdad. The battery appears to have been unearthed in a tomb of the Parthian period (247 B.C.-A.D. 228). When found, it consisted of a 13 centimeter tall oval jar of bright yellow clay, inside of which were a rolled up copper sheet, an iron rod, and some fragments of asphalt. The asphalt had been used to seal the top and bottom of the copper cylinder, as well as to hold the iron rod in place in the center of the cylinder. The use of an asphalt sealing indicated that the object had once contained liquid of some sort, as is also suggested by traces of corrosion on the copper tube, which was probably caused by an acidic agent, perhaps vinegar or wine. Similar artifacts were found in the nearby cities of Seleucia (where the jar contained papyrus rolls) and Ctesiphon (where it contained rolled bronze sheets).

In 1938, German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig, then director of the Baghdad Museum Laboratory, came