All Posts

The Antikythera mechanism survived two thousand years underwater.The theory behind it did not. That asymmetry isn’t accidental. It shows up repeatedly in the history of knowledge: tools persist long after the explanations that created them fade . Artifacts Remember What People Forget A tool encodes understanding in matter. You don’t need to know Greek astronomy to see that the Antikythera mechanism does something . Turn the crank, and the dials move in precise relationships.

For centuries, Europeans copied Euclid flawlessly—and still didn’t know how to do  geometry. The propositions survived. The diagrams survived. The proofs survived. What quietly disappeared was the habit of re-deriving  results and extending them. Geometry became something to memorize, not something to think with. By the late medieval period, Euclid was treated as an authority to cite, not a system to operate. That pattern shows up everywhere. Survival Is Not the Same as Funct

When people talk about lost knowledge, they imagine fire. Libraries burning. Cities falling. Conquerors smashing statues and scattering scholars. It’s dramatic, violent, and satisfying in a narrative sense. Something important disappears, so something equally important must have destroyed it. That’s not how it usually happens. Most knowledge isn’t lost in catastrophe. It’s lost through neglect . The Version I Expected Before I started reading history seriously, I assumed know

When people talk about Roman roads, they usually talk about durability. They say things like: “They lasted two thousand years,” or “We still use their routes today.” That’s true, but it misses the point. Longevity was not the primary achievement. Function was. Roman roads were not built to move people comfortably or efficiently by modern standards. They were built to move information, orders, and force with minimal ambiguity. In other words: they were an information network.

For most people, ancient technology is imagined in broad strokes: stone tools, bronze swords, maybe aqueducts if we’re feeling generous. Precision machinery belongs to the modern world. Gears imply factories, tolerances, industrial supply chains—things we’re taught simply didn’t exist in antiquity. The Antikythera mechanism breaks that picture cleanly in half. Recovered from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, the device initially looked like an unremarka

Picture this: It's 280 BC and you're a Greek ship captain who's had one too many cups of watered-down wine. The Egyptian coast is a black void ahead, and you are definitely about to become another added kill to Poseidon's K/D ratio. Then, BOOM, a point of light burns though the storm into your eyes, visible from 35 miles away, and you are overcome by the shear scale of the veritable supervillian's lair of a lighthouse in front of you. You whisper "thank the Gods" and steer st

Many people are familiar with Eratosthenes' discovery of the circumference of the Earth using vertical sticks and geometry, but a...

While an impressive scientist and philosopher in his own right, as well as the Chief Librarian of the famed Library of Alexandria,...

Arguably, one of the most important figures in both Classical History and Engineering History is Archimedes. Born in Syracuse, Sicily, in...