Clickspring has been recreating the Antikythera[1] and findings[2] went into a research paper.[3]
[1] Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
[1] Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
And I also believe, since communication was spotty, and took a long time, that there were pockets of real Mastery in the world. But everyone didn't benefit, just because of the communication and knowledge-sharing difficulties from that time.
I think Travelers had an amazing experience. They could go to some parts of the world and literally see the future, and other parts of the world and perhaps feel very connected to the very basics.
Meta: I sure wish this Google Voice thing would not randomly capitalized words. Sorry for the typos I just dictated this and hit send
I think what happens is that we forget that you can make a heck of a lot of even complicated and precise things with simple technology if you have a lot of time, have a lot of money to pay for labor, and don't need to produce more than a handful of the thing.
Need 100000 pairs of matched gears with a very precise fit, and you need them next month and cheaply? You need modern techniques.
Need one pair, and you've got years to produce it, and plenty of money? All you need is someone with a fine file to hand file the teeth, frequently checking the fit and tweaking it.
Since the Median empire at least, the post was also fairly standard. Vice versa, I am affraid I severely underestimate what pockets of real mastery exist in the world, hidden behind NDAs, paywalls and below the threshold in libraries. I'm normally pretty much satisfied with holding a telecommunication device in my hand.
This includes, hypothetically, the modern knowledge of ancient knowledge. So I don't disagree with you.
That's why I'm saying it's the same as today. There is no good reason a peasant would be unable to read, except that nobody taught them, which should not take too much time for alphabetics, or that it was written in a foreign, holy language.
Heck, Runes were considered to have magical power and ritual incantations were highly formularized--as they are today: a) e.g. in fashion brands, b) e.g. in law code to the extent that it requires professional translators
Or closer to the topic, take maths, which has a highly formularized, international, often ambiguous and domain specific writing system. Indeed, it's also a good example of a science where instruction is crucial, and most information is left out in writing because the reader is expected to have it all in working memory.
Even better analogy, computing machines: Not only do write with them, but in a sense we encode information in the, well, object, just like a sine and cosine wave diagram (or animation) encodes the motion of a radius in the circle. Only the keenest reverse engineers are able to read out the fundamental principles of its working. But, for analogy, CISC was found unwieldy so the trend is going back to RISC and doing hyperscalarity via networking, to solve heat problems.
Anyhow,domain knowledge implies today as it did then where to get stuff, not just how to use it. Specifically for the Iron age this means knowledge of iron mines, geography and geology. Maths and other structural sciences are only peripheral.
Given that early Iron was meteoric, one can kind of see how a connection to the skies and gods could be drawn.
And we have to wonder about fate, too. Some resources simply deplete. It's not that the knowledge is lost, but its application. Calenders have been further developed, certainly. Currently we predict the future on the end of global climate. Yeah that's sad, but it puts the little bit of heat that I put out as background noise into perspective.
Obviously in-person mentorship and instruction is still ideal, but the modern internet is much more than just a virtual text book or a bunch of videos of recorded lectures— for any given topic there are a hundred communities which happily welcome novices and are willing to examine your reasoning about a particular problem and help plug the holes.
Especially when that superior knowledge went against the controling religion of the day in that mass acceptance of the knowledge would severely weaken the control that the religion had on the populace. Some of these religious governing periods set back human learning for centuries.
Thanks for posting it