X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets

[Sasq]

A series of hidden texts written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being revealed by US scientists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5235894.stm

[Dr Mordrid]

[lowlifecat]

damn, my caffienation factor must be a little low, i read the title as 'X-rays reveal Archmage secrets'

where's that expresso machine.

[Byock]

Wow! Now that is impressive! Was parchment so hard to find back then that they had to recycle ancient text??

[MultimediaMan]

It could be depending on whether or not there was a shortage of meat (thus skins); not all animal skin types lent themselves to being made into parchment.

[Jammrock]

Wow! Now that is impressive! Was parchment so hard to find back then that they had to recycle ancient text??

Paper making didn't really make it to Europe until the 12th century. They had old Egyptian forms of papyrus and parchments made from animal skins, but anything of high quality was very precious (remember, most commodities back then were guild controlled, which meant price control and client control). Even the Declaration of Independence was written on skin parchment. Paper didn't really become commonplace until the 19th century in the western world when industrialization made making paper cheap.

My wife and I were bored one night and saw some PBS special about Chinese technology and how they had quality paper making abilities nearly a millennia before Europe. The Chinese really could have ruled the world and built an empire that would have put Rome to shame if they weren't too busy killing each other to conquer the barbarians.

[TnT]

@Jammrock

From everything I've read and heard, China's sudden technological stupor has nothing to do with their in-fighting. China was unified way before Europe. The relative peace is actually one possible theory for stagnation. Europe having much more strife and competition forced people to develop new things to stay ahead.

Another theory is that the Asian countries grew too fast. With so many people able to work it was impractical to invent new technologies to reduce labor. Working harder instead of smarter, which is the opposite of how things were before when China was way ahead of the curve.

[Jammrock]

@Jammrock

From everything I've read and heard, China's sudden technological stupor has nothing to do with their in-fighting. China was unified way before Europe. The relative peace is actually one possible theory for stagnation. Europe having much more strife and competition forced people to develop new things to stay ahead.

Another theory is that the Asian countries grew too fast. With so many people able to work it was impractical to invent new technologies to reduce labor. Working harder instead of smarter, which is the opposite of how things were before when China was way ahead of the curve.

Interesting. I was only commenting and paper and China being so advanced, but the history lesson was nice. I think China could have made the largest, both land and population wise, empire ever if they were adventurous and mean enough. But China of old was really a bunch of loose kingdoms and didn't really form the way we know it until ... the 1800's I believe.

Had they been unified back in their Song dynasty days, including the invading mongols for good measure, when the rest of the world was suffering from the dark ages they could have ruled everything between the Pacific and Atlantic ocean. They had the most advanced warfare tactics and tech, most advanced general technology, navy, and lots and lots of canon fodder. That's just a fantasy of course, but it would be an interesting alternate reality.

Jammrock