Did the Romans have cars?How a

[Aus Der Box Skeptisch]

Wait what//????? Your going to have to explain. To me why we can't reproduce a steel mixture... I'm not terribly familiar with Damascus steel in particular ... that being said though I am familiar with the many forms of stainless as well as alloy steel. I am also aware of how advanced we are at creating the different mixtures... is it we can't recreate Damascus steel or more likely we choose not to because we have far better quality mixtures available to us. Please though school me in ddamascus steel and what makes it special because I do lack the insight into that specific type.

[Mr Right Wing]

Wait what//????? Your going to have to explain. To me why we can't reproduce a steel mixture... I'm not terribly familiar with Damascus steel in particular ... that being said though I am familiar with the many forms of stainless as well as alloy steel. I am also aware of how advanced we are at creating the different mixtures... is it we can't recreate Damascus steel or more likely we choose not to because we have far better quality mixtures available to us. Please though school me in ddamascus steel and what makes it special because I do lack the insight into that specific type.

They didnt have furnances capable of reaching the temperatures to make steel.

Despite this primitive alloys of steel have been found but it isnt known how they were produced. Rest assured their steel was no match for modern metalurgy and was so poor they couldnt make bridges or buildings with it.

I suspect they probably had to use lava to produce the stuff.

[Druidus-Logos]

They didnt have steel, they didnt have Newtons classical mechanics to understand the world around them and their philosophy was filled with nonsense like water, air, fire and earth preventing them making huge advances.

I would argue that classical mechanics are not necessary to begin industrialization. Helpful, but not necessary. And, yes, Aristotle`s nonsense really didn`t provide much help. However, had a stronger and more `modern` infrastructure for technological advancement been in place, principles of physics would have been discovered as a part of the revolution that never was. Not only that, but Aristotle`s `theories` would have been found to be the fluff they are, IMO. And Aristotle wasn`t the only philosopher. There were other ones that had differing theories, including the idea of the atomos (Democritus, off the top of my head, I believe). Didn`t Aristotle`s philosophies hold back science for some time even in medieval Europe? Wasn't it only great (and privileged - society could afford far more "scientists" with a higher pop. density and a stronger infrastructure with which to support more professional scholars) minds who enabled the scientific advancements of the industrial revolution to unfold? Who knows what could have occurred had things been altered only a little.

You can have gunpowder without understanding the chemistry of combustion. You can have steam powered engines and not understand classical physics or have a deeply refined world view/philosophy. These people were not idiots, and given the right circumstances (again, stronger infrastructure and higher pop. to support non-"working" pre-scientists, I hold that they could have achieved their own industrialization. I think you scoff too much at the minds and abilities of the ancient Greeks; to think them incapable of understanding or generating a system of true science is rather modernocentric.

Also, about the steel, it is still debatable. Indians may have had steel production by 500BCE and it was probably quite standardized by the time of Alexander. Indeed, Roman and Greek smiths were capable of producing low grade steel, even if by accident (contact with charcoal and the like), though there is some evidence that people were pursuing a proper technique to produce it. True, they weren't masters of the art, or even close to it, but the seeds were there, and could have been expanded upon; indeed WOULD have been expanded, had world circumstances permitted, had the apparent stagnation of intellectualism that plagued generations after the period of, say, 80BCE-80CE never occurred. To me it really seems more important that there was a much lower population and therefore a much lower number of "genius" class individuals (as a proportion of society) or the infrastructure to support them.

That said, yeah, I'm not claiming it was a certainty that they would have industrialized, I'm just claiming that the possibility was there. I realize that your ideas on this are as good as mine, given the remoteness of the era of discussion from the present and the necessarily hypothetical nature of such a discussion. But I think it closed-minded indeed to actually revoke even the possibility of the ancient Greeks managing even at least a small scale industrial revolution to be the foundation for a future system of advancement.

Honestly, just because we took one memetic route to industrialization doesn't mean it's the only path. Other minds, other ideas, and other cultural backgrounds could have done it under different circumstances. I think the Greeks had the most chance of achieving this industrialization technology and had the foundational memes to lead to it, while the Romans would probably have the most capable infrastructure for the task. Either way, I'm not even the first to muse on the possibilities of a Golden Age that never ended. It's not as if I'm the first to bandy about the idea of an alternate history where the glory of intellectual pursuit and study of the world thrived long after the so-called "dark ages" began. It's not that unrealistic an idea, either, I honestly don't know why you reject it as impossible out of hand.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Druidus-Logos

[Gaden]

The only way to answer some of these questions is to get into the Vatican Libray and have the freedom to see any books or documents. There is a section of the Library that deals with ancient Egyptian scrolls. We are told we should have freedom to do research, yet the Vatican does not believe in such notiions. I would love to see the sections dealng with World War II, Hitler and Pearl Harbor. The Vatican had its spies everywhere.

The Library was the heart of Renaissance movement which was the rebirth of learning based on Green and Roman works. They got the writers and geographers and scientists into Library where they free to plagiarize to their hearts content. Columbus was given the Piri Reis Map of the Carribean and Da Vinci was shown engineering diagrams of ancient technology as the helicopter, tank, machine gun and other future investions. He was 500 years ahead of his time. So where did he get such ideas? Da Vinci has access to the Library because he advised the Popes.

You must be very lonely there in that little world of yours, devoid of the reality that we enjoy here in our world. It's time to fess up, now, tell the truth, you make this stuff up as you go, don't you? You try to come up with the most outlandish claims just to get a rise out of people, isn't that right? It's obvious you're makeing this stuff up, because no one could be that dense.

[Oniomancer]

The only way to answer some of these questions is to get into the Vatican Libray and have the freedom to see any books or documents. There is a section of the Library that deals with ancient Egyptian scrolls. We are told we should have freedom to do research, yet the Vatican does not believe in such notiions. I would love to see the sections dealng with World War II, Hitler and Pearl Harbor. The Vatican had its spies everywhere.

The Library was the heart of Renaissance movement which was the rebirth of learning based on Green and Roman works. They got the writers and geographers and scientists into Library where they free to plagiarize to their hearts content. Columbus was given the Piri Reis Map of the Carribean and Da Vinci was shown engineering diagrams of ancient technology as the helicopter, tank, machine gun and other future investions. He was 500 years ahead of his time. So where did he get such ideas? Da Vinci has access to the Library because he advised the Popes.

Right. Which is why all his designs are completely in keeping with Renaissance technology. Neat trick Columbus pulled too, using a map that says right in the margins that it was based on maps made by Columbus in the first place. A navigational feat worthy of that noted explorer Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen. But than, he would share quite bit in common with you in that respect, wouldn't he?

Edited November 19, 2011 by Oniomancer

[Mr Right Wing]

That said, yeah, I'm not claiming it was a certainty that they would have industrialized, I'm just claiming that the possibility was there. I realize that your ideas on this are as good as mine, given the remoteness of the era of discussion from the present and the necessarily hypothetical nature of such a discussion. But I think it closed-minded indeed to actually revoke even the possibility of the ancient Greeks managing even at least a small scale industrial revolution to be the foundation for a future system of advancement.

The only historical evidence I can find which might open up the possibility is that mechanism for astronomy they recovered off the seas floor (cant remember the name). The gear cogs in that needed precision engineering i.e. a lath.

[Druidus-Logos]

They didnt have furnances capable of reaching the temperatures to make steel.

Not unless under special conditions, yeah. They probably didn't make much steel, if at all, though, again, there is every reason to believe they were pursuing the technology, recognizing its superiority to iron, even if they didn't understand that it was all about the carbon and heat. Sustained intellectualism over decades could have figured out how to do this. I know the hardships, but, again, under the right circumstances, possible.

Despite this primitive alloys of steel have been found but it isnt known how they were produced.

Most likely simple contact with charcoal at unusually high smithy heat levels. This steel WAS used, and valued, though low quality.

Rest assured their steel was no match for modern metalurgy and was so poor they couldnt make bridges or buildings with it.

Agreed. Good thing those things aren't the only ways to go.

I suspect they probably had to use lava to produce the stuff.

Seriously? They knew it was the heat, so they used lava, but they couldn't figure out that the charcoal was important too? If they made the leap to lava for heat, they could have made the carbon leap. Or was that humour of some kind?

[Mr Right Wing]

The only way to answer some of these questions is to get into the Vatican Libray and have the freedom to see any books or documents. There is a section of the Library that deals with ancient Egyptian scrolls. We are told we should have freedom to do research, yet the Vatican does not believe in such notiions. I would love to see the sections dealng with World War II, Hitler and Pearl Harbor. The Vatican had its spies everywhere.

The Library was the heart of Renaissance movement which was the rebirth of learning based on Green and Roman works. They got the writers and geographers and scientists into Library where they free to plagiarize to their hearts content. Columbus was given the Piri Reis Map of the Carribean and Da Vinci was shown engineering diagrams of ancient technology as the helicopter, tank, machine gun and other future investions. He was 500 years ahead of his time. So where did he get such ideas? Da Vinci has access to the Library because he advised the Popes.

The first known war was the Dacians invading ancient Greece. The original Greeks were pushed south and became the Spartans while the Dacians settled and created their city which was Athens. As war was invented by Europeans the only conflict the rest of the world knew about until recent times were the minor tribal skirmishes between rival gangs of spear throwers.

Its worrying to think that Europeans may have encountered far more advanced nations in ancient India and the Americas but destroyed them simply because they didnt know what war was. There could be some huge dark secrets in the Vatican.

[Druidus-Logos]

The only historical evidence I can find which might open up the possibility is that mechanism for astronomy they recovered off the seas floor (cant remember the name). The gear cogs in that needed precision engineering i.e. a lath.

The Antikythera mechanism, and yes, it is quite impressive.

If small group of philosophers and engineers (or even just one, depending on source) could build that, then given the proper support and infrastructure, what else could they have done?

Really, it boils down to a lack of infrastructure to support intellectual endeavors on as large a scale as you find in industrializing Europe. The universities of Europe compared to the few academies of ancient Greece?

[Druidus-Logos]

The first known war was the Dacians invading ancient Greece. The original Greeks were pushed south and became the Spartans while the Dacians settled and created their city which was Athens.

Definitely not that clear cut.

As war was invented by Europeans the only conflict the rest of the world knew about until recent times were the minor tribal skirmishes between rival gangs of spear throwers.

Really now? That's highly debatable. Aztecs, Mayans, Incans; Mohawk, Mi'qmaq, THE FREAKING INDIAN EPICS THAT DESCRIBE WARFARE, Japans feuding states, Nubians, Bantu, I think an east Asian fellow by the name of Sun-Tzu wrote a CLASSIC called "The Art of War", hell, go back far enough and you could even call the systematic extinction of the Neanderthals a form of war. ALL of these people had WAR. War is intrinsic to the human primate. We find evidence of mass slaughterings of hominids, or simply mass slaughterings of sapiens, all over the world. Europeans don`t have some mystical monopoly on the birth of war. Where is your source for that, anyway? I've never heard that assertion before your post.

If you think the rest of the world was "primitive" tribespeople than you are far from correct. Mass war was conducted on ALL of the continents save Antarctica and poss. Australia. It certainly never started in Europe as some new and unthought of idea. That's patently absurd.

Its worrying to think that Europeans may have encountered far more advanced nations in ancient India and the Americas but destroyed them simply because they didnt know what war was. There could be some huge dark secrets in the Vatican.

Don't you think we'd have evidence of destroyed civilizations that were "more advanced"? Didn't know what war was... LMAO, I can't even keep responding to this.

For your reading pleasure:

"The first recorded war occurred in c. 2700 B.C. It was between Sumer (in modern Iraq) and Elam (a region that is now part of Iran), and was fought in the area around Basra (just like the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s). Of course, tribes, cities, etc., had been fighting each other for thousands of years before that, but there are no records of these earlier conflicts as writing wasn't invented until a little before 3000 B.C. " - KL47

The two thousand years following the dawn of the fourth millennium changed all this. As a mechanism of cultural development, the conduct of war became a legitimate social function supported by an extensive institutional infrastructure, and it became an indispensable characteristic of the social order if people were to survive the predatory behavior of others. This period saw the emergence of the whole range of social, political, economic, psychological, and military technologies that made the conduct of war a relatively normal part of social existence. In less than two thousand years, man went from a condition in which warfare was relatively rare and mostly ritualistic in which combat death and destruction were suffered at low rates to one in which death and destruction were attained on a modern scale. In this period, warfare assumed modern proportions in terms of size of the armies involved, the administrative mechanisms needed to sustain them, the development of weapons, the frequency of occurrence, and the scope of destruction achievable by military force. And it was in Sumer and Egypt that the world witnessed the emergence of the world's first armies.

-http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr0002.htm

Sumer is west Asia, no? Egypt is African?

In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, says that approximately 90–95% of known societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare,[13] and many fought constantly.[14]

-Wikipedia "War" Page

c. 2271 BC Battle of Uruk King Sargon of Akkad defeats the Sumerian force led by king Lugal-Zage-Si at Uruk.

unknown Battle at Gibeah Biblical battle between the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin and the other tribes of Israel, regarding the death of a concubine.

c. 1600 BC Battle of Mingtiao Tang of Shang defeats Jie of Xia, marking the beginning of the Shang dynasty.

c. 1500 BC Battle of the Ten Kings King Sudas defeats the invading Ten Kings in the Punjab region.

c. 1457 BC Battle of Megiddo Egyptian forces, led by Thutmose III, rout the Canaanite forces under the King of Kadesh.

c. 1274 BC Battle of Kadesh King Muwatallis of the Hittites surprise Ramesses II; the battle ends in a draw.

1269 BC Siege of Dapur Egyptian forces, led by Ramesses II, conquer Dapur.

c. 1184 BC Battle of Troy Troy falls after the ten-year Trojan War.

c. 1100 BC Battle of Mount Gilboa The Israelites fight against the Philistines; King Saul and his son Jonathan die.

1046 BC Battle of Muye Decisive victory of the Zhou Dynasty against the Shang Dynasty.

925 BC Battle of Bitter Lakes Shoshenq I of Egypt defeats a Bedouin incursion after surprising the enemy at the shores of the Bitter Lakes.

925 BC Sack of Jerusalem (925 BC) The Egyptians capture and plunder the Israeli capital of Jerusalem.

853 BC Battle of Karkar Assyrian Shalmaneser III faces a military alliance of the king of Damascus and other rulers including Tyre.

733 BC Siege of Gezer (c.733 BC) The Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pilesser III takes Gazru (Gezer).

707 BC Battle of Ruge King Huan of Zhou defeated by the Zheng general Zhu Dan when King Huan of Zhou launched a campaigned against the Zheng principality.

693 BC Battle of Diyala River King Sennacherib of Assyria defeats the Elamites of Southern Iran, led by Mushezib-Marduk, at Diyala River.

691 BC Battle of Halule King Sennacherib of Assyria fights a rebel force, composed by Babylonians, Chaldeans, Aramaeans, Elamites and by the tribes of the Zagros; the battle ended in a draw, although the greatest losses were suffered by the Assyrians.

A short an non-comprehensive history of early warfare, again courtesy of wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_before_601#Before_500_BC

Edited November 19, 2011 by Druidus-Logos

[Mr Right Wing]

Seriously? They knew it was the heat, so they used lava, but they couldn't figure out that the charcoal was important too? If they made the leap to lava for heat, they could have made the carbon leap. Or was that humour of some kind?

No not at all

The Greeks are supposed to have had a focused mirror weapon for using the suns rays to set fire to ships. Its always possible they used it to make steel too. If not the only other source of high temperature I can think of is lava.

Ancient furnances were not capable of reaching the required temperatures and they wouldnt have had the chemicals to initiate reactions that are highly exothermic.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Mr Right Wing

[Oniomancer]

The only historical evidence I can find which might open up the possibility is that mechanism for astronomy they recovered off the seas floor (cant remember the name). The gear cogs in that needed precision engineering i.e. a lath.

You don't need a fancy lathe to cut gears. At any rate the antikythera mechanism's gears were all hand cut.

[Druidus-Logos]

No not at all

The Greeks are supposed to have had a focused mirror weapon for using the suns rays to set fire to ships. Its always possible they used it to make steel too. If not the only other source of high temperature I can think of is lava.

Ancient furnances were not capable of reaching the required temperatures and they wouldnt have had the chemicals to initiate reactions that are highly exothermic.

That weapon was actually tested and shown to be unfeasible. But, again, I'm not really arguing about the steel.

You don't need a fancy lathe to cut gears. At any rate the antikythera mechanism's gears were all hand cut.

Thanks, I thought so but wasn't sure.

[Mr Right Wing]

Really now? That's highly debatable. Aztecs, Mayans, Incans; Mohawk, Mi'qmaq, THE FREAKING INDIAN EPICS THAT DESCRIBE WARFARE, Japans feuding states, Nubians, Bantu, hell, go back far enough and you could even call the systematic extinction of the Neanderthals a form of war. ALL of these people had WAR. War is intrinsic to the human primate. We find evidence of mass slaughterings of hominids, or simply mass slaughterings of sapiens, all over the world. Europeans don`t have some mystical monopoly on the birth of war. Where is your source for that, anyway? I've never heard that assertion before your post.

If you think the rest of the world was "primitive" tribespeople than you are far from correct. Mass war was conducted on ALL of the continents save Antarctica and poss. Australia. It certainly never started in Europe as some new and unthought of idea. That's patently absurd.

Don't you think we'd have evidence of destroyed civilizations that were "more advanced"? Didn't know what war was... LMAO, I can't even keep responding to this.

Imagine humans landing on some distant planet armed with machine guns.

They get there, they discover the alien civlization is millions of years more advanced than us however they dont know what war is so they get conquered.

We then wage cultural and technological genocide against their people. We kill all their intellectuals, we gut their civlization leaving empty stone buildings and we redefine their people as savages. We then impose our 'superior culture' on their future generations. Sounds like the British Empire doesnt it?

Wheres the proof that I'm right? Well for starters theres advanced knowledge in the Vedic texts of the Indus Valley Civilication. Where did that come from? Who built the impressive cities in the Americas?

You don't need a fancy lathe to cut gears. At any rate the antikythera mechanism's gears were all hand cut.

You do for precision engineering.

Precesion means the gear wheels are perfectly round to with in a couple thousandths of a millimetre.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Mr Right Wing

[Oniomancer]

No not at all

The Greeks are supposed to have had a focused mirror weapon for using the suns rays to set fire to ships. Its always possible they used it to make steel too. If not the only other source of high temperature I can think of is lava.

Ancient furnances were not capable of reaching the required temperatures and they wouldnt have had the chemicals to initiate reactions that are highly exothermic.

Good grief man. You're starting to sound like mike. Isn't it easier and more logical simply to postulate an early adaption of better conventional furnace techniques, the earliest known of which already dates to between the 3rd C. BC and the 3rd C. AD?

You're right though in that the Romans wouldn't have had the technology for this as we know it, but you're kind of losing your original point in the shuffle.

You do for precision engineering.

Precesion means the gear wheels are perfectly round to with in a couple thousandths of a millimetre.

Which is perfectly attainable by hand methods, or simpler forms of machinery than our modern versions. A precise circle alone needs only a circle cutter with a graving point to attain. How do you think medieval clock gears were cut?

[Druidus-Logos]

Imagine humans landing on some distant planet armed with machine guns.

They get there, they discover the alien civlization is millions of years more advanced than us however they dont know what war is so they get conquered.

We then wage cultural and technological genocide against their people. We kill all their intellectuals, we gut their civlization leaving empty stone buildings and we redefine their people as savages. We then impose our 'superior culture' on their future generations. Sounds like the British Empire doesnt it?

Really? That's incredibly unlikely. First of all, a species doesn't evolve in isolation, it is part of a biosphere. These aliens evolved with predation. They at least know struggle.

Now, let's assume that you're right, and, for some unknown reason, these people have NEVER once conceived, over millions of years, the concept of struggle against another species (having evolved with predators, of course). I'm not ready to assume that, but just let's.

We start using our machine guns, and then millions of years of advanced technology is geared to deal with the new threat. These are intelligent, cultured, and technological beings, millions of years more advanced than us. If we start shooting, they'll understand what war is soon enough. They are not just going to sit back and take it, they'll do what they did the past few epochs, and LEARN. Don't tell me all that futuretech is no match for our paltry machine guns (by the way, why machine guns, we've just crossed interstellar space ).

They wouldn't sit there totally incapable of understanding what war was while we decimated them. That is, again, if I buy the incredible notion that a sentient species has no conception of warfare, either against its own or other species. That might work in fiction, but any evolved sentient species will know and understand struggle and most likely war. The circumstances for war not to ever come about in a sentient society are extremely improbable.

Wheres the proof that I'm right? Well for starters theres advanced knowledge in the Vedic texts of the Indus Valley Civilication. Where did that come from? Who built the impressive cities in the Americas?

That "advanced knowledge" makes for good reading but proves nothing of substance. The impressive cities were built by capable and intelligent Amerindians.

You do for precision engineering.

Precesion means the gear wheels are perfectly round to with in a couple thousandths of a millimetre.

Source for this statement; I did a quick search and found nothing about the precision of the mechanism, nor did a search for the mechanism and the word "lathe" produce much.

[Mr Right Wing]

Which is perfectly attainable by hand methods, or simpler forms of machinery than our modern versions. A precise circle alone needs only a circle cutter with a graving point to attain. How do you think medieval clock gears were cut?

As an engineer I assure you it isnt possible by hand

[Mr Right Wing]

They wouldn't sit there totally incapable of understanding what war was while we decimated them. That is, again, if I buy the incredible notion that a sentient species has no conception of warfare, either against its own or other species. That might work in fiction, but any evolved sentient species will know and understand struggle and most likely war. The circumstances for war not to ever come about in a sentient society are extremely improbable.

But we know what Central and Sourthern American ideas about warfare were.

To them war wasnt about slaughtering hostile warriors it was about trying to capture them alive so they could be sacrificed to the Gods. They simply were not equipped physically or mentality to cope with a Spanish Invasion force that wanted to annhilate them. Heck they even thought we were their Gods.

The buildings in their civilizations indicate advanced knowledge because we cant even lift some of the stone blocks they used now. This may mean complete cultural and technological genocide of a more advanced civilization.

My alien example was taken to the extreme just to make a point. I know that even if the Aztecs/Mayans/Incas were more advanced than us it would only have been by a couple thousand years at most.

[Druidus-Logos]

<Deleted>

Edited November 20, 2011 by Druidus-Logos

[Druidus-Logos]

But we know what Central and Sourthern American ideas about warfare were.

To them war wasnt about slaughtering hostile warriors it was about trying to capture them alive so they could be sacrificed to the Gods.

No, this is not the only reason. They also fought over resources, territory, trade disputes, and more. Also, it was primarily the Aztec that were known for the capture for sacrifice phenomenon.

They simply were not equipped physically or mentality to cope with a Spanish Invasion force that wanted to annhilate them.

They were equipped mentally; they were definitely intelligent enough. Guns, germs, steel, and horses were why the Spanish won, not some inherent inferiority of the southern Amerindians. There are well defined reasons why these things were not present in the Americas.

Heck they even thought we were their Gods.

Not quite. They thought Quetzalcoatl had returned as Cortez, yes, but they didn't necessarily view us all as Gods. They most likely saw us as evil, four legged monsters, at first; were further startled by gunfire and shining steel armour, and ended up too fearful of these new things to stand up in a concerted fight against the small invasion force. Their emperor was killed through deception, and they were severely demoralized. These events in no way show that these Amerindians were unaware of war. It shows that they were a several hundred years behind in weaponry and armour tech. They were well aware of war, and war also appears in their myths.

The buildings in their civilizations indicate advanced knowledge because we cant even lift some of the stone blocks they used now.

bull, please supply a source.

This may mean complete cultural and technological genocide of a more advanced civilization.

No, it doesn't, certainly not without sources. What stones are you even talking about?

My alien example was taken to the extreme just to make a point. I know that even if the Aztecs/Mayans/Incas were more advanced than us it would only have been by a couple thousand years at most.

In approximately 200 years, we're expected to have a ridiculous level of technological achievement. If they were thousands of years ahead of us, at that time, then they would have invented such things as computers roughly 800-400 BCE, wide margin of error. We'd have found evidence of this. You can't hide the extirpation of an entire culture that also happens to be advanced enough to be expected to leave ARTIFACTS. Serious stuff, like communications tech, robots, nanomachinery, radar, astronomy, satellites (would have had those perfected in the middle ages, lol), nuclear weaponry, airships, etc. Plus, you can't convince me a civilization that far ahead of us wouldn't have scouted using their airships that they'd undoubtedly have designed while becoming so advanced. They would have explored Earth, and they would have seen the European "threat" long before it became one. They would not be caught unawares.

Your whole argument seems rather specious and you don't even really seem to respond to queries or objections. If you wish to resume our discussion/debate, please kindly respond to the poster before you, fully, and stop saying completely ridiculous things with no citations or evidence of any kind. We can't get anywhere when your claims go undefended by sourced fact, and you refuse to acknowledge any of the numerous errors you've already made in this thread.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Damascus Steel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

I remember reading somewhere that "Excalibur" was Damascus Steel which is why it was so formidable.

[Mike 215]

If you do not believe that the Romans had a car, how about the Greeks having a death ray that can burn ships? See Archimedes Heat Ray on google. IN 212 BC in the seige of Syracuse Archimedes used some kind of devise to destroy an entire fleet of Roman Ships. What this device was is not clear but apparently it was based on mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays to make a death ray capable of burning wooden ships.

The problem with the description of the device is that even with our technology we cannot reproduce exactly when he did. There have been many experiments using mirrors to burn model ships less then 100 feet away and they have been successf

ul. The probem is that we do not have the mirrors or the technology to throw that beam hundreds of feet and capable of burning an entire fleet of ships. Solar furnances which have hundreds of mirrors have a short focial lengths to concentrate the sun's heat.

Anyway,I think that this great Greek scientist developed some kind of laser system using the sun's rays to project a laser beam a great distance. It is only system I can think that would accomplish what the Romans described in this battle.

[Swede]

As an engineer I assure you it isnt possible by hand

Am unaware of functional metal-turning lathes prior to the 18th century. References?

.

[Druidus-Logos]

If you do not believe that the Romans had a car, how about the Greeks having a death ray that can burn ships? See Archimedes Heat Ray on google. IN 212 BC in the seige of Syracuse Archimedes used some kind of devise to destroy an entire fleet of Roman Ships. What this device was is not clear but apparently it was based on mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays to make a death ray capable of burning wooden ships.

The problem with the description of the device is that even with our technology we cannot reproduce exactly when he did. There have been many experiments using mirrors to burn model ships less then 100 feet away and they have been successf

ul. The probem is that we do not have the mirrors or the technology to throw that beam hundreds of feet and capable of burning an entire fleet of ships. Solar furnances which have hundreds of mirrors have a short focial lengths to concentrate the sun's heat.

Anyway,I think that this great Greek scientist developed some kind of laser system using the sun's rays to project a laser beam a great distance. It is only system I can think that would accomplish what the Romans described in this battle.

Sorry, bro. It doesn't work, it's an unfeasible weapon. You can't focus the light long enough on a single ship in one place to cause it to alight. At BEST, I'd think you could burn their sails, or maybe more probably simply put some glare in someone's eye. The reason we can't reproduce it is because it didn't happen as it is described.

At a distance, you'd be attempting to aim narrow beams of focused photons at specific points in order to heat them up to ignition temperature. Ships move, relatively quickly, at that. When they move, you lose the spot you were heating and end aiming elsewhere. In the end, the ship can always dissipate enough heat to stop combustion from commencing.

It might have been used in a test, or show of ability, and then exaggerated or such. It MIGHT work, if the target was kind enough to sit completely still, and it wasn't cloudy, or at night. This whole legend would be actually more believable if it were used BY the ships to attack stationary defenses ashore, without wasting ammo or risking close assault. Even then, a stretch would be a kind description of it.

Am unaware of functional metal-turning lathes prior to the 18th century. References?

I really don't think he's coming back, but I do would be interested in these references. Also, it's kind of funny that you say "unaware of 'functional' metal turning lathes..." just because it kind of sounds like they were making non-functional ones for some time before then, and some breakthrough remedied this situation.

lol, I don't even know if that's at all funny, this is hour 46-48 awake right now, so sorry if my sleep deprivation makes me say anything stupid.

[Englishgent]

Lava has been mentioned here regarding the forging of steel. However, I find it difficult to see how this can be (for the following reasons.)

1.Lava solidifies very quickly once exposed air.

2.This would mean using the lava 'in situ' and I doubt very much wthether in those days they had heat resistant clothing, although from some of the clains made in this thread I am sure somebody will prove me wrong. Even with our present technology in this type of clothing we could not stand too close to molten lava for a long time. Certainly not long enough, I would suggest, to produce steel,

3. Did the Greeks have any continuous lava flows which could possibly of been used for this purpose? I may be wrong but the nearest active volcanos are along the lower part of Italy/Sicily are tbey not?