Antikythera Mechanism - A basis for more pragmatic uses of complex gear mechanisms?

Hi all,

Now I'm fairly aware the Antikythera Mechanism is almost viewed with the same disdain as the Aeolipile to a certain extent. However, the mechanism does to an extent point towards a vast prior knowledge with complex gear systems that amounted to the Antikythera Mechanism. Unlike the basic Aeolipile of which we are aware with 2000 years of hindsight that the basis of which leads to steam engines but requires vast industrial leaps for any pragmatic use.

Yet the basis of the Antikythera Mechanism, complex gear mechanisms, is arguably far more advanced technology than many of the practical applications such knowledge can be applied to.

So my question is, with a POD at around 100BC (around or just before the Antikythera Mechanism is produced) can we start seeing gear systems being used in various applications across the Greco-Roman world in agriculture, windmills/watermills, mining, construction and other applications to a far greater extent than in OTL? What would the effects of a cog and gear industrial revolution be?

Bump.

It depends a lot of the feasability and context of the PoD.

I'd tend to say, giving that this sort of contraptions were more seen as demonstration of theories or amusing gadgets rather than searching to have a practical application to theories, that it would require a really different mindset (rather than "industrial leaps"), so maybe no Roman Empire or at least a different one.

It's not that some semi-industrial features weren't present in the Roman Empire, with a widespread use of geared watermills close to great centers of productions and consumption (and even some ships propelled by beefs and paddle according hypothesis of some historians)
But it'd require at least the concentration of productive means that were still essentially agricultural to have more, and enough rentability for that huge structural replacement (you don't pass from slav-based production* to semi-industrial overnight for no reasons)

(This book is interesting on this matter)

*Arguably, it was essentially an African, Italian and Hispanic thing. But other provinces had a more important place for little property and decentralisation of production.

I entirely understand you can't change from a slave based system to semi industrial over night for various reasons, but it is that exact impact I was looking to delve in to with discussion. I would argue that the Romans dependency on slaves were the primary reason for their downfall. I don't expect the economic system to change leaps and bounds alongside the technological, but I think it would be a way to veer it away from an absolute dependency on slavery at the expense of the slaves but also the plebeians and the peasantry.

And that is a very interesting link I'll be sure to check it out, cheers.

Machine of God's - Technology of the Ancient World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPuQQJ4oB2o&spfreload=10

found this doco quite interesting. is all about how important it used to be to create mechanical "stage magic" for ancient temples.

even the Antikythera mechanisms main purpose may well have been to give priests advance knowledge of celestial movements which they could use to prove their "connection" with the gods.

Mr.Wigglemunch said:

I would argue that the Romans dependency on slaves were the primary reason for their downfall.

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I'd disagree : slavery importance in economy declined (while still important) with the II and IIIrd centuries. Less by halting conquests and raids (you still had an influx of slaves from Africa, Asia and Barbaricum, from inner raidings by tribes that sold slaves to Romans); but by the disruption caused by epidemics and ongoing climatic changes.

Eventually, it was some sort of semi-free peasantry, coloni, reminiscent of medieval serves that appeared alongside a more decentralied economical micro-management and more tied up to the direct houseold rather than on a land.

Not that slavery wasn't still an important feature in Late Antiquity, in order to compensate partially the constant manpower issues after the epidemics (semi-mechanisation attempts, such as mechanical harvester, were more used in this period in the same order of idea). Spain, for example, maintained an important use of slavery by the VIIIth century.

As for the context of WRE's collapse, you may want to take a look at this thread.

but I think it would be a way to veer it away from an absolute dependency on slavery at the expense of the slaves but also the plebeians and the peasantry.

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"Absolute dependency on slavery" is probably as much an historical reality than "Ancient Egyptian slavery-based economy".

Not only it discard provincial economies more based on little property or at least having it in relativly important proportions (Gaul, Egypt) that weren't exactly secondary centers of production; but it greatly exaggerate the slave proportion and social/work position on the other provinces as well.

Allow me to point you towards another text

Unlike in the slave societies of the New World, Roman slave labor never dominated market production in quantitative terms but created vital pockets of development.

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