If an ancient civilization had electronic/digital tech?

would we be able to identify it as being so today, 10000 years later or whatever? nobody has found a computer chip from 15000 BC (that I know of), but does that mean none were made?

Ancient Egyptians had batteries. What they used it for, i have no idea.

But, they knew about the flow of electricity, and had items in which it could be used.

reply to post by gandhi


www.badarchaeology.net...
Actually Babylon had batteries. Check this cool link out.

The Baghdad batteries are not batteries at all, but urns/jars to store and protects important scrolls.

I believe we could recognize them for what they are. didn't Intel rip off ancient designs they found...somewhere? they probably had similar names too for their chips...

As Harte says (I don't want to be yelled at again so I must give credit where credit is due )

Absence of evidence is not only evidence of absence, it is the ONLY evidence of absence!

coredrill, those things do give out a voltage of about 1.5 volts when filled with grape or orange/lemon juice. I am not saying they made them for that reason, just that they could be used as such too. One of the reconstructions was used by a German archaeologist who worked on them to gold plate a small statuette.

If there was no battery, how did they use their lamps?





[edit on 8-6-2010 by cushycrux]

Valid question, if we are SURE these are indeed lamps!

Are we?

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Carl Sagan
US astronomer & popularizer of astronomy (1934 - 1996)

Look, just my take here, but I tend to believe that ET beings gave electronics and digital devices and circuits way back when the Egyptians were in their First dynasty, and ancient Sumer was the cradle of modern civilization. It is common knowledge among some that the Transistor was alien tech. Is it such a stretch to take this into account? I don't think so.
Modern man could not build the monoliths that are all over the world, and much evidence has come forth that the ancients were a whole lot more knowledgeable that we of today are.

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
would we be able to identify it as being so today, 10000 years later or whatever? nobody has found a computer chip from 15000 BC (that I know of), but does that mean none were made?

If it was just a chip of something lying around that fell out of the sky, it might be hard to find. However, that's just the point. Digital technology just didn't appear out of nowhere. It developed within a technological context. And there would be all kinds of other relatively high-tech things associated with it (like plastics, glasses, machined parts, batteries, wires, power generating equipment, etc.) that we would probably find sooner than a chip, itself. What would we find the most of? Maybe little bits of fine, plastic-coated copper wire. Electronic trash. But nobody's even found any of that, so it's probably unlikely that there were any computer chips.

Originally posted by TheIrvy
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Carl Sagan
US astronomer & popularizer of astronomy (1934 - 1996)

Yeah, but neither is it evidence of presence. That's why positive proof is so important when you're dealing with the question of whether or not something existed (or exists).

Originally posted by coredrill
The Baghdad batteries are not batteries at all, but urns/jars to store and protects important scrolls.

Exactly. The scrolls were wrapped around an iron rod in the center, then a copper sheath was wrapped around the scroll. Then the thing was shoved in a clay pot and sealed with bitumen. Unfortunately, that preservation technique didn't always work, and the scrolls still disintegrated, leaving the metal parts, which coincidentally happen to generate a small bit of electricity when in acid.

Like when you accidentally bite into tin foil with your fillings. Nobody is powering their iPods with electricity generated that way. It's just a happenstance mixture of materials.

reply to post by cushycrux


I suggest you read properly about The Dendera Reliefs

In the last room, one sees, carefully carved on the Southern wall, a falcon with detailed feathers, preceded by a snake emerging from a lotus blossom within a boat. Whereas the whole of the temple is constructed of sandstone, to facilitate a relief of fine quality there was placed in the wall, at the level of the figures, a block of limestone suitable for very detailed work, and of this the artist took full and perfect advantage. These reliefs are cosmological representations. The snake that comes out of the lotus is equated with the shining deity Harsamtawy as he appears for the first time out of the primordial sea. He is again represented near the bottom of the crypt in the form of two snakes also coming forth, but this time wrapped in lotuses like protective envelopes. Sometimes those that were on the Mesktet-barque collaborated with Horus; other times the Mandjet-barque with its crew helped to reveal the god: Djed raises his body, a supreme manner of worship, attendant of the god's prestigious ka. The statuettes appear to have been used for the New Year celebration and the festival of Harsamtawy. It is likely that on these solemn occasions these objects were transported to the vault [i.e. the room above the crypt]. [pp. 60-61; my own translation.]

Source

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
would we be able to identify it as being so today, 10000 years later or whatever? nobody has found a computer chip from 15000 BC (that I know of), but does that mean none were made?

Yes. We could identify advanced technology.

For one thing, you don't wake up in your cave one morning and decide to invent the Ipod (well, you might, but there are some serious problems with this.) In order to have Ipods, you have to have chips. In order to make those, you have to have clean rooms and industrialization. That leaves traces. In order to have industrialization, you need to have metal and ceramic technology (bricks, metal devices, wires) as well as standardization (nothing varies in composition or effects by more than 5%.) You also need to be able to make climate controlled buildings (architecture, power, material science.) You have to have accurate instructions, which means you write them down and transmit them through schools. You need good math (particularly for computer engineering and logic circuits), which means books and schools on math and material science. You have to be able to efficiently calculate things, which means a fairly simple system of numbering (just try writing out "pi" in decimal form using Roman numerals and you'll rather quickly see where that problem comes in.) You need scales that measure minute amounts of things.

You need good food production to support the workers and the researchers.

You need a society that supports a drive for advancement.

You need a society that trades to many other places (and soon you'll see those societies buying your Ipods and Izods and Wrangler jeans.)

...and so on and so forth.

Originally posted by Maegnas
Valid question, if we are SURE these are indeed lamps!

Are we?

Yea because everytime I see that picture I myself question a lamp or test tube with a snake in it?????

Byrd owns the thread once again!!!

Right on, girl!

Originally posted by autowrench
Look, just my take here, but I tend to believe that ET beings gave electronics and digital devices and circuits way back when the Egyptians were in their First dynasty, and ancient Sumer was the cradle of modern civilization. It is common knowledge among some that the Transistor was alien tech. Is it such a stretch to take this into account? I don't think so.
Modern man could not build the monoliths that are all over the world, and much evidence has come forth that the ancients were a whole lot more knowledgeable that we of today are.

I am pretty sure it's common knowledge that transistors were invented here on planet earth by people just like you and i.

modern man can build monoliths, but why build them when they have absolutely no use? it's not that we lack the know-how; it's just the money can be better used elsewhere.

reply to post by Donnie Darko

understand we as humans white and non white are hu-men we are men that are copied from an original by a greater group of people who are our mastors these group of people have think thanks that decide simple easy ways for us dumb slaves franken people. to mindlessly work and put together the things they build with their mind since they use something we cant called a pineal gland since we are copies we dont have access to this feature. thats why its scary to be broke the most we can do as these versions of human is sing, fight, swim, acrobats, body strenghtning, all these features were made dominant in us so we'd could be better slaves. now that you know this humans dont make technology if we did we wouldnt sit around being stuck on this planet in little mazes called cities using money to buy things bcuz we cant do for ourselves bcuz we are slaves so now that you know are mastors make technology 'aliens make technology humans dont' you can better discover the origin of this super virtual creation

No I don't think we would recognise it. Symbolism plays a key role in technology, in the same way a child must recognise the connection between the symbol of a letter and the concept it subscribes to, we would need to understand the symbolism of their systems. A man unfamiliar with the symbols of a keyboard would take a very long time to write anything of meaning.