Maybe when uneducated plebeians like you think about it but for most of us who are educated and work in this field we look into everything and a lot of things in antiquity were schemes and scams to scare people and make them follow a certain thing that's why a lot of statues would be hollow with bronze tubes so they could make noises from behind a curtain through the statue. Seriously don't say things if you're an idiot
The part about the statues of memnon where one of them made noise at dawn I read about years ago. The book that I read had the theory that there was a sort of hollow chamber inside the Statue and when the Sun would rise and shine on the statue, that change in temperature would trigger the sound, and he even talked about how they took the statue apart to see what made the noise, and they didn't find anything and when they put it back together it didn't make the noise anymore.
Greatest thing a scientist told me is that scientific innovation is a spectrum, it’s not linear. Things like robots, electricity, and scientific advancements have always existed, just not as widespread…
The greatest thing I ever heard from a scientist was that their experimental methods involved _chasing chickens up a treadmill._ Funny as that sounds, there was a reason to it. They were studying how powered flight may have evolved in non-avian dinosaurs and (eventually) birds, with chickens chosen as a proxy due to their general inability to fly. Said study found that once the substrate hits a particular angle, the chickens start flapping their wings, and this flapping motion actually aids them in climbing up steep sloping surfaces. This, in turn, has strong implications for how this flapping motion and reflex evolved in pre-avian dinosaurs, and suggests the ancestors of birds evolved this behavior to help them climb trees, with the combination of flapping motion and elongated arm feathers working together to give said dinosaurs extra lift while running up the trunk. From there, it was a relatively short leap to co-opt that reflex for gliding and flight. Said study has effectively put to bed the longstanding debate over whether avian flight started up from the ground or down from the trees.
Other than coal power, it was the standardization that revolutionized everything. Machines have existed for a long, long time but everything was hand crafted by an expert artisan and no two machine would actually be the same. So you couldn't mass produce even the measuring devices that were used to exponentially scale up the production. Now you can just go to a hardware store and buy some screws without thinking whether it would fit your machine as long as you know what size you need
@@Sambroke lol no, literally the opposite. Conspiracy theorists say ancient people couldn't build these without aliens because before white people learned how to do it in 18th century, no one knew how to build anything. Basically people go from tribalism to feudalism to "civilized" like 18th century western Europe, and people elsewhere are apparently just behind that linear curve (lol). Of course humans have been smart for a bloody LONG time. If you go back 5000 years, you'll see a global trade network where someone in Iraq has access to goods from both India on one side, and maybe even imports metal ore from all the way to Brittany (or maybe it was Cornwall, I don't remember).
On top of robots, I remember reading Hero of Alexandria some years back and being blown away by what is essentially a prototype piston engine(he calls it "The Fire Engine").
Agreed it brings up that group that were notorious for creating assassin automatons in the guy who joined them and hid the scroll of their creation in his thigh of his leg and sewed it up so that he wouldn't get caught with it
Things like this remind you these people were not advanced "for their time" nor were their creations impressive "for their time". This is just plain impressive.
@@ologhai8559 not exactly, but they have discovered prosthetics for limbs, the 3d printer of the time was a human craftsman, if you think about it, there is literally no idea that wasn't thought of or entertained as a possibility in prehistoric and ancient times. want to read about armadas in space using weapons of mass destruction? india's got you covered. want to read about aliens visiting from the stars and subjugating humans to mine precious metals they needed? check up on the Annunaki. There is nothing new, we're just entering an era of enough understanding of our surroundings to try and achieve most of the stuff ancient people dreamed about.
I dunno.... I think society's wealthiest scumbags openly discussing reducing the potency of the sun and having mosquitos infected with manmade population reduction agents to pass on to the public, having already poisoned the skies for decades, to literally fooling most people into thinking there's an impossible 'viral' pandemic to cover an economic reset/wealth transfer and teaching little boys in school to chop off their parts and become little girls and prosecuting parents for disagreeing and having the public just passively tolerate all this and comply is all quite new..... lol
4:27 An automaton animated by mercury sounds very plausible. Since it is so dense, having a waterwheel style system to drive it's mechanics, but with mercury instead of water, sounds very reasonable. A reservoir of mercury' draining from the upper portion of the automaton, would provide a little over 13 times the gravitational potential energy than the equivalent volume of water.
@@ATruckCampbell The ancients used the safer mineral-type mercury from rocks etc. It's the organic type of mercury (very recent development that isn't much use but is incredibly deadly) that is why it gets a bad name.
One aspect of humanoid automata not mentioned here is that even in ancient times there were replacement limbs. Obviously they were not powered, but still they were crafted with the idea of mimicking normal human limbs and movement. While the poor might have a peg leg at best, wealthier people may have had ornate replacement limbs with joints. The silver hand or arm of Nuada, for instance, was probably an extrapolation of what a replacement limb might be if it was made by the gods.
They really aren't, there is no connection between modern robots and these devices. These were religious gimmicks that served no useful purpose, and mechanically had no influence on later automata, as they were already forgotten for a thousand years or more.
@@TransoceanicOutreach they were most certainly not forgotten, because we remember them today it's very simple, they were simply abandoned ideas that we revisited when we had the knowhow. Same thing you can say about flying, one of the oldest stories we have is about "technology" and how we could achieve that, daedalus building mechanical wings for him and his son, even how the myth ends it's like saying "we're not there yet". There was always the need for it, we just didn't know yet how to accomplish it. Space travel, multiple dimensions, alien visitors, weapons of mass destruction, robots, cars, airplanes, and countless other stuff are topics that have been at least entertained as thoughts in ancient times. Was the "scientific" approach wrong at those times? yeah, so wrong it can get comedic but never forget my brother, our need for tech and useful gadgets is something was has passed down to us since the times we had only oral tradition and used to paint in caves.
7:15 I got that! I was playing Assassin's Creed Origins and found those statues when exploring, and they did make some noise but only at dawn or dusk. It wasn't the sound you'd hear anywhere else in the game, it was quite baffling. I'd describe it as some kind of whiring sound of the wind going between a narrow channel and thought might be the wind that goes between the statues. But the statues are quite far apart. So, idk. The dev put some kind of note that can be found near one of the feet referring to the legend.
I think we should adopt Emperor Claudius' punishments to suppliers of "Faulty" goods and send some computer boffins to entertain the crowds in the Colloseum.
Am I alone in wanting a second part of this, taking us through the chess playing and musical automata? Also, there was a thing called "The Grand Cascade" displayed at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the late 1700s and early 1800s which was a completely automated landscape in miniature with rivers, a watermill and a procession of horses and carriages traversing the scene. It was wildly popular, and people would visit the gardens several times, just to see it.
I second this and want a continuation! I'm very curious to see the elaborate pieces nobility had like in Russia and China, and the automated toys you sometimes saw in the Victorian era.
I am abashed your channel is still experiencing such small numbers. I think it is only a matter of time until you will see the hundreds of thousand of views your videos are worthy of. Keep it up.
Amazing!!! One correction though, Ctesibius was credited for the creation of the water clock. The "Clepsydra" is a much older invention (probably from Egyptian origins) which was basically just a vase with an insertion for water to flow through. It's one of the first artifacts invented by men to measure time. But it relied on being refilled and the flow of the water wasn't constant. So it would have a much stronger flow when it was full and a weak flow when it was empty because of the water pressure. Ctesibius is credited of creating a water clock capable of having a constant flow which allowed him to implement much complex functions.
Amazing Video! The ancient world is so beautiful and full of ingenuity. Seeing what could be created in times so long ago and the significance they had is awe inspiring. As we age there are not many things that fill us with a child like wonder, your videos about the ancient world serve such a great purpose to me and many others. Keep up the good work!
It really makes you wonder just how further ahead we could of been technologically if we didn't have to rediscover so much. Also makes one wonder what we lost to time. Maybe we should look a little harder at ancient myths & legends for kernels of truths hinting at what might of been
It has nothing to do with resdiscover the word is hidden in the past they had steam trains which naturally required no coal plants that grew to enormous lengths through frequency and also electric cars and scooters in the 19-20th century the list goes on.
There was no need for steam engines or anything like that in the ancient world. The reason for that is spelled Slavery. There was no economic incentive to get a complicated and expensive machine that could pump water to irrigate a field or anything like that when you had slaves. Instead of paying hard erned money for a technician to do maintence and paying for spare parts and fuel all you needed was to toss the slaves some food and nothing more. That is why we neve needed anything like this untill the industrial revolution, because of cheap or even free labour. So the knowledge was never really lost it was just not needed.
@@BolinFoto nope it was hidden because if what your saying was the case why didn’t they have it in 30s when people were working in the railway or for other purposes even until now people are still throwing coal in to power underground trains are you telling me the elite and the government just have dementia? don’t be so ridiculous they simply removed it because they can’t profit from it
@@BolinFoto it has nothing to do with people using slaves as most of these technology advances didn’t require any or little to no effort so you saying they didn’t care about it because they had slaves is a weak excuse if you look across history most technology was made to advance society for example Crystal Palace which was originally a place that would go miles down and had the best plants/flowers everything you can think of and the interesting part is these plants would grow to ridiculous lengths not through water through frequency.. nowadays if you saw a 5ft lily pad and you would say it was made through frequency people would assume it’s new technology just like the false pretence that electric cars are new when they’ve been around since the 19th century... power stations for them tok the point is society is extremely far behind and it’s like every century they hide discovery’s from that century and circulate it another 100 years and the fools look at it like they’re even going somewhere
I really hope you makes a video on later automatons too! Thank you for these videos, I'm binging them now and will be recommending them to others for sure!
How I so much wish to travel back in time and stroll down those ancient Greek and Roman avenues and witness the automatons in action and observe the people living in that period. I always thought that era seemed very futuristic some how.
It;s crazy to think how close these societies were to ours before they crumbled, makes you wonder what the world would be like right now had their empires not crumbled
This is so extraordinary. To think that the ancients had such advanced knowledge and craftsmanship. Thank you for this extremely informative video. And thank you even more for NOT using AI to obtain images snd narration. So many youtubers have fallen into the laziness habit of using AI for everything and it makes thair videos look ridiculous and just dimb.
@@VergiliosSpatulas how was that snarky lol, he’s just glad that someone preserved the knowledge that was lost elsewhere (“Mesopotamians” and “Arabs” are two different things btw)
I think it is fascinating that during a 2017 dig in Greece an excavation of a ancient Greek Inn uncovered a vibrating bed that was activated by a dropping a Tetrobol into the slot.
I like to listen to old sci fi radio programs from the 30s and 40s. It is amazing that our grandparents and great grandparents had the same concerns about AI and robots. They questioned if an AI did indeed have a soul. In fact one of my favorites is a story about two friends. One is a priest and the other is dying. The one dying confessed he was a robot and is asking last rites. And watching this, not only our grandparents, but ancestors had these same concerns and questions.
There's a version of the flying bird automata still in use today. During Easter in Florence, Italy they will send a rocket dove to ignite a stack of fireworks.
This is so interesting and fascinating. We often underestimate the knowledge, skill and craftmanship of the ancient people, sometimes even stupidly attributing their achievements to "aliens". Although we are now more advanced in terms of technology, I doubt we are that much more skilled than our ancestors.
The bronze guy in the thumbnail is of course Talos, the titan, from the film "Jason and the Argonauts". It's curious how that guy has stayed in popular conscious for 60 years now. He certainly made a deep impression on me when I was a kid.
There is a warrior called 'Barbarik' in Mahabharata whom is said to be a robot (in our words) because he had a skull of metal and a brain indistinguishable from ours. It's written in hindu scriptures that he was not from our world. His head is in rajashthan (India) and we worship him in the name of Kathushyam. He was so powerful that it is said he could defeat everyone in Mahabharata in couple of seconds alone
I might be wrong but I think the snail in Athens was kind of supposed to be a insult as it had recently been conqerd. Their is a book about this which I found really interesting but don't remember the name. I kind of remember it describing how Pandora from the famous legend was made by the gods and programed in a similar way to how we might today describe a robot. Super interesting video 👍
Well theres a thing called Bagdhad Battery. Ancient battery thats thousands of years old and also Egyptian glyphs that show lamps with wires and transformers. Makes you wonder if they really had electricity thousands of years ago...
It's interesting how much of what we know about ancient robotics were mostly used for entertainment. I suspect we have tech today that's mostly used for entertainment but the majority of it's value is in other things. I think the Hoberman sphere and video games are a good 21st century example
This is awesome! I knew there was more too it! I never realized how much evidence was gathered about automata! I want to know more now! Any books about the topic that also don't leave out the mechanical details would be desirable.
Also in Ancient India there is mention of a 5000 year old empire using automated boars as target practice for princes. These machines are known as yantras.
@@semi-useful5178 I found an article which has a few paragraphs on them. First I ever heard of this, it is fascinating. It is on a website called quartz and was the 3rd search result when I looked up "ancient robot bulls India yantra." I would link it but I am not sure if that is acceptable.
@@semi-useful5178 If you search that term with boars instead of bulls (my mistake) a bunch of stuff pops up including what looks like some scientific research and /or papers on the subject.
Wasn't Kumbhkaran said to be a robot? And the vehicle on which Raavan used to travel & abducted seeta with the help of it? Idk I remember my dad saying it could be depicted as some kinda ancient helicopter
Any book recommendations related to ancient automata? I have visited the Ancien Greek Technology Museum in Athens and since then, have been really hooked to the subject
You know, its interesting how its gone from godly legend to a project in a lab. Makes me think if you told someone from Antiquity about the living standards and technology of today, they'd mistake you for living as a god. Think about it, nowadays we can get cheap food and wine in abundance and air conditioning, meanwhile someone from this era would be in absolute awe. I love history, too bad I won't be around to see how we progress in the next 1000 years... Also knowing too well about the fate of the library of Alexandria still hurts to know
If you watch that animated film 'The Nightingale,' Its also about that a mechanical bird in the shape of a nightingale animal bird, It made music, And the king even became addicted to it - It was just ONE story passed-down about automata from back then which only supports this video's history it covers..!
Show this to Sam Worthington & his going to have a stroke. For context reasons why the automaton owl had little role on 2 Clash of Titan films is because he threatened that he will not accept the Perceus role if they give more role to the owl. As he thought robots in Greek mythology are ridiculous. Hence why it was relegated to a cameo.
All this talk of men and gods etc causing images (statues) to speak. Talking machinary and automation of the ancient world, brings this to mind. The False Prophet in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. In a prophecy/future prediction causes something similar to occur. Revelation 13:14-15 "14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Very interesting. I've learned alot from this video.
You're stretching a bit with the golden maidens. They are part of the poetic vision of the epic text, and not a reference to robots or something like that.
Very interesting topic. An unfortunate realization too is that the emperor who sent manufacturers to fight in the arena when the automata malfunctioned may have played a key part in conditioning many future generations to obsess over perfectionism or give up on their dreams far too early.
I want to find the source for that because, of basically all the emperors except Marcus Aurelius and maybe Antoninus Pius, Claudius (from all I've learned of him) is probably the third LEAST LIKELY emperor to have sentenced someone for that, and when it comes to him knowingly destroying knowledge and technology he is literally the least likely to have done it. Claudius literally wrote volumes of history books because a speaking disability made him the black sheep of the family so Augustus and tiberius barred him from a political career, so he pursued knowledge instead until he was thrust into power. Not to mention that he was renowned for both clemency and fair judgment. Basically i would believe this about the majority of emperors, but very specifically NOT CLAUDIUS. I wish i could see that source though, because there were several emperors named Claudius, and many more who had the name Claudius as part of their full name. Claudius gothicus would have probably done something like that (if he hadn't spent his whole reign fighting off goths) and Gaius Claudius Nero (that Nero) would leave me shocked if he didn't kill the automaton makers. Just go read some of the historical analysis of Claudius and see if you come away with the impression that killing inventors in the fighting pits (the Colosseum wasn't even built yet) was at all in line with his apparent character.
Perhaps. But it was definitely used to create rotational energy as described in ancient Hindu epics. The Nazis also had a mercury-like substance (Xerum 525) that they used to power The Bell (an experimental "anti-gravity" or teleportation device). Large amounts of mercury are also found under certain Chinese and Mexican pyramids.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
When you think about antiquity, robots never come to your mind. Great topic and a great video
Actually, that's one of the first things to come to my mind.
It's one of those topics, ancient tinkerers, that are fascinating.
It’s because most people are too busy looking at the fake history they feed the masses.
THen you didn't watch Aladdin, it has the villain named Mechanicles.
Maybe when uneducated plebeians like you think about it but for most of us who are educated and work in this field we look into everything and a lot of things in antiquity were schemes and scams to scare people and make them follow a certain thing that's why a lot of statues would be hollow with bronze tubes so they could make noises from behind a curtain through the statue. Seriously don't say things if you're an idiot
Ptolemy: "Pour me some wine."
Automaton: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Ptolemy."
Was Ptolemy driving that evening...?
Forget the space this is just the odyssey
100AD - An Odyssey
The part about the statues of memnon where one of them made noise at dawn I read about years ago. The book that I read had the theory that there was a sort of hollow chamber inside the Statue and when the Sun would rise and shine on the statue, that change in temperature would trigger the sound, and he even talked about how they took the statue apart to see what made the noise, and they didn't find anything and when they put it back together it didn't make the noise anymore.
When steam tables run out of they make a very interesting pinging/tink sound when the metal expands. Science is tight!
They killed the statue :(
No, the turned the escalator into stairs.
It's like Ork technology
So the theory is incorrect?
Greatest thing a scientist told me is that scientific innovation is a spectrum, it’s not linear. Things like robots, electricity, and scientific advancements have always existed, just not as widespread…
The greatest thing I ever heard from a scientist was that their experimental methods involved _chasing chickens up a treadmill._
Funny as that sounds, there was a reason to it. They were studying how powered flight may have evolved in non-avian dinosaurs and (eventually) birds, with chickens chosen as a proxy due to their general inability to fly. Said study found that once the substrate hits a particular angle, the chickens start flapping their wings, and this flapping motion actually aids them in climbing up steep sloping surfaces. This, in turn, has strong implications for how this flapping motion and reflex evolved in pre-avian dinosaurs, and suggests the ancestors of birds evolved this behavior to help them climb trees, with the combination of flapping motion and elongated arm feathers working together to give said dinosaurs extra lift while running up the trunk. From there, it was a relatively short leap to co-opt that reflex for gliding and flight. Said study has effectively put to bed the longstanding debate over whether avian flight started up from the ground or down from the trees.
Other than coal power, it was the standardization that revolutionized everything. Machines have existed for a long, long time but everything was hand crafted by an expert artisan and no two machine would actually be the same. So you couldn't mass produce even the measuring devices that were used to exponentially scale up the production. Now you can just go to a hardware store and buy some screws without thinking whether it would fit your machine as long as you know what size you need
Is this some ancient aliens nonsense
@@Sambroke lol no, literally the opposite. Conspiracy theorists say ancient people couldn't build these without aliens because before white people learned how to do it in 18th century, no one knew how to build anything. Basically people go from tribalism to feudalism to "civilized" like 18th century western Europe, and people elsewhere are apparently just behind that linear curve (lol). Of course humans have been smart for a bloody LONG time. If you go back 5000 years, you'll see a global trade network where someone in Iraq has access to goods from both India on one side, and maybe even imports metal ore from all the way to Brittany (or maybe it was Cornwall, I don't remember).
@@Sambroke Are you mentally handicapped?
On top of robots, I remember reading Hero of Alexandria some years back and being blown away by what is essentially a prototype piston engine(he calls it "The Fire Engine").
The name is Heron.
@@hariszark7396 the name Jared
@@mymyrrah what?
God foresaw the consequences of the industrial revolution and decided to stop that abomination before it was too late
He failed the second time though
"The sorceress Media hypnotise Talos and made him pull out the nail" - ancient hacker made the robot sabotage his own fuel system.
I've heard a version where Talos thinks that he is human, she just points out the nail, which Talos proptly pulled out.
@@emjakos3548 Might be, very interesting all together.
Agreed it brings up that group that were notorious for creating assassin automatons in the guy who joined them and hid the scroll of their creation in his thigh of his leg and sewed it up so that he wouldn't get caught with it
Sounds legit
Things like this remind you these people were not advanced "for their time" nor were their creations impressive "for their time". This is just plain impressive.
“There is nothing new under the sun”
I truly believe that.
yeah, the best part is when archeologist discovered 3D printer in Egypt 😂
@@ologhai8559 not exactly, but they have discovered prosthetics for limbs, the 3d printer of the time was a human craftsman, if you think about it, there is literally no idea that wasn't thought of or entertained as a possibility in prehistoric and ancient times. want to read about armadas in space using weapons of mass destruction? india's got you covered. want to read about aliens visiting from the stars and subjugating humans to mine precious metals they needed? check up on the Annunaki. There is nothing new, we're just entering an era of enough understanding of our surroundings to try and achieve most of the stuff ancient people dreamed about.
Yup. ❤
I dunno.... I think society's wealthiest scumbags openly discussing reducing the potency of the sun and having mosquitos infected with manmade population reduction agents to pass on to the public, having already poisoned the skies for decades, to literally fooling most people into thinking there's an impossible 'viral' pandemic to cover an economic reset/wealth transfer and teaching little boys in school to chop off their parts and become little girls and prosecuting parents for disagreeing and having the public just passively tolerate all this and comply is all quite new..... lol
4:27 An automaton animated by mercury sounds very plausible. Since it is so dense, having a waterwheel style system to drive it's mechanics, but with mercury instead of water, sounds very reasonable. A reservoir of mercury' draining from the upper portion of the automaton, would provide a little over 13 times the gravitational potential energy than the equivalent volume of water.
Thanks!
Would have been interesting had history been some details towards other places to have some automatons fighting against other armies in ancient Greece
I wonder if very salty water would have a similar less effective effect, while being safer and easier?
@@ATruckCampbell The ancients used the safer mineral-type mercury from rocks etc. It's the organic type of mercury (very recent development that isn't much use but is incredibly deadly) that is why it gets a bad name.
One aspect of humanoid automata not mentioned here is that even in ancient times there were replacement limbs. Obviously they were not powered, but still they were crafted with the idea of mimicking normal human limbs and movement. While the poor might have a peg leg at best, wealthier people may have had ornate replacement limbs with joints. The silver hand or arm of Nuada, for instance, was probably an extrapolation of what a replacement limb might be if it was made by the gods.
A certain Gotz comes to mind with his Iron Hand.
Thank you
@@semi-useful5178the real life guts whom Miura claimed did not knew when writing berserk
@@a.r.h9919
Indeed
Love this perspective!
These mechanical creations are the backbones of our robots today is so cool seeing how technology was born
They really aren't, there is no connection between modern robots and these devices. These were religious gimmicks that served no useful purpose, and mechanically had no influence on later automata, as they were already forgotten for a thousand years or more.
@@TransoceanicOutreach true
@@TransoceanicOutreach If it were to serve real purpose, what would happen today?
@@TransoceanicOutreach you have no idea what you're talking about
@@TransoceanicOutreach they were most certainly not forgotten, because we remember them today it's very simple, they were simply abandoned ideas that we revisited when we had the knowhow.
Same thing you can say about flying, one of the oldest stories we have is about "technology" and how we could achieve that, daedalus building mechanical wings for him and his son, even how the myth ends it's like saying "we're not there yet".
There was always the need for it, we just didn't know yet how to accomplish it. Space travel, multiple dimensions, alien visitors, weapons of mass destruction, robots, cars, airplanes, and countless other stuff are topics that have been at least entertained as thoughts in ancient times.
Was the "scientific" approach wrong at those times? yeah, so wrong it can get comedic but never forget my brother, our need for tech and useful gadgets is something was has passed down to us since the times we had only oral tradition and used to paint in caves.
7:15 I got that! I was playing Assassin's Creed Origins and found those statues when exploring, and they did make some noise but only at dawn or dusk. It wasn't the sound you'd hear anywhere else in the game, it was quite baffling. I'd describe it as some kind of whiring sound of the wind going between a narrow channel and thought might be the wind that goes between the statues. But the statues are quite far apart. So, idk. The dev put some kind of note that can be found near one of the feet referring to the legend.
Cool, where was that..? I haven't run into it yet in the game...
I think we should adopt Emperor Claudius' punishments to suppliers of "Faulty" goods and send some computer boffins to entertain the crowds in the Colloseum.
Am I alone in wanting a second part of this, taking us through the chess playing and musical automata? Also, there was a thing called "The Grand Cascade" displayed at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the late 1700s and early 1800s which was a completely automated landscape in miniature with rivers, a watermill and a procession of horses and carriages traversing the scene. It was wildly popular, and people would visit the gardens several times, just to see it.
I second this and want a continuation! I'm very curious to see the elaborate pieces nobility had like in Russia and China, and the automated toys you sometimes saw in the Victorian era.
Sounds like the Miniaturwunderland today
I thought this too and really hope he makes a video on these later automatons!
I am abashed your channel is still experiencing such small numbers. I think it is only a matter of time until you will see the hundreds of thousand of views your videos are worthy of. Keep it up.
Amazing!!! One correction though, Ctesibius was credited for the creation of the water clock. The "Clepsydra" is a much older invention (probably from Egyptian origins) which was basically just a vase with an insertion for water to flow through. It's one of the first artifacts invented by men to measure time. But it relied on being refilled and the flow of the water wasn't constant. So it would have a much stronger flow when it was full and a weak flow when it was empty because of the water pressure. Ctesibius is credited of creating a water clock capable of having a constant flow which allowed him to implement much complex functions.
This documentary deserves more views.
Amazing Video! The ancient world is so beautiful and full of ingenuity. Seeing what could be created in times so long ago and the significance they had is awe inspiring. As we age there are not many things that fill us with a child like wonder, your videos about the ancient world serve such a great purpose to me and many others. Keep up the good work!
To be honest I never knew that ancient robots (automatons) existed like this. I find this stuff so fascinating
Dwemer technology is truly remarkable.
Only the real will get this.
@@tekanmecha2698 consider yourself real, frendo
I listened to 'secunda' again from the Skyrim soundtrack...pure nostalgia I highly recommend you check out the song again
Ngl those dwemer centurions scared me the first time I encountered them
It really makes you wonder just how further ahead we could of been technologically if we didn't have to rediscover so much. Also makes one wonder what we lost to time.
Maybe we should look a little harder at ancient myths & legends for kernels of truths hinting at what might of been
It has nothing to do with resdiscover the word is hidden in the past they had steam trains which naturally required no coal plants that grew to enormous lengths through frequency and also electric cars and scooters in the 19-20th century the list goes on.
There was no need for steam engines or anything like that in the ancient world.
The reason for that is spelled Slavery.
There was no economic incentive to get a complicated and expensive machine that could pump water to irrigate a field or anything like that when you had slaves.
Instead of paying hard erned money for a technician to do maintence and paying for spare parts and fuel all you needed was to toss the slaves some food and nothing more.
That is why we neve needed anything like this untill the industrial revolution, because of cheap or even free labour.
So the knowledge was never really lost it was just not needed.
@@BolinFoto nope it was hidden because if what your saying was the case why didn’t they have it in 30s when people were working in the railway or for other purposes even until now people are still throwing coal in to power underground trains are you telling me the elite and the government just have dementia? don’t be so ridiculous they simply removed it because they can’t profit from it
@@BolinFoto and I’m talking about the 19th-20th century..
@@BolinFoto it has nothing to do with people using slaves as most of these technology advances didn’t require any or little to no effort so you saying they didn’t care about it because they had slaves is a weak excuse if you look across history most technology was made to advance society for example Crystal Palace which was originally a place that would go miles down and had the best plants/flowers everything you can think of and the interesting part is these plants would grow to ridiculous lengths not through water through frequency.. nowadays if you saw a 5ft lily pad and you would say it was made through frequency people would assume it’s new technology just like the false pretence that electric cars are new when they’ve been around since the 19th century... power stations for them tok the point is society is extremely far behind and it’s like every century they hide discovery’s from that century and circulate it another 100 years and the fools look at it like they’re even going somewhere
wow, this topic would never come to my mind. Great video as always!
I really hope you makes a video on later automatons too! Thank you for these videos, I'm binging them now and will be recommending them to others for sure!
How I so much wish to travel back in time and stroll down those ancient Greek and Roman avenues and witness the automatons in action and observe the people living in that period. I always thought that era seemed very futuristic some how.
It;s crazy to think how close these societies were to ours before they crumbled, makes you wonder what the world would be like right now had their empires not crumbled
Great video! I didn't know how far back in time automaton-like devices actually go. The ingenuity of the ancients never ceases to amaze me.
If they could have automated rocks, rock smashing, brick making assembly lines...they surely would have. 🙂
Byzantine and Sassanid emperors have been recorded exchanging automatas as gifts to each other.
This is so extraordinary. To think that the ancients had such advanced knowledge and craftsmanship. Thank you for this extremely informative video.
And thank you even more for NOT using AI to obtain images snd narration. So many youtubers have fallen into the laziness habit of using AI for everything and it makes thair videos look ridiculous and just dimb.
last time I was this early, it was still antiquity
*I LIKE* how you broke your character in the middle and all of a sudden started talking from the first perspective, with “I”.
Another reason to love greek history even more
Glad Arabs preserved Classical tech for future generations.
@@hackman669 Mesopotemians*
Also you needn't have a snarky attitude to appreciate the evolution of technology, that's just cringe.
@@VergiliosSpatulas how was that snarky lol, he’s just glad that someone preserved the knowledge that was lost elsewhere (“Mesopotamians” and “Arabs” are two different things btw)
Love for Greece 🇬🇷
I have been talking about automatons and their similarities to modern-day robots. Uncanny Valley exists for a reason. It's engrained in our DNA.
I really admire the Ancient Greeks, they had steam engines and robots. This is soooo cool. Imagine if somehow they had invented photography.
Such a fascinating topic!
I think it is fascinating that during a 2017 dig in Greece
an excavation of a ancient Greek Inn uncovered a vibrating bed
that was activated by a dropping a Tetrobol into the slot.
Great video and fascinating information
I like to listen to old sci fi radio programs from the 30s and 40s. It is amazing that our grandparents and great grandparents had the same concerns about AI and robots. They questioned if an AI did indeed have a soul. In fact one of my favorites is a story about two friends. One is a priest and the other is dying. The one dying confessed he was a robot and is asking last rites. And watching this, not only our grandparents, but ancestors had these same concerns and questions.
There's a version of the flying bird automata still in use today. During Easter in Florence, Italy they will send a rocket dove to ignite a stack of fireworks.
Cannons, Robots and Computers, the ancient Greeks were _way_ ahead of the curve
Fascinating. Thank you for your effort.
This is so interesting and fascinating. We often underestimate the knowledge, skill and craftmanship of the ancient people, sometimes even stupidly attributing their achievements to "aliens". Although we are now more advanced in terms of technology, I doubt we are that much more skilled than our ancestors.
The bronze guy in the thumbnail is of course Talos, the titan, from the film "Jason and the Argonauts". It's curious how that guy has stayed in popular conscious for 60 years now. He certainly made a deep impression on me when I was a kid.
There is a warrior called 'Barbarik' in Mahabharata whom is said to be a robot (in our words) because he had a skull of metal and a brain indistinguishable from ours. It's written in hindu scriptures that he was not from our world. His head is in rajashthan (India) and we worship him in the name of Kathushyam. He was so powerful that it is said he could defeat everyone in Mahabharata in couple of seconds alone
In my pov , He might be a Drone telecasting the Mahabharata war and Sanjay doing commentary about the events in Hastinapur..
I always look forward to your videos. Keep up the amazing work!
I might be wrong but I think the snail in Athens was kind of supposed to be a insult as it had recently been conqerd. Their is a book about this which I found really interesting but don't remember the name. I kind of remember it describing how Pandora from the famous legend was made by the gods and programed in a similar way to how we might today describe a robot. Super interesting video 👍
This was such an incredible video. Makes the mind wonder what other marvels they don't yet know of.
Well theres a thing called Bagdhad Battery. Ancient battery thats thousands of years old and also Egyptian glyphs that show lamps with wires and transformers. Makes you wonder if they really had electricity thousands of years ago...
This channel is fantastic.
What an amazing channel! Hard not to binge watch…
It's interesting how much of what we know about ancient robotics were mostly used for entertainment.
I suspect we have tech today that's mostly used for entertainment but the majority of it's value is in other things.
I think the Hoberman sphere and video games are a good 21st century example
rewatched several times. best short documentary on automata out there
Thanks - seeing the true colors and learning about that process … very informative … thank you for the education and enjoyment :)
Thanks a lot for the video ! And thank you again for posting all the links 🙂
19:52 That mood! Can we still do that with engineers/programmers today? no?
The Rennaissance automata are still in existence and would make a good followup.
there is a funny and interesting similarity between ancient agyptian tempels and animatronics in theme parks!
There should be a museum exhibition for the recreation of all automata mentioned in this video
at 11:51 that is not Philo of Byzantium rather that is the speculative portrait of Philo of Alexandria
Can you tell me what the X insignia is for on his helmet? Ty!
So, in short, ancient automata were powered by water, fire and pirates.
@Zef no, water fire and arrrr.
This is awesome! I knew there was more too it! I never realized how much evidence was gathered about automata! I want to know more now! Any books about the topic that also don't leave out the mechanical details would be desirable.
Also in Ancient India there is mention of a 5000 year old empire using automated boars as target practice for princes. These machines are known as yantras.
Where can I read more about them?
I don't see anything online when looking up yantras. How else can I read about them?
@@semi-useful5178 I found an article which has a few paragraphs on them. First I ever heard of this, it is fascinating. It is on a website called quartz and was the 3rd search result when I looked up "ancient robot bulls India yantra."
I would link it but I am not sure if that is acceptable.
@@semi-useful5178 If you search that term with boars instead of bulls (my mistake) a bunch of stuff pops up including what looks like some scientific research and /or papers on the subject.
Wasn't Kumbhkaran said to be a robot? And the vehicle on which Raavan used to travel & abducted seeta with the help of it? Idk I remember my dad saying it could be depicted as some kinda ancient helicopter
native people of america also created models of animals that mimicked their sounds when you fill them with water and tilt them back and forth
Any book recommendations related to ancient automata? I have visited the Ancien Greek Technology Museum in Athens and since then, have been really hooked to the subject
You know, its interesting how its gone from godly legend to a project in a lab. Makes me think if you told someone from Antiquity about the living standards and technology of today, they'd mistake you for living as a god. Think about it, nowadays we can get cheap food and wine in abundance and air conditioning, meanwhile someone from this era would be in absolute awe.
I love history, too bad I won't be around to see how we progress in the next 1000 years... Also knowing too well about the fate of the library of Alexandria still hurts to know
no they wouldn't they probably would see us a pathetic species
@@el_equidistante if they saw twitter
Whenever I see a video like this, my brain immediately makes me think about Mazinger Z. Not sure if it’s a good thing at this stage
Awesome, a fellow super robot fan!
If you watch that animated film 'The Nightingale,' Its also about that a mechanical bird in the shape of a nightingale animal bird, It made music, And the king even became addicted to it - It was just ONE story passed-down about automata from back then which only supports this video's history it covers..!
The Egyptians had a steam powered set of sliding doors that would 'magically' open after enough incantations.
Where is the map at 8:32 from? Do you have a link please? Thanks in advance.
Here I was mourning the downfall of a certain historical RUclipsr, and this video shows up on my recommended this morning. Great content ❤
Very fascinating topic and great video as always. I love your content! ❤️
Show this to Sam Worthington & his going to have a stroke. For context reasons why the automaton owl had little role on 2 Clash of Titan films is because he threatened that he will not accept the Perceus role if they give more role to the owl. As he thought robots in Greek mythology are ridiculous. Hence why it was relegated to a cameo.
Bubo the owl.
And you have got tick tock from the return to oz.
The One Piece manga brought me here! Oda is amazing for referencing something like this into his story !
Absolutely amazing 😊
Incredible content!
All this talk of men and gods etc causing images (statues) to speak. Talking machinary and automation of the ancient world, brings this to mind. The False Prophet in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. In a prophecy/future prediction causes something similar to occur.
Revelation 13:14-15
"14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”
Very interesting. I've learned alot from this video.
Ive never seen Egyptian drawings of people from the front before! Is this not rare? 6:07
I knew this was gonna be a good video when you start the first chapter of the video w/ Aetas Romana
Thank you!
You're stretching a bit with the golden maidens. They are part of the poetic vision of the epic text, and not a reference to robots or something like that.
Fantastically well done I love these sort of strange marginalized parts of history gettting content
really good video and presentation about a topic that is particularly interesting to me. thank you for the content
If I ever start a steampunk-cosplay thrash metal band, I’m calling it Proto-Robots of Antiquity
One of those ‘automata’ played with me for chess…
And beat you.
Imagine if the Byzantines had basically an army of T-600s
Thanks for this video
This video is awesome 👌
The museum of Kotsanas in Athens is verry interesting for visiting regarding this topic 👍
Very interesting topic. An unfortunate realization too is that the emperor who sent manufacturers to fight in the arena when the automata malfunctioned may have played a key part in conditioning many future generations to obsess over perfectionism or give up on their dreams far too early.
I want to find the source for that because, of basically all the emperors except Marcus Aurelius and maybe Antoninus Pius, Claudius (from all I've learned of him) is probably the third LEAST LIKELY emperor to have sentenced someone for that, and when it comes to him knowingly destroying knowledge and technology he is literally the least likely to have done it. Claudius literally wrote volumes of history books because a speaking disability made him the black sheep of the family so Augustus and tiberius barred him from a political career, so he pursued knowledge instead until he was thrust into power. Not to mention that he was renowned for both clemency and fair judgment. Basically i would believe this about the majority of emperors, but very specifically NOT CLAUDIUS. I wish i could see that source though, because there were several emperors named Claudius, and many more who had the name Claudius as part of their full name. Claudius gothicus would have probably done something like that (if he hadn't spent his whole reign fighting off goths) and Gaius Claudius Nero (that Nero) would leave me shocked if he didn't kill the automaton makers. Just go read some of the historical analysis of Claudius and see if you come away with the impression that killing inventors in the fighting pits (the Colosseum wasn't even built yet) was at all in line with his apparent character.
16:18 out of context is wild "water springs out of his holy staff"
A very humbling theme to think about.
Simply fascinating * Thank you :)
What was the name of the film in the intro, where the pentagram was on the wall behind the robot?
Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1929). Great movie.
Mercury… maybe it was used as some kind of working fluid in some kind of hydraulics using magnetism?
Perhaps. But it was definitely used to create rotational energy as described in ancient Hindu epics. The Nazis also had a mercury-like substance (Xerum 525) that they used to power The Bell (an experimental "anti-gravity" or teleportation device). Large amounts of mercury are also found under certain Chinese and Mexican pyramids.
it's denser than water, so if your using water wheel you get more "force" from the mercury than you would the same amount of water
@@necropolistc6357 i mean using the properties of mercury (being that it can be affected by magnets) to use some kind of electric-pneumatics
4:39 plz tell me the name of this painting plz tell me thank you 🤗😄
Sure! That's "Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan", painted by Diego Velázquez in 1630. The statue is "Penelope" by Franklin Simmons, made in 1873.
@@kingsandthings thank you soo much love your vids 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🥰🥰🥰
Thanks for this
The Talos Principle amirite
I jus found your channel, nice
TES3 Morrowind has the Akulakhan 💪😎
I would've loved it if you also focused on Indian history here since we too have various mentions of such proto-robots
good content