6 Advanced Ancient Inventions Beyond Modern Understanding

Great read. Thanks. Loved reading about the Damascus steel and the alchemy that they knew about.
 
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I think the "Mythbusters" also tried to replicate "Greek fire." Have never read the original Greek fire could only be extinguished with vinegar, urine, and sand. Sand I get, that basically smothers the flame. Vinegar is acidic, but urine can be either acid or alkaline. I think text book average urine has a pH roughly that of water.
 
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I think the "Mythbusters" also tried to replicate "Greek fire." Have never read the original Greek fire could only be extinguished with vinegar, urine, and sand. Sand I get, that basically smothers the flame. Vinegar is acidic, but urine can be either acid or alkaline. I think text book average urine has a pH roughly that of water.
It's funny because if you boil urine the crystals that form (KNO3) is a component in gunpowder and a few other explosives...
 
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Great read. Thanks. Loved reading about the Damascus steel and the alchemy that they knew about.
It used to be called wootz steel. There's a few companies that have recreated it to the best of their knowledge and it's full of carbides making the steel super hard but doesnt really resemble laminated steels today.
 
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It's funny because if you boil urine the crystals that form (KNO3) is a component in gunpowder and a few other explosives...

Yeah, I'm very familiar with BKNO3, it's a common military grade pyrotechnic ignitor.
 
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Oh WOW I loved this article!! Flexible glass!!!
Plastic?
I wouldn't be surprised. There was a steady accumulation of knowledge for a thousand years or more and then in the third century civilisation nearly ended in Europe, North Africa and the near east due to natural disasters, war and economic collapse. Books couldn't be recopied due to lack of funds and later rising religious extremism saw book burning and the murder of academics. By the dark ages, barely anybody could read.
The monks who copied what was left? They were mostly illiterate! Just copying meaningless symbols with perhaps an abbot who could read in at least one language overseeing. That's why there are so many drawings and decorations, really. They were bored!

A thousand years of advancement swept away and everything starting again from savagery. The Romans had central heating, advanced roads, they knew the world was round and about dinosaurs. Ancient engineering is the stuff of legend. They had planetariums of a sort via stage magic and sci-fi novels about intergalactic wars.
Plastic wouldn't surprise me at all.
 
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