/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18854727]

just found out the greeks invented science fiction, what the fuck

[Anonymous No.18854774]

Depends on how broadly you want to consider science fiction. If it's the use of techne to control nature and do battle with the gods, then science fiction is as old as myth. But obviously modern science fiction differentiates itself in so many ways that it becomes its own genre.

[Anonymous No.18854791]

You know how every fantasy piece of media has some advanced ancient acropolis that’s far more technologically sophisticated than the medieval setting of the rest of the world? Well it’s based on an ancient archetype (Atlantis) which was real. The ancients were surprisingly advanced
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
Byzantine Greeks already had flamethrowers
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
Parthians had electricity
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Classical Greeks invented the analog computer
There’s also rumors that Mughal India had nukes and wiped out the Indus Valley civilization with them.

[Anonymous No.18854796]

>>18854727
that's Mary Shelly

[Anonymous No.18854800]

>>18854727
autonomous statues existed thousands of years ago, change my mind

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18854808]

>>18854774
How about space travel and aliens?
(Syrian)

[Anonymous No.18854818]

>>18854791
>>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
>Byzantine Greeks already had flamethrowers
>>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery
>Parthians had electricity
>>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
>Classical Greeks invented the analog computer
What the absolute fuck?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18854830]

>>18854818
Aw, what’s a’matter?

[Anonymous No.18854848]

Science fiction is speculating about the future and solving potential dilemmas with logic and reason and fact. A giant monster in armor chasing you around isn't scifi, it's dark souls

[Anonymous No.18854862]

>>18854818
The Greeks also invented a steam engine but thought it was stupid since slaves did the same work but better

[Anonymous No.18854867]

>>18854818
The claim about the Baghdad Batteries being actual batteries isn't proven. Those other two things are real though

[Anonymous No.18854886]

History isn't as linear as we've interpreted it in the past.

[Anonymous No.18854909]

Post more ancient inventions.

[Anonymous No.18854930]

>>18854862
I thought it was Romans that did that? Either way, the theory that slavery can impact technological advancement is interesting.

[Anonymous No.18854935]

>>18854727
Not /lit/ related but if anyone is into The Elder Scrolls series, this Greek myth inspired the Numidium.

[Anonymous No.18854943]

>>18854800
Based and Harryhausenpilled retard

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18854949]

>>18854930
Syracuse. They’re “Greek” culturally and not Latins

[Anonymous No.18854958]

>>18854791
>There’s also rumors that Mughal India had nukes and wiped out the Indus Valley civilization with them.
There's a gigantic blind spot in human history before the appearance of the ancient civilizations we know of within the past few thousand years. Entire millenniums where humans were just as smart as we are now. I don't ascribe one way or another, but it's interesting to entertain the idea that we may be living in the aftermath of advanced civilizations that have perished for whatever reasons.

[Anonymous No.18854976]

>>18854791
>>18854958
Can I read more about this somewhere?

[Anonymous No.18854990]

>>18854958
Homo sapiens are here for 300 000 years. And what is the oldest known civilization? The Sumerians? 4000 years ago?
What the fuck was before that?

[Anonymous No.18855259]

>>18854791
>Parthians had electricity
Most likely not, as stated in your link. Though there is a small possibility they actually hadelectricity, it must have been so rudimentary that it was basically useless and therefore forgotten.
>Mughal India
Wrong time. I don't know much about early Indus civilizations, but you are referring to some ancient vedic texts where a destructive battle took place between Gods in the sky, who possessed the power to destroy a city not only physically, but chronically, so it may not recover any life for millenia or something. Correct me if I'm wrong. If anyone knows more, I'm very curious about this
>ancient archetype (Atlantis) which was real
Don't want to seem pedantic, but do you think Atlantis was real, or is it fiction based on something real? It is likely that Plato just made it up as a rhetorical device to demonstrate that moral decay can destroy the most powerful of nations. Now, an interesting question then is, did he base it on something real? Supposedly the events surrounding Atlantis happened 9000 years before Plato, and the great civilization was situated in the Atlantic ocean (therefore the name). Their most precious metal was gold, the second most precious 'Oreichalkos', in Platos time the red variant of brass, with more copper ingredient than nowadays. If it was real, then it wasnt some hyperadvanced civilization like some romanticize it to be, but just advanced for its time. For the Greeks the Atlas mountains were the end of the world, and when people meet boundaries, they imagine all kinds of phantastical stories (El Dorado, Prester John, Hyperborea, Shambhala etc.). It might have been based on the sea people, thats my guess.

[Anonymous No.18855342]

>>18854976
I'm the second anon you responded and I don't know much about that point specifically. I remember reading years ago that a region in the middle east has an abnormally large amount of radiation in pockets of earth and even human skeletons with radiation, and a large number of artifacts that had been glassified, similar to what happens from high-intensity heat from nuclear bombs.
I found this article: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/thedanispost/researchers-find-proof-of-ancient-atomic-war-a-great-many-years-prior/ it doesn't link any sources but he names a few researchers and books to read on the subject. The area specifically is called the Mohenjo-Daro. Someone who knows more about it could talk about it. The counter theory to the nuclear bomb is that it was a series of erratic thunder strikes on the region at some point.
>>18854990
Exactly. Sumeria is the oldest recorded civilization and that was just roughly around 4000 years ago. Still over another 200,000 years of homo-sapiens existence on this planet, which have the same mental acuity that we do now. It really makes you wonder when you think about it. How could such a long period be virtually unrecorded? The common answer is we spent all that time as hunter-gatherers, but honestly I find it more implausible that we could spend over 3/4s of our existence stuck on one stage of development when it only took 4000 years from the Sumerians to get to where we are now.
Now you can explain this with the theory that technological advancement is a snowball effect, and that once we hit a certain advancement it's just been building up since then. It might have just took a long time for that snowball to begin rolling. At the end of the day, whether there might have been ancient advanced civilizations that have perished, or humans just took forever to advance, it's hard to say. Ultimately there's just so much of human history that we only have a fraction of access to and we'll likely never have the answers.

[Anonymous No.18855364]

>>18854958
Resources don't just regrow after a few ten thousand years. If these advanced civilizations existed - what were they running on if they didn't use any of the metals, gasses, oil or radioactive materials we are using up today?

Super advanced lost civilizations are wishful thinking.

[Anonymous No.18855366]

>>18854958
>>18854990
It's a real mindfuck, maybe civilization was attempted countless of times in very primitive forms, there just wasn't enough cooperation on a larger scale to sustain it, maybe it was too vulnerable. Another thing to consider is that we weren't much dumber in those 200.000 years. Like, what did some hunter gatherer think when he looked at the night sky full of stars? What are those tiny sparkles, why do I share the earth with wild beasts? How big is the world, what the fuck is even the moon? Being completely conscious about your surrounding, but having maybe no words to describe it. The magnitude of it all sometimes scares me, there are so many stories we will never know about. Interesting details that are lost forever...

[Anonymous No.18855382]

>>18854848
>Science fiction is speculating about the future and solving potential dilemmas with logic and reason and fact.
It can also be humans reacting to a hypothetical problem. There’s a dozen good definitions for sci-fi, all different

[Anonymous No.18855477]

>>18855364
>Super advanced lost civilizations are wishful thinking.
Probably, but it's still fun to think about and consider.

[Anonymous No.18855489]

>>18855477
No it isn't. It's retarded and a waste of time and detracts from actual intellectual discussion

[Anonymous No.18855496]

>>18855364
>what were they running on if they didn't use any of the metals, gasses, oil or radioactive materials we are using up today?
Mana.

[Anonymous No.18855514]

>>18855364\
>what were they running on if they didn't use any of the metals, gasses, oil or radioactive materials we are using up today?
The resources from lost continents

[Anonymous No.18855561]

>>18855364
This might be a retarded argument, but it's possible that there were simply... more resources. And if there *were* advanced civs, then they'd also have the capacity to use renewable sources of energy. I think the biggest hole in the ancient civs theory isn't the supposed lack or abundance of natural resources, moreso the lack of non-biodegradable goods that an advanced civ could create (plastics really only come to mind).

[Anonymous No.18855562]

>>18854791
>Mughal
Nope, you have your indian civ all mixed up. Mughal is 1600s CE

[Anonymous No.18855573]

>>18855489
>Thinking about fantastical concepts is retarded and a waste of time
On a literature board, in a Sci fi thread.
The definition of a pseud with a stick up his ass.

[Anonymous No.18855592]

>>18855561
I don't think there could have been that much more without them getting mined and used leaving a trace, I imagine having read. Happy to learn otherwise if there is a credible source, but yes, not leaving any trace is another strong argument against those civilizations.

Its a fun Sci fi concept, but I don't see how it could be possible.

[Anonymous No.18855604]

I don't know why brainlets love to speculate that there might have been advance civilizations before the ice age or whenever.
There is no evidence.
Those ancient Assyrian batteries made of copper and clay?
The Antikythera mechanism?
Cool. That was all there was, folks. There were no flying cars or Atlantis.
There's zero archaeological evidence of that shit.
No mysterious sophisticated writing systems. Just a few indecipherable bronze Age scripts which were clearly not advanced.
No concrete structures before the Romans invented it.
Nothing.
>t: PhD (did not complete) in ancient history

[Anonymous No.18855617]

>>18855366
Oh man, you're preaching to the freakin' choir here. Our oldest oldest oldest stories are still relatively *new* compared to the age of our species! It's mind boggling! Christ! We're communicating over an imageboard, an imageboard that was created for the discussion of anime, another, idiosyncratic form of mass media entertainment exported by an island in Asia that was formerly a divine empire! Ah! 5000 years, 5000 years, and Saturn used to be a sun in the sky-- and this is how far we've come-- Volcano ash choked the world-- The San Fernando Valley was a fucking inland sea for millions and millions of years and now I go to the poquito mas in Encino and get a burrito served to me by the descendants of an ancient Sun God civilization that collapsed yesterday! My heart!

[Anonymous No.18855620]

>>18855604
See >>18855573
You might be more of a brainlet than you think.

[Anonymous No.18855654]

>>18855604
>There is no evidence.
Okay
>Those ancient Assyrian batteries made of copper and clay?
>The Antikythera mechanism?
>Cool. That was all there was, folks. There were no flying cars or Atlantis.
The idea that they could make artifacts like those back then is what lends itself to the idea that maybe there's more advanced stuff we don't know about. That ancient civilizations in history and pre-history may have done more than we know. You jump to flying cars when no one mentioned it.
>No mysterious sophisticated writing systems. Just a few indecipherable bronze Age scripts which were clearly not advanced.
If you can't decipher it, how do you know it isn't advanced? That sounds like a big cope.
>No concrete structures before the Romans invented it.
The concrete we use today still isn't as advanced as the Romans. Our roads and concrete buildings would whither away into nothing in less than a thousand years. Yet were far more advanced than ancient Romans.

[Anonymous No.18855669]

>>18855604
>PhD (did not complete)
You either have the title or not, there is no incomplete PhD. You may have went to the university, studied some history and dropped out at the most. (if youre not what I suspect mich more, a larping 13 year old)

[Anonymous No.18855684]

>>18855654
There.is.no.evidence
>Muh Atlantis legends
>Muh could've or mebbe
No.evidence
Ancient civilizations leave archaeological evidence. Buildings, artifacts, inscriptions.
The last big find was Gobekli Tepe.
Big ceremonial centre. Cool. No advanced writing system. Primitive pictographs. Apart from that, just impressive blocks of stone.
Show.me.the.evidence.
Just one structure or artifact that indicates an actual unknown advanced civilization.

[Anonymous No.18855737]

>>18855684
You rely too much on evidence and not enough on the truth of the soul, legends told that transcend physical degradation.

[Anonymous No.18855766]

>If you can't decipher it, how do you know it isn't advanced
You know nothing about linguistics. Even reading a popular text about how Linear B was deciphered or fuck even some Wikipedia articles on indeciphered texts will clue you in here. Hint: if I have 10 symbols which are usually found in set sequences, we aren't dealing with complex encoded information. Lists, names, mnemonics perhaps. Not advanced or sophisticated.
There is no evidence of advanced civilization prior to the established narrative of the Fertile Crescent, Indus, Egypt being the first and gradual locus of literacy, urban life, large buildings etc.

[Anonymous No.18855771]

>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonaguni_Monument
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam's_Bridge
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Wonders_of_the_Ancient_World
The ancients were true masters of engineering, even with modern tech we couldn’t make pyramids today.

[Anonymous No.18855774]

>>18855684
>Just one
The Dropa Stones

[Anonymous No.18855787]

>>18855771
>even with modern tech we couldn’t make pyramids today
Lol, you are genuinely stupid.

[Anonymous No.18855799]

>>18855774
Come on you can do better.
Even you know they're BS.
Is this stuff shown on the history channel? I've never watched it, but from references here and there it seems to be a vector for the most ridiculous nonsense.

[Anonymous No.18855879]

>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_spheres_of_Costa_Rica
How could a bunch of uncivilized savages carve sheer rock into perfectly round spheres? The only people living there were isolated tribes of hunter-gatherers, the Maya empire did not extend that far south, and metallurgy was discovered late in the Americas.
It must have been a people that came before, the mysterious ancients...

[Anonymous No.18855896]

>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai
The Moai of Easter Island, how could the Rapa Nui, Polynesian seafarers with no civilization or metallurgy to speak of, build these mighty stone heads?
Also their script still has not been deciphered to this day...
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo

[Anonymous No.18855913]

>>18855879
>>18855896
IT MUST HAVE BEEN ATLANTIANS OOOOOO AHHHHHHHH ALIENS HELPED THEM BUILD IT YESSSSSSSSSS

[Anonymous No.18855924]

>>18855879
Per Wikipedia:"They appear to have been made by hammering natural boulders with other rocks, then polishing with sand."
Wow!

[Anonymous No.18855930]

>>18855617
based echanted anon

[Anonymous No.18855931]

>>18855924
NOOOO IT WAS THE ATLANTIANS THEY ARE THE ONY ONE WHO CAN MAKE BALLS NOOOO

[Anonymous No.18856164]

>>18854791
None of those things you linked to are in any way comparable to the modern terms you applied to them

[Anonymous No.18856166]

>>18856164
>None of those things you linked to are in any way comparable to the modern terms you applied to them

[Anonymous No.18856318]

>18855931
>18855913
>18856164
>IT WAS ATLANTEANS
Yes.

[Anonymous No.18856380]

>>18856318
basado

[Anonymous No.18858116]

>>18854727
Lucian of Samosata?
There's already an automat in the Iliad but by magic, like the Golem, not technology

[Anonymous No.18858142]

>>18854727
he maybe was made of bronze but he wasn't imagined as a robot as in your pic

[Anonymous No.18858148]

there is no proof humans are 200,000 years old

[Anonymous No.18858205]

>>18854791
The Mughals invaded northern India in the 16th century AD, the Indus civilisation had dissapeared by 1500 BC

[Anonymous No.18858209]

>>18854727
pretty much all mythology is just science fiction or fantasy but called something different because it's old

[Anonymous No.18858221]

>>18858209
Isn’t mythology something used to explain past and current events while science fiction is something describing what could potentially happen in the future?

[Anonymous No.18858248]

>>18854958
This is basically the gist of The Road and its ending.

[Anonymous No.18858284]

>>18854791
enlightened post

[Anonymous No.18858465]

Reminder to skeptics that Troy and the Trojan horse have been found, Homer wrote of factual events.

[Anonymous No.18858662]

>>18855617
Why do you type like that

[Anonymous No.18858730]

>>18858465
>the trojans were actually unironically big enough retards to fall for it
damn

[Anonymous No.18859094]

>>18855617
>Saturn used to be a sun in the sky
Anyone know anything about his?

[Anonymous No.18859101]

>>18854791
>There’s also rumors that Mughal India had nukes and wiped out the Indus Valley civilization with them.
Holy based Mughals doing what America is too scared to

[Anonymous No.18859129]

>>18858465
>Trojan horse have been found
Lol those retards really brought it in?
Where can I read more about this?