Wonders of the World

[vakkotaur]

While on the treadmill Tuesday evening I watched a NOVA about a search for the ruins of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The program was interesting enough, showing how things progressed by exploring and mapping an underwater area, searching more within it, and finding ruins that were interesting if perhaps not the original things sought. Some of these were brought up to land from the sea floor, to much celebration of everyone, not just the researchers.

One thing that was mentioned was that many Egyptian structures used stone from earlier structures as each new ruler wanted to put his own mark on things seemingly without too much regard for whoever came before. That got me to wondering what someone from ancient Alexandria would make of the researchers and the effort to bring ancient artifacts to light. What such a person would think is unknowable but does make for interesting speculation.

Would there be pride, that something of that age or era was still of interest all these centuries later? Would there be amusement at that, since they tended to change things around, so what's all the fuss about? Would there be astonishment that modern folks bothered at all with things so far past in what would surely seem an age of miracles?

There I was, an ordinary person, not a ruler or noble of any sort, exercising because my daily routine for living lets me easily consume more calories than I need to burn to work and stay alive. I was watching this show, which was recorded, on TV. The station had a feed from a geosynchronous satellite. The divers had tanks of compressed air and regulators that let them spend much time underwater. The boats were power driven, with no sail in sight and no sail needed. Position measurements were recorded with GPS, then maps made with computers. Some work (ashore) could be done at night with electric lighting - and electrical power is simply assumed, almost everywhere. At night the city was bright with lights. Some people likely arrived by jet airplane from far across the globe. They likely slept in hotels with air conditioning. Probably none have encountered diseases that once plagued mankind. Likely a few had some serious ailment or injury in their lives that had been treated with ease. And all this was perfectly normal, routine, even boring. The amazing things were the getting of government permission to do the dives, the discovery of lost artifacts, and their being shown on land.

I have to wonder, what would the ancient Alexandrian think of it all?

Comments

[ginafae.livejournal.com]

I would imagine that an ancient Alexandrian, much like the modern Dali Lhama, would think that we must be the happiest, most content people in the entire history of the world. For why would we not be? What could possibly breed discontent and unhappiness in a people who need not endure any physical hardship, and whose only apparant complaint is the price of luxuries? I imagine, an Ancient Alexandrian would be suprised to look in our medicine cabinets and see "Ritalin" and "Zoloft" and "Paxil". I imagine, he would be sorry for us, to have all we physically need, and still create mental illnesses.

[jdm314.livejournal.com]

Well, the ancients may not have had a problem with recycling or reapproriating old monuments, but they did certainly have the idea that a long-lasting monument was to the glory of its builder. They were certainly impressed, just as we are now, with the incredible age and durability of the Great Pyramids.

Alexandrians were an amazingly diverse crowd, so I have no doubt that you would get a lot of different reactions if you could somehow do a man-on-the-street interview series. Of course Alexandria was also a hotbed of mad scientists: inventors so far ahead of their time that everyone thought their inventions were worthless toys and ignored them. For instance, they came this close to inventing the steam engine (cf. the Aeolobolus) and rocket propulsion (cf. the "Clay pigeon"). So I imagine if you found the right alexandrian, they would love to learn all about the technology we used.

As for ginafae's remark, well the Greeks had a saying: "Count no man as truly happy(/fortunate/blessed) until he is safely in his grave."

...Or maybe they just would attribute our high incidence of depression to our rejection of the four humors model of medicine ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I agree these things are fascinating to ponder. I am often inclined to turn it around though, and wonder what an archeologist 500 or 1000 years hence will be finding and puzzling over in the remains of our own culture. Soda can tabs (remember when they used to pull right off to become a separate piece of litter from the can itself?) Paper clips? Plastic floppy disks? Circuit boards? Television rabbit ears?

Consider how alien a rotary dial phone is to an eight year old, who can probably operate a cell phone without thinking about it. Or how strange and puzzling a buttonhook or a butter churn is even to someone of our own ages.

How many of the objects we use every day, that are so obvious to us in their origin and usage that they come with no instructions or documentation, would be a complete mystery to either those ancients or some future archeologist (human or otherwise)?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I once read an interesting paragraph or so that was poking fun at Erich von Däniken by taking the modern day out of context. It was amusing, but also quite possible to see how the very wrong conclusions could be drawn.

[michaelmink.livejournal.com]

Cf. the satirical book "Motel of the Mysteries"

[melissasutton.livejournal.com]

I saw two very interesting shows recently - one was on Discovery about Pompei the last day - I had NO idea how the erruption actually progressed, how long it took and that the end, the whole column of the eruption collapsed and sent a pyroclastic flow clear across the Bay of Naples and killed thousands way over there too! It was fascinating and horrible!

The other was on Arcamedes' (spelling) claw machine that was swung out over the battlements of his city and tore into the Roman ships to tip them and flood them, full of soldiers! They rebuilt it from period materials and made it work.. we stayed up way too late, being fascinated at the genius of this man!

If i'd had better grades in school I would have spent my life as such a geek (grin)