@Kye the printing press came around the 16th century...

@Kye the printing press came around the 16th century (Gutenberg) and eyeglasses came around the 17th (Huygens and other Dutch inventors).

I've used that example because the Middle Ages (especially the early period) were indeed a period when engineering skills from the Greek and Roman period were lost. It took us more than a millennium before we figured out (with Brunelleschi) how to build a large dome like the one used in the Pantheon, and the same goes for the art of Roman concrete production.

Like 30 Jul 2023 at 16:09 | Open on social.platypush.tech

2 comments

Panda | 판다

@blacklight @Kye The Jikji was printed in 1377 and there may well have been books printed even earlier that haven’t survived so although Gutenberg developed the printing press in the West (in 1455), it came around earlier in Korea.

30 Jul 2023 at 21:14 | Open on assemblag.es

dagnymol

@blacklight @Kye Early eyeglasses existed in the thirteenth century and the modern printing press in the early fifteenth (Gutenberg died in 1468)

Additionally, the idea of a "dark ages" is extremely Western-centric idea, particularly ignoring the contributions of the Islamic golden age (8th to 13th centuries) which brought us the astrolabe, windmills, solid soap, manufactured glass, kerosene lamps, water clocks, pinhole cameras, various gears and valves, the entire basis of algebra, and much of the basis for modern chemistry.

@blacklight @Kye Early eyeglasses existed in the thirteenth century and the modern printing press in the early fifteenth (Gutenberg died in 1468)

Expand text...

2 Aug 2023 at 12:05 | Open on pony.social