Ancients had High Tech gadgets? Part 1

It is quite a long time I am reading and re- reading ancient history books. Once upon the time when I was a High School student I hated Ancient Greek Literature. It was too difficult to understand and so many rules I had to learn! We were studying Homer, Herodotus, Plato etc. Small paragraphs would take us months to go through, and analyze the syntax and the words and the roots of the words, and the grammar. OMG. I couldn't care less that time. I was thinking what a waste of time.

Later in my life, when I start traveling around the globe, I found that too many people had actually studied Ancient Literature and they were very knowledgeable on many subjects. This intrigued me to have a second more careful look to my books from my High School era. I realized that it was a thesaurus there. I read them all, and after I finish reading I start reading them again. Every time I discovered more and more interesting things. About the society, about the science about everything.

Was it possible to be such a treasure hidden in this ancient stories? Well it turned to be the truth. I was excited.

I believe that I am a technical minded person, so it was inevitable that several issues regarding technology attract my attention. I remember reading Ulysses, the epic poem Homer wrote approximately seven centuries B.C. It was the time that I have installed a brand new piece of equipment on my aircraft, a sophisticated GPS receiver with Map and a huge database of all the nav-aids and airports of the world. This gadget was coupled to the autopilot and I had simply to input the destination airport, and the computer would find the best route from my present position to the destination, and further will guide the autopilot to bring me there. I have to tell you that this equipment even more sophisticated, is a necessity and it is installed on every modern aircraft, especially the airliners. They call it FMS which stands for Flight Management System.

Reading Homer / Ulysses that night, I reached Rhapsody M lines 50 to 55. The poet was describing the meeting of Ulysses with King Alkinoos of the Pheacas, After a long voyage, Ulysses (Odiseus in Greek) wrecked on the coast of Pheacas island (some historians claim that it is the island of Corfu) , where he is found by the daughter of King Alkinoos who brings Ulysses to her father. And the King says to Ulysses, “ stranger you look to be from a royal origin, tell us where are you from and we will send you to your homeland with our ships, which as you know, they do not have captains or steering wheels, but they know all the villages and the cities of this world, and we tell them where we want to go and they are taking us there”

Surprise!!! I read and read again this paragraph, as I had fresh in my mind the training I had from the gadget earlier that day. Was it possible that seven centuries B.C. people were using the same gadgets as I did this morning?? It was a teaser to my curiosity, which made me to start searching deeper and deeper to every book I had in my library related to Ancient history, and they were a lot.

To my surprise again, I found more evidence on several occasions that lead me to the conclusion that something was there. For example reading about the Argo-nautical expedition with Jason, Hercules and other heroes, I found that they had invited TIFIS to steer Argo, pretty much as a captain, as he had the ability and the knowledge to “communicate” with the ship! Argo was able to talk and communicate. By the way, Argo-nautical expedition is earlier than Ulysses.

Writing this article, I will kindly invite anyone who has information about ancient technology to open a discussion and present his/her findings on this subject.

Later I expand my research to the ancient history of other nations, and I found information about flying machines “vimanas” in India, or description of take offs and landings in the Bible. I am willing to present all these information in this article, starting from the ancient Greek literature.

To be continued.....