LOST & FOUND #5 …

Excellent Reading:
--- The Lost Discoveries from the beginning of Recorded History to the Renaissance --- Lost Discoveries - Dick Teresi.

LOST & FOUND
#5 The Start of Science

  • Scientists and Technicians often considered the same and many men were both, i.e. Banu Musa Brothers of Islam (~850 A.D., The Book of Ingenius Devices, in Baghdad): astronomers, mathematicians, as well as engineers: made water wheels, hot & cold water systems, pumps, automatic oil lamps, dredging machines, fountains, a crank, 83 trick vessels as toys or curiosities (a pitcher which cannot resume pouring once stopped, mixtures that pour separately)
  • Automata - al Gazer ~1200 A.D. in Turkish Artukid Dynasty - gear systems mainly for water (200 years later showed up in European clock) one invention was drinking men on an automated toy boat which when activated had sailors rowing while musicians were playing
  • 1,000 years ago Califs of Baghdad built private playgrounds with automatic toys - one description was of animatronics: ponds with 2 metal mechanical singing birds, mercury pond with gold boats, other singing birds, roaring lions, and other animatronic animals
  • Mesoamerica (New World Western Hemisphere) gave crops to the Old World, perhaps 3/5 of crops now in cultivation, but had little iron, no wheel or riding animals - but ignited agricultural revolution in Europe, Asia, and Africa - were considered miracle crops (corn and potatoes)
  • Mayan Kings had royal chocolate makers (cacao bean)
  • Olmecs of southwestern Mexico considered mother civilization of Mesoamerica (1500 - 600 B.C.): massive basalt (dark, volcanic rock) sculptures and monuments - diet was for many ancient cultures the basic four: maize, beans, chili peppers, and squash - agriculture good enough to support 8 - 10 million people
  • Mayan (sometimes sacred) ball games were in almost every town (very serious, even to death) - game played from ~2000 B.C.

RUBBER

  • Aztec version of ball game: 8" solid rubber ball, 1-4 players per team, hackey sack style ball control (no hands - can't hit ground), ball goes through stone rings or markers or into a goal along court, ball's mass could disable a player. Technology: rubber ball could bounce several feet high
  • Charles Goodyear in 1839 developed vulcanization process - natural latex sap from rubber trees when dried is soft, sticky, and not elastic - vulcanization in 1839 heats latex, mixes it with sulfur and gets hard bouncy rubber (tricky part is to prevent mixture from getting too brittle or too sticky)
  • ~1600 B.C. natives take sap from Castilla Elastica tree (white, viscous, liquid sap which gets brittle when dry) and mix with juice from a Morning Glory vine (which wraps itself around latex tree)
  • Recently MIT archeologist Dorothy Hosler and undergraduate Michael Tarkanian rediscovered technique: when they arrived, found farmers still doing same age old technique - 10 minutes after mixing latex + vine juice => rubber rises to surface and farmer makes ball that bounces easily 6' in air
  • They brought ball, raw latex, and juice to MIT to a material scientist (through nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy) found unknown organic compound in latex that were no longer present in rubber - perhaps plasticizers that keep substance runny by preventing polymers from cross linking (like modern production) maybe vine juice dissolves plasticizers and lets polymer molecules of latex form a rubbery mass
  • In the Morning Glory juice they found sulfur compounds that might do this - only a few such entanglements would give rubberness
  • Olmecs made axes with rubber bands, painted with rubber, lip balm

OBSIDIAN BLADES

  • Obsidian a natural glass (the steel of that world)
  • They could precisely chip, then grind, then pressure flake (still don't know how they did this part of process) until incredible blade for surgery, etc.
  • Still sharpest of ancient or modern - better than our surgical blade - some surgeons are trying now to use obsidian once again

Questions

  1. Like the Banu Musa brothers, there were no ancient “scientists”? Name three professions that we get much of our scientific, technological breakthroughs from?
    astronomers, mathematicians, as well as engineers
  2. Some say the parents to the robot is the computer. But actual robots existed as early as ________ in the Turkish Artukid Dynasty.
    1200 A.D.
  3. Who brought corn to the Europeans?
    Mesoamerica
  4. Who is at least one of the peoples we can thank for chocolate?
    Mayans
  5. What four foods were the staples of many ancient South American cultures?
    maize, beans, chili peppers, and squash
  6. Which of these four foods (or combinations of them) include the four basic types of food?
    proteins - beans
    starch - maize, beans
    oil - maize, chili peppers
    carbohydrates - maize, beans, chili peppers, and squash
  7. What secret did the MIT researchers find that allowed ancient Aztecs to make rubber harden just the right amount in about 10 minutes? [Hint: anybody can get the rubber tree sap – the trick is to keep it from getting hard, yet not letting it stay too sticky.]?
    mixing latex + vine juice
  8. What is an ancient technology that we are just about to re-discover in modern medical practices?
    Obsidian surgical blades