In 2024 we come to the iPhone 16, we start to see the future differently with the Apple Vision Pro. Artificial intelligence is starting to change the way we work…We are immersed in a revolution similar to the industrial revolution, based on AI, and which will change the world as we know it.
All these advances are the result of years and centuries of calculations and research and innovative people who dared to think differently. From the discovery that the Earth is not the center of the universe, to the beginnings of computing by Alan Turing.
All of these advances could have happened hundreds of years ago.
More than 1,800 years before modern computing enabled the construction of impressive structures and the advancement of technologies such as programming and artificial intelligence, humanity possessed knowledge that They could have changed the course of history. However, the loss of a crucial manuscript by the monks in the 13th century set back these developments by several centuries.
The famous The Archimedes Palimpsest is not just an ancient text. This book contains the first indications of what we understand today by combinatorial mathematics and was written in the 2nd century BC. It is therefore considered to be the basis on which our modern engineering is based. But all this was lost when some monks decided to erase the ancient texts to write religious chants.
Back in the 3rd century BC, Archimedes of Syracuse wrote down all his knowledge on papyrus scrolls. Towards the end of the 5th century These writings made the leap to parchment and were boundWhen the great libraries of Constantinople were plundered in 1204, the Archimedes Scroll managed to survive and reach a Christian monastery.
On this page of the Archimedes Palimpsest, you can see a liturgical text that is read from top to bottom, while Archimedes’ work appears in a more sober text that is read from left to right.
The monks erased the book, even though they had no bad intentions.
In 1229, a Greek monk needed space for a prayer book. So he took apart Archimedes’ manuscript, He scratched off what was written and on the same skin he copied the ecclesiastical text.. A very common process at a time when parchment was a rare and expensive commodity. It must be taken into account that the general population did not know how to read or write and that the Church was practically the only one capable of transmitting and capturing history. On the one hand, they destroyed it, and on the other, they created it to arrive at what we are today.
So, and for centuries All this knowledge was hidden until a Dane discovered the manuscript in 1906. in the library of a Greek Orthodox monastery in Constantinople. At that moment, he realized that there was something more behind those words. Thus, the Western world began to learn of the existence of a previously unknown work of Archimedes: the Method of Mechanical Theorems.
Shortly after World War II, the Archimedes Manuscript disappeared from the library and is believed to have remained in the hands of a French family for most of the 20th century. In 1998, unexpectedly, was auctioned at Christie’s and was acquired for two million dollars by an anonymous buyer. Already in the 21st century, the manuscript has revealed its secrets. This confirms the high mathematical knowledge base today for computer science and even artificial intelligence.
After restoration of the Archimedes Palimpsest, the original text can be read easily
We will never know how many other advances have been lost in similar ways. Just imagine a world where Archimedes’ theories would have been available in the Middle Ages. It was all there: the materials, the human mental capacity… the difference was having the knowledge to launch these revolutions.
It wasn’t until the mid-1700s that the steam engine began to be used. From there, they evolved into more advanced machines with the arrival of electricity. What if it all started three hundred years ago? The iPhone would have been with us for two generations or more, and the race for space travel would have started much earlier.
All this, thinking that the course of history would have continued in the same way, but starting centuries ago. Perhaps with an even more premature knowledge, the planet’s resources would be much more depleted. Because we must not forget that technological progress entails a cost for the environment. Perhaps, in a scenario of accelerated progress, our ecological footprint would be greater and environmental and social problems even more critical.
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