While I was searching for something completely different (read fandom stuff), I came across a pretty interesting bit of science that got me thinking.
Meet the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient, and pretty accurate for its day, advanced clock/computer. This thing is seriously cool. It’s also some 2,000 years old, give or take a few decades. We don’t know who made it, or exactly why it was made beyond the obvious, but pretty sophisticated for back during the Hellenistic Period. I loved it instantly.
The world hides all kinds of neat stuff from our ancient ancestors. Like the Native American arrowheads we sometimes stumble across when digging in the dirt or dinosaur bones when we start building new stuff. And let’s not even start on the vast amount of ancient artifacts that have been stolen and hidden away.
But like I said, this piece of ancient technology got me thinking.
A hundred or a thousand years from now, what will some more advanced civilization, built in the ruins of ours, find of us? What will they make of our cell phones or computers or eyeglasses? What will they make of my Gabriel Funkopop? Will some future archeologist find him and thing it had some religious significance, or that it was a toy?
Well, if that archeologist finds my Gabriel, I hope, if nothing else, it brings them delight and a fraction more understanding of a civilization left behind. And just maybe inspires them to write about it the same way the Antikythera Mechanism inspired me, and hopefully inspires you.
-T.A. Creech
Author of LGBT romance and speculative fiction.
Very interesting and well written article!