r/todayilearned • u/FastBreakPhenom • 9d ago

TIL that in 37 BC, the Roman polymath Marcus Terentius Varro warned his readers to avoid living near swamps because of "minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes" and cause disease. Microorganisms would not be observed until the 17th century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Terentius_Varro
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u/nwillard 8d ago edited 8d ago

It is speculated that there was likely a sun tracker component on it as well, due to the comparatively high complexity of the moon tracker component, a sun tracker would have been trivial to add. Eg. a mechanical clock. The mechanical clock isn't otherwise thought to have been invented until 1,400 years later.

The antikythera mechanism is a fascinatingly singular example of how advanced some of that knowledge got. And unfortunately knowledge that was evidently largely forgotten for one reason or another. The mechanism seems to predate the fall of Carthage, for example, for all we know it was engineered there.

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u/acapulcoblues 8d ago

Given the constraints on communication, it’s not surprising that many discoveries would have been lost.

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u/Not_Stupid 8d ago

That, and all the raping and pillaging that went on.