Historica Automaton (12/29/25)

Robots and automata have been with humans in one form or another for thousands of years. From ancient Egyptian illusionary statutes to Ancient Greek steam or air powered birds, even programmable carts and theatrical figures, up to near-modern mechanisms like the Digesting Duck in 1739 France, the 1770 Austrian chess robot, the 1773 Silver Swan in England, the 1795 Tipu’s Tiger of India and the many robots of far east Asia. As early as the 8th century BC, the Chinese were using wooden mechanisms for burial objects, centuries before the Greek myth of a giant mechanical Talos. Long before European machines that are hardly remembered today, the Japanese had mechanical dolls called Nashiki karakul, which served tea and entertained every level of Edo society. None of this history is hidden, and part of the problem in deciphering what it means is our definition of words like robot, machine, giant, myth etc. However, as with technology today where glorified search engines are believed to be sentient intelligence, there were probably many in the ancient world who saw these devices as supernatural. The vast majority probably saw them for what they were though - entertainment. Although the value in such mechanisms has largely been lost today, or simply evolved or transitioned into something more contemporary, our modern use of similar technologies will likely be looked at by a future generation in the same way that we look back on an apparently lost part of human history. The modern popular culture, and conspiracy, perception of the past is that anything considerably advanced must be part of a lost civilization or alien, perhaps Tartarian specifically. But the printing press dates to 1440 and the cotton gin to 1793, two inventions that mechanically revolutionized the world in a way equal to modern phones, and yet few would dispute the modern-human-civilization origin of these devices.   *The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, you can subscribe below underneath the show description. WEBSITE FREE ARCHIVE (w. ads) SUBSCRIPTION ARCHIVE - X / TWITTER FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM YOUTUBE RUMBLE - BUY ME A COFFEE CashApp: $rdgable  PAYPAL: rdgable1991@gmail.com Ryan's Books: https://thesecretteachings.info - EMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / rdgable1991@gmail.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-secret-teachings--5328407/support.