The Antikythera Mechanism

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165

I absolutely love this sort of thing. In 1900 a sponge diver found a corroded hunk of ancient junk that upon being examined with modern technology turns out to be a fairly complicated clockwork mechanism that could predict the locations off all the known planets of the time.

The article is somewhat vague in places but even if this isn't what happened here it brings to mind all those times that somebody points to something in an ancient manuscript, like Cicero's mention of an astronomical calculator or Homer talking about a minor skirmish in Asia Minor, and the "experts" very condescendingly pat him on the head for believing in such fairy tales since it's obvious that old Wasname was given to exaggeration and making things up. Then whatever it is actually turns up and it takes decades before there is grudging acknowledgment that okay, maybe he did know what he was talking about after all.

Then you have things like Otzi the Ice Man having the bad grace to show up with a copper axe a thousand years before he was supposed to have one. And tobacco traces in Egyptian mummys that had been in sealed tombs for millenia.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens one of the most inquisitive and inventive species on the planet evolved over 130 thousand years ago, maybe even over 200 thousand years ago, and is supposed to have basically sat around with its collective thumb up its butt until 9000 years ago. And even then it wasn't until the last 3000 years or so that we discovered most of the advanced stuff. Like chemistry and astronomy and physics etc.

And even though they migrated all over the world from Africa once they got where they were going they lost contact with each other and there was no contact between the Americas and the rest of the world until Leif Erickson showed up.

Riiiiiggght.

IMO the lack of fossil fuel burning transportation and vast stretches of asphalt does not a stupid civilization make. And the Dolphins are way ahead of us anyway.