Here's a challenging thought experiment: What is the most modern technology that you could go back in time the farthest and still make? Ex: I think I could go back about 500 years and make: A simple camera. An electric battery. An electric guitar (but not an amp). You?
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Thinking about the camera, I think it'd be possible to go back even farther. I think you could go back to the time of the Greeks or Egyptians and possibly make it. I think you could definitely go back 2500 years and create it in China.
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So then the followup to this thought experiment is: If an expert from our time could go back 500, 1000, 2500 years and create a piece of modern tech, then *what* prevented that culture/location from figuring it out? There really isn't much in a camera but, nobody made one.
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Replying to @zedshaw
They had camera obscura back then (and possibly way before) . But not the chemical knowledge yet to capture the photons on paper?
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Not really, I think they *almost* had all the pigments from almost 2000 years of painting, they just didn't realize it. It's almost as if, once painters used the pigments for painting people didn't think "hmmm I wonder if I could use this for non-painter things".
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