The Silk Road’s long peri­od of high activ­i­ty spanned the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BC and the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry AD, but its name was­n’t coined until more than 400 years after that. Schol­ars have argued it prac­ti­cal­ly ever since, giv­en that the ref­er­ent was­n’t just one road but a vast and ever-chang­ing net­work of them, and that silk was hard­ly the only com­mod­i­ty car­ried by its traders. Yet the name per­sists, and not only due to Mar­co Polo-type roman­ti­cism. Silk may not have been the high­est-vol­ume item on its epony­mous road — more busi­ness was sure­ly done in every­day tex­tiles, to say noth­ing of spices, grains, or dyes — but it was per­haps the most vis­i­ble, and sure­ly the most glam­orous. From the per­spec­tive of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion, it can also look like the most impor­tant.

In the new Pri­mal Space video above, you can hear the sto­ry of “the machine that made Chi­na rich”: the pat­tern loom, that is, a mod­el of which was unearthed in 2017 dur­ing sub­way con­struc­tion in the city of Cheng­du. At some­where between 2,100 and 2,200 years old, they rep­re­sent the ear­li­est known evi­dence of pat­tern loom tech­nol­o­gy, of which Chi­na made high­ly pro­duc­tive use dur­ing the time of its three-mil­len­ni­um monop­oly on silk.

As far away as the Roman Empire, those who had the means could­n’t get enough of the stuff, espe­cial­ly when it came in designs nev­er before seen in human his­to­ry. Hence the high pri­or­i­ty Chi­na placed on keep­ing knowl­edge of its har­vest­ing and weav­ing pro­pri­etary — at least until a cou­ple of Roman monks man­aged to smug­gle silk­worm lar­vae back to Europe in the mid­dle of the sixth cen­tu­ry.

Yet even hav­ing lost its sta­tus as the only land capa­ble of pro­duc­ing silk, Chi­na retained a great advan­tage in the form of its sheer man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty. (This sto­ry rings some­what famil­iar about a mil­len­ni­um and a half lat­er, when none of us can dis­pute which coun­try holds the title of “the world’s fac­to­ry.”) Its silk indus­try could achieve that scale thanks to the rel­a­tive ease of use of the pat­tern loom, which required no spe­cial skills to oper­ate. The most com­plex aspect would have been “pro­gram­ming” the pat­terns to be formed by the strands, which, though an entire­ly ana­log process, has its basic sim­i­lar­i­ties with the dig­i­tal com­put­er pro­gram­ming we know today. Chi­na’s trade net­works have great­ly mul­ti­plied since the days of Mar­co Polo, and the tech­nol­o­gy it uses has devel­oped to a pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able degree. Yet some­how, the “Elec­tric Vehi­cle Road” does­n’t have quite the same ring, does it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the World’s First Earth­quake Detec­tor, Invent­ed in Chi­na 2,000 Years Ago

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

Watch a Trans­fix­ing Demon­stra­tion of Kumi­hi­mo, the Ancient Japan­ese Art­form of Mak­ing Braids & Cords

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

From TED-Ed comes an ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism, an ancient Greek device that dates back to the 2nd cen­tu­ry BCE. TED writes: “In 1900, Greek divers stum­bled upon a 2,000-year-old ship­wreck whose con­tents would shake our under­stand­ing of the ancient world. Among the remains were frag­ments of man­gled wood and cor­rod­ed met­al, which archae­ol­o­gists soon real­ized were parts of the old­est geared device ever dis­cov­ered — and humankind’s first com­put­er. So, how did it work?” Above, sci­ence jour­nal­ist Max G. Levy explains the inner work­ings of the Antikythera Mech­a­nism and how the Greeks put the device to use.

For those who want to take a deep­er dive into this ancient ana­log com­put­er (there’s a lot more to learn), we invite you to explore the titles in the Relat­eds sec­tion below. They’ll take you deep­er into this mar­vel of ancient engi­neer­ing.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the World’s Old­est Com­put­er Worked: Recon­struct­ing the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism

Researchers Devel­op a Dig­i­tal Mod­el of the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism, “the World’s First Com­put­er”

A Ful­ly Func­tion­al Repli­ca of the Antikythera Mech­a­nism, the First Ana­log Com­put­er from Ancient Greece, Re-Cre­at­ed in LEGO

How the Ancient Greeks Invent­ed the First Com­put­er: An Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (Cir­ca 87 BC)

Grant­ed access to a time machine, few of us would pre­sum­ably opt first for the expe­ri­ence of skull surgery by the Incas. Yet our chances of sur­vival would be bet­ter than if we under­went the same pro­ce­dure 400 years lat­er, at least if it took place on a Civ­il War bat­tle­field. In both fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Peru and the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Unit­ed States, sur­geons were per­form­ing a lot of trepa­na­tion, or removal of a por­tion of the skull. Since the Neolith­ic peri­od, indi­vid­u­als had been trepanned for a vari­ety of rea­sons, some of which now sound more med­ical­ly com­pelling than oth­ers, but the Incan civ­i­liza­tion took it to anoth­er lev­el of fre­quen­cy, and indeed sophis­ti­ca­tion.

Any­one with an inter­est in the his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy would do well to study the Incas, who were remark­able in both what they devel­oped and what they did­n’t. Though there was no Incan alpha­bet, there was khipu, (or quipu), pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a sys­tem of record-keep­ing that used noth­ing but knot­ted cords.

The Incas may not have had wheeled vehi­cles or mechan­i­cal devices as we know them today, but they did have pre­ci­sion mason­ry, an exten­sive road sys­tem, advanced water man­age­ment for agri­cul­tur­al and oth­er uses, high-qual­i­ty tex­tiles, and plant-derived anti­sep­tic — some­thing more than a lit­tle use­ful if you also hap­pen to be cut­ting a lot of holes in peo­ple’s skulls.

Study­ing the his­to­ry of trepa­na­tion, neu­rol­o­gist David Kush­n­er, along with bioar­chae­ol­o­gists John Ver­a­no and Anne Titel­baum, exam­ined more than 600 Peru­vian skulls dat­ing from between 400 BC and the mid-six­teenth-cen­tu­ry, which marked the end of the Incans’ 133-year-long run. As Sci­ence’s Lizzie Wade reports, the old­est evi­dence shows an unen­vi­able 40% sur­vival rate, but the sur­gi­cal tech­nique evolved over time: by the Inca era, the num­ber ris­es to between 75% and 83%, as against 46% to 56% in Civ­il War mil­i­tary hos­pi­tals. Some Incan skulls even show signs of hav­ing under­gone up to sev­en suc­cess­ful trepa­na­tions — or non-fatal ones, at any rate. Though that ven­er­a­ble form of surgery may no longer be prac­ticed, mod­ern neu­ro­sur­geons today use tech­niques based on the same prin­ci­ples. Should we find our­selves in need of their ser­vices, we’ll no doubt pre­fer to keep our dis­tance from the time machine.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Khipu, the Ancient Incan Record & Writ­ing Sys­tem Made Entire­ly of Knots

Behold the Medieval Wound Man: The Poor Soul Who Illus­trat­ed the Injuries a Per­son Might Receive Through War, Acci­dent or Dis­ease

Jazz Musi­cian Plays Acoustic Gui­tar While Under­go­ing Brain Surgery, Help­ing Doc­tors Mon­i­tor Their Progress

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & Drones Uncov­er 303 New Naz­ca Lines in Peru

How the “First Pho­to­jour­nal­ist,” Math­ew Brady, Shocked the Nation with Pho­tos from the Civ­il War

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Renais­sance did not, strict­ly speak­ing, occur in Chi­na. Yet it seems that the Mid­dle King­dom did have its Renais­sance men, so to speak, and in much ear­li­er times at that. We find one such illus­tri­ous fig­ure in the Han dynasty of the first and sec­ond cen­turies: a states­man named Zhang Heng (78–139 AD), who man­aged to dis­tin­guish him­self across a range of fields from math­e­mat­ics to astron­o­my to phi­los­o­phy to poet­ry. His accom­plish­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy include invent­ing the first hydraulic armil­lary sphere for observ­ing the heav­ens, improv­ing water clocks with a sec­ondary tank, cal­cu­lat­ing pi fur­ther than it had been in Chi­na to date, and mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies about the nature of the moon. He also, so records show, put togeth­er the first-ever seis­mo­scope, a device for detect­ing earth­quakes.

A visu­al expla­na­tion of Zhang’s design appears in the Sci­ence­World video above. His seis­mo­scope, its nar­ra­tor says, “was called hòufēng dìdòngyí, which means ‘instru­ment for mea­sur­ing sea­son­al winds and move­ments of the earth,’ ” and it could “deter­mine rough­ly the direc­tion in which an earth­quake occurred.”

Each of its eight drag­on heads (a com­bi­na­tion of num­ber and crea­ture that, in Chi­na, could hard­ly be more aus­pi­cious) holds a ball; when the ground shook, the drag­on point­ing toward the epi­cen­ter of the quake drops its ball into the mouth of one of the dec­o­ra­tive toads wait­ing below. At one time, as his­to­ry has record­ed, it “detect­ed an earth­quake 650 kilo­me­ters, or 400 miles away, that was­n’t felt at the loca­tion of the seis­mo­scope.”

Not bad, con­sid­er­ing that nei­ther Zhang nor any­one else had yet heard of tec­ton­ic plates. But as all engi­neers know, prac­ti­cal devices often work just fine even in the absence of com­plete­ly sound the­o­ry. Though no con­tem­po­rary exam­ples of hòufēng dìdòngyí sur­vive from Zhang’s time, “researchers believe that inside the seis­mo­scope were a pen­du­lum, a bronze ball under the pen­du­lum, eight chan­nels, and eight levers that acti­vat­ed the drag­ons’ mouths.” Mov­ing in response to a shock wave, the pen­du­lum would release the ball in the oppo­site direc­tion, which would roll down a chan­nel and release the mouth at the end of it. How­ev­er inno­v­a­tive it was for its time, this scheme could, of course, pro­vide no infor­ma­tion about exact­ly how far away the earth­quake hap­pened, to say noth­ing of pre­dic­tion. For­tu­nate­ly, cen­turies of Renais­sance men still lay ahead to fig­ure all that out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks Invent­ed the First Com­put­er: An Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (Cir­ca 87 BC)

The Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy of Ancient Rome: Auto­mat­ic Doors, Water Clocks, Vend­ing Machines & More

Behold Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Dur­ing the After­math of San Francisco’s Dev­as­tat­ing 1906 Earth­quake

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

What Ancient Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy Can Teach Us About Liv­ing the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Pro­fes­sor, Michael Puett

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Buck­min­ster Fuller was, in many ways, a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry man: an achieve­ment in itself, con­sid­er­ing he was born in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and died in the twen­ti­eth. In fact, it may actu­al­ly count as his defin­ing achieve­ment. For all the inven­tions pre­sent­ed as rev­o­lu­tion­ary that nev­er real­ly caught on — the Dymax­ion house and car, the geo­des­ic dome — as well as the count­less pages of eccen­tri­cal­ly the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ing and even more count­less hours of talk, it can be dif­fi­cult for us now, here in the actu­al twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, to pin down the civ­i­liza­tion­al impact he so earnest­ly longed to make. But to the extent that he embod­ied the faith, born of the com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al might and exis­ten­tial dread that col­ored the post­war Amer­i­can zeit­geist, that tech­nol­o­gy can ratio­nal­ly re-shape the world, we’re all his intel­lec­tu­al chil­dren.

In the video above, Joe Scott pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to Fuller and his world in about ten min­utes. After a much-ref­er­enced Dam­a­scene con­ver­sion, the once-dis­solute Fuller spent most of his life “try­ing to solve the world’s prob­lems,” Scott says, “specif­i­cal­ly in find­ing ways to save resources and pro­vide for every­body on the plan­et: to do more with less, as we would say.”

The title he gave him­self of “com­pre­hen­sive antic­i­pa­to­ry design sci­en­tist” neat­ly rep­re­sents both his glob­al­ly, even uni­ver­sal­ly scaled ambi­tions, as well as his com­pul­sive knack for self-pro­mo­tion. If the designs he came up with to achieve his utopi­an ends nev­er took root in soci­ety (even geo­des­ic domes end­ed up as some­thing like “the hula hoop of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry archi­tec­ture,” James Gle­ick writes, in that they were “every­where, and then they were a bit sil­ly”), the prob­lem had in part to do with the ten­den­cy of his grand visions to out­pace the func­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy of his day.

In his sen­si­bil­i­ty, too, “Bucky” Fuller can come off as a famil­iar type in our own time, even to those who’ve nev­er heard of him. “There is no doubt what­ev­er in Fuller’s mind that the whole devel­op­ment of mod­ern sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy has result­ed from a will­ing­ness on the part of a very few men to sail into the wind of tra­di­tion, to trust in their own intel­lect, and to take advan­tage of their nat­ur­al mobil­i­ty,” wrote the New York­er’s Calvin Tomp­kins in a 1966 pro­file. No won­der he appealed to the Whole Earth Cat­a­log coun­ter­cul­ture of that decade, which even­tu­al­ly evolved into the cul­ture of what we now call Sil­i­con Val­ley, where no declared inten­tion to rein­vent the way humans live and work is too ridicu­lous­ly ambi­tious. Though few fig­ures could have seemed more like­ly to turn per­ma­nent­ly passé, Buck­min­ster Fuller con­tin­ues to inspire fas­ci­na­tion — and in a way, as a patron saint of tech­no-opti­mism, he lives on today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Three-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller, One of the 20th Century’s Most Pro­duc­tive Design Vision­ar­ies

Buck­min­ster Fuller Tells the World “Every­thing He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lec­ture Series (1975)

Buck­min­ster Fuller, Isaac Asi­mov & Oth­er Futur­ists Make Pre­dic­tions About the 21st Cen­tu­ry in 1967: What They Got Right & Wrong

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

A New Online Archive Lets You Read the Whole Earth Cat­a­log and Oth­er Whole Earth Pub­li­ca­tions, Tak­ing You from 1970 to 2002

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.