The fascinating untold story of how the ancients imagined robots and other forms of artificial life – and even invented real automated machines.

The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life – and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, “life through craft.” In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements – and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines.

As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend; Buddha’s precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley.
A ground breaking account of the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveals how some of today’s most advanced innovations in robotics and AI were foreshadowed in ancient myth―and how science has always been driven by imagination. This is mythology for the age of AI.

Talos, the Killer Robot from Ancient Greek Mythology
Article by Robert Lamb

If you were to go looking for the world’s first mechanical humanoid, you’d have to go all the back to ancient Greek mythology. His name? Talos, the man of bronze.
Talos emerged from the tales of Jason and his Argonauts – a band of heroes that in some ways stands as a proto-superhero team. When our heroes reached the island of Crete, they encountered a bronze automaton created in the likeness of a man. There, the great protector stalked the shores, hurling rocks at unidentified sea vessels and embracing any enemy brave enough to land in an immolating red-hot bear hug.
The origin of Talos varies. Some accounts describe him as the last survivor of an ancient race of bronze men, but the more popular versions attribute his creation to Hephaestus, god of the forge. Later tellings even cast him as the work of Daedalus, the mythic inventor of the Minoan maze and the wings of Icarus.

Wherever he came from, his appearance in Greek myth mostly revolves around his demise. Ancient spoiler alert: Jason and the Argonauts were able to overcome the bronze man (described variously as a giant or a human-sized entity) only with the aid of the sorceress Medea. With magic and deception, she pulled a bronze nail from Talos’ heel and drained the vital ichor fluid (or blood of the gods) from its body, reducing the mighty guardian to a heap of lifeless metal.
While myths can reveal much about history and culture, this episode also concerns the nature of technology.

On one hand, Talos stands as a potential metaphor for the might of bronze technology during the Greek Bronze Age, stretching from 3200 to 1200 B.C.E. In its towering stature, we see the elite nature of bronze craftsmanship at the time, as well as the military prowess of bronze weaponry. It was an age of peak bronze technology. The might of nations depended upon this durable alloy.
All ages come to an end, however, and historians believe that the invaders who attacked Greece from the north around 1200 B.C.E. used iron weapons. So it’s possible that this is a tale of the transition from bronze to iron, with Talos’ destruction symbolizing the end of bronze superiority.
Talos is something special, even to modern humans. He’s the embodiment of technological achievement and divine power intertwined in a single mythic being. And, as classics professor Merlin Peris pointed out in his 1971 paper discussing the “Abominable Bronze Man”:

Talos is remarkably futuristic, anticipating the scientific possibilities of the present age, and even then, belonging more with the bizarre imaginings of the new mythology of science fiction than with the mechanisms created and used in real life.

This killer robot stares back at us from the mists of ancient human civilization, reflecting the attitudes of its time but also challenging us to consider the ramifications of artistic and technological creation. What are the limits of the modern Talos’ might? How terrible is its embrace?
Despite the never-ending onslaught of sci-fi killer robots, these questions remain as enthralling as ever.

Source: history.howstuffworks.com

Hephaestus

Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire, and volcanoes. He had his own palace on Olympus, containing his workshop with anvil and twenty bellows that worked at his bidding. Hephaestus crafted much of the magnificent equipment of the gods, and almost any finely wrought metalwork imbued with powers that appears in Greek myth is said to have been forged by Hephaestus. He designed Hermes’ winged helmet and sandals, the Aegis breastplate, Aphrodite’s famed girdle, Agamemnon’s staff of office, Achilles’ armour, Heracles’ bronze clappers, Helios’s chariot, and Eros’s bow and arrows.

Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him. This included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus. He gave to the blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide. In some versions of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestus’s forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave to man, the woman Pandora and her pithos. Being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus.
The Greek myths and the Homeric poems sanctified in stories that Hephaestus had a special power to produce motion. He made the golden and silver lions and dogs at the entrance of the palace of Alkinoos in such a way that they could bite the invaders.
George Georgiou

Source: Wikipedia / Sergiosantos.cgsociety.org

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