![]() The imaginary integration of living and non-living components, melding biology with metallurgical “mechanics,” makes Talos into a kind of cyborg. After the 5th century BC Montesarchio Vase, drawing by Michele Angel. Jason using a tool to remove the bolt on Talos’s ankle. Notably, the myth described the tube in Talos with the ancient medical term for “vein.” In antiquity, the vein on the ankle was used for bloodletting. During casting at great heat, the melted wax flowed out at the feet. In lost-wax casting, bronze statues were made with interior tubes of wax from head to toe. Cook proposed an intriguing theory for the distinctive physiology of Talos. 450 BCE, Art Resource.ĭrawing on metallurgy technology of the Bronze Age, classicist A. Scenes of Jason using a tool to remove the bolt appear on fifth century BCE vase paintings and vase painters humanized the bronze giant in their illustrations of his demise. When Jason removed the bolt, ichor flowed out like “molten lead” and Talos’s “life” ebbed away. She convinced Talos that she could make him immortal, but only if he allowed Jason to remove the bolt on his ankle. Luckily, the sorceress Medea figured out how to destroy Talos with a combination of persuasion and technology. The story of Talos is best known from the Argonautica, the epic saga of Jason and the Argonauts, who almost became the robot’s victims. Talos hurling a rock and the Golden Hound, automatons made by Hephaestus for King Minos. The “vivisystem” was sealed with a bronze bolt on his ankle. ![]() We even have the details of his inner workings: an artery ran from his head to his foot and in this conduit pulsated his power source, ichor, the life force of the immortal gods. “Programmed” to spot strangers and hurl boulders to sink ships, the killer robot could also heat his body and roast people by hugging them to his chest. The bronze guardian Talos was charged with defending King Minos’s kingdom of Crete. These female androids, says Homer, “looked just like real women” and moved on their own, with “reason and mind.” Moreover, they were endowed with “all the knowledge of the gods,” essentially an ancient version of Artificial Intelligence. Examples include gates that automatically opened and closed for the gods’ chariots, “smart” bellows for his forge, a choir of singing statues, gold and silver animated watchdogs, driverless delivery carts to serve ambrosia at celestial banquets, and a staff of Golden Maidens as his assistants. ![]() My book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, delves into the earliest expressions of the desire to create artificial life, from the age of mythology to proliferation of real automatons in Alexandria, Egypt.Īccording to Homer’s Iliad, Hephaestus, the god of invention and technology, made a host of automated devices. So, thousands of years before medieval and early modern machines-and centuries before innovations of the Hellenistic era (fourth century to first century BCE) produced real self-moving devices-ideas about creating artificial life were being explored in imaginative thought experiments, set in an alternate world where technology was marvelously advanced. Ancient poets describe the artificial entities as “made, not born,” to emphasize their technological, non-biological origins. The stories envisioned ways of replicating nature by a process of bio-techne, “life through craft.” These beings were not simply inert matter brought to life by magic or a god’s command. Robots, synthetic beings, and self-moving devices appear in myths about Odysseus, Jason and the Argonauts, the sorceress Medea, the bronze automaton Talos, and Pandora. I found descriptions of imaginary automatons as early Homer, more than 2,500 years ago, in a remarkable group of Greek myths. But I wondered, was it possible that the concepts of robots could have been imagined in classical antiquity, long before technology made them possible? Other scholars assume that all animated beings in mythology were inert matter brought to life by gods or magic, like Adam and Eve or Pygmalion’s ivory statue. Some philosophers of science claim that it was impossible for anyone in ancient times to imagine technologies beyond what already existed. Who first imagined robots? Most historians believe that automatons were first developed in the Middle Ages. ASOR-AFFILIATED RESEARCH CENTERS FELLOWSHIPSĪncient Automatons in Myth and History By Adrienne Mayor.MEMBERSHIP & ANNUAL MEETING SCHOLARSHIPS.SCHOLARSHIPS FOR FIELDWORK PARTICIPATION.2023 Call for Member-Organized Sessions and Workshops.ASOR-AFFILIATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS.
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