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             Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots

      The French philosopher René Descartes was reputedly fond of automata: they inspired his view that living things were biological machines that function like clockwork. Less known is a strange story that began to circulate after the philosopher’s death in 1650. This centred on Descartes’s daughter Francine, who died of scarlet fever at the age of five.

      According to the tale, a distraught Descartes had a clockwork Francine made: a walking, talking simulacrum. When Queen Christina invited the philosopher to Sweden in 1649, he sailed with the automaton concealed in a casket. Suspicious sailors forced the trunk open; when the mechanical child sat up to greet them, the horrified crew threw it overboard.

      The story is probably apocryphal. But it sums up the hopes and fears that have been associated with human-like machines for nearly three millennia. Those who build such devices do so in the hope that they will overcome natural limits – in Descartes’s case, death itself. But this very unnaturalness terrifies and repulses others. In our era of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), those polarized responses persist, with pundits and the public applauding or warning against each advance. Digging into the deep history of intelligent machines, both real and imagined, we see how these attitudes evolved: from fantasies of trusty mechanical helpers to fears that runaway advances in technology might lead to creatures that supersede humanity itself.

         (Disponível em: <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05773-y)

        Researchers have unveiled long “hidden” and finely detailed tattoo designs on the skin of ancient mummies from Peru, a study reports. Tattoos were a prevalent art form in pre-Hispanic South America, as attested by the discovery of mummified human remains in the region with preserved skin decoration that date back centuries, and even millennia.

         While such body art works can provide insights into ancient cultures, tattoos are known to fade and bleed over time — a process compounded in mummies by the decay of the body. This often means that the original designs are difficult to make out.

         In the latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers used a technique known as laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) to examine tattoos on mummified individuals belonging to the pre-Hispanic Chancay culture of what is now coastal Peru.

         The mummified remains that team of researchers examined were originally discovered in 1981 at the Cerro Colorado cemetery archaeological site in the Huaura Valley of Peru. The LSF technique revealed “exceptionally fine” and previously unknown details of the ancient tattoos.

         The team managed to identify intricate geometric and zoomorphic (representing animal forms) designs that were “very surprising” because they demonstrate a higher degree of artistic complexity than any other existing Chancay artwork, including on pottery and the culture's renowned textiles. The art of tattooing was clearly important to the Chancay, as evidenced by the high proportion of tattooed individuals among known mummified remains from the ancient culture. 

Hidden Tattoos Revealed on 750-Year-Old Ancient Mummies: ‘Very Surprising’.

Internet: <newsweek.com> (adapted).