they were considered unnecessary to the needs of the current society

Then there's also greek computers that were lost

We get a small glimpse from what Solon passed on, but much of it is lost

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

lostech irl

holy shit that's awesome

Also roman steam power

If anything is evidence of time travel it's greece & rome

rome didnt have steam power

they had a spinny thing they found entertaining

It was proposed to use it for power

But the idea was dropped because slaves were currency

someone in the middle ages invented refrigeration too

they just used it for party tricks

So reducing their value would have basically ruined the post-money roman economy

Capitalism is what drives innovation

Probably required too much power to keep things cool for long time

considering that most of what roman slaves did was agriculture

Anything else is stagnating and party tricks

and all the steam engine is good for really is pumping water

assuming you dont have high class metallurgy to make railroads and stuff

i think the slaves jobs wouldve been pretty secure even if they did mechanize it

but they didnt

Imagine if a Roman built a steam boat

can you fucking imagine steampunk rome

to build a steam boat you need paddles

or screws

Or a train

they didnt have the metallurgy for screws

much less a full train

maybe a paddle boat

What would you need screws for

What I’m pretty sure they had screw technology

screws make ships move

theyre how you translate an engines power into propulsion

they didn't even have steel afaik

in modern ships

at least not in any bigger quantities

these are massive screws

youd need proper metallurgy

likewise even making a proper steam engine