As Mr Clarke says, the Antikythera Mechanism for sure is ancient wisdom that changed our view of back then; the others are questionable. The Antikythera mechanism is one proof the dark ages happened(as is the fact that things like Euclid's elements were 'radical' knowledge to the Europeans of a 1000 A.D. as i've already commented on this blog before).
As Arthur C. Clarke points out further, where would humanity be if the dark ages hadn't happened? Today, we're in the beginning stages of nano-manufacturing and the associated nanotechnologies, quantum computers, chaotic dynamics controls, artificial intelligence. If the dark ages hadn't happened, we'd either have destroyed ourselves a thousand years ago, or, we'd have settled many thousnads of stars by now; we couldn't imagine the science and technology we'd have right now.
This point is a main point of today's intellectuals interested in Extraterrestrial civilizations. The industrial era of humanity seems to be a small window. We either graduate to nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, or perish. This would be the same for other intelligences around the cosmos. So, we shouldn't expect to detect any radio emissions or thousands of them.
While this may be true, the fact that we see nothing but natural phenomenon, stars, galaxies, and nebula seems a little bit weird. We don't see any engineering on a large scale, and yet, with the knowlede of the capabilities we ourselves most likely will be on in just a century(actually decades now), not to mention that most Extraterrestrial intelligences must be thousands if not millions of years beyond us, the universe should be swarming with intelligence. Maybe they choose to not reveal themsevles and talk to us? Maybe, but, what about interstellar wars between them? We don't see any evidence of that either!
I for one fear that most intelligences get sucked up with religions, and the religions say to not go much further down the road to science enlightenment. I've already seen that most nanotechnologists think we should lock up humanity here on earth untill everyone is converted to christianity.
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