The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,1
is this sustainable? Will we reach a time when advancement stagnates? Some believe we’ve already reached that tipping point. Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, penned a manifesto, The Great Stagnation, stating that we’ve reached our apex of innovation by having already taken full advantage of cheap energy and industrial-age breakthroughs. He thinks our time of rapid advancement is coming to an end.
Or will it? There certainly have been periods of technological stagnation, mostly because individual societies actively choose to stop innovating. The Chinese did it after the Ming Era; the Arab world followed suit during the fourteenth century. Still, it seems whenever one part of the world douses the flame of innovation, another picks it up. When the Arab world was sinking into darkness, the countries of Europe started the Renaissance, carrying forward the torch that the Islamic world had forsaken.
To illustrate, from the eighth to the fourteenth century—known as the Islamic Golden Age—Arab scientists proved themselves to be masters of design and innovation. One of the most prominent was Ismail al-Jazari (1136–1206), who invented all manner of tools from water clocks to sophisticated automatons. The components and techniques of construction were beyond anything seen before. Al-Jazari’s greatest masterwork was a volume titled The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices and contained diagrams for more than a hundred inventions. He would become known as “the Leonardo da Vinci of the Arab World.”
In fact, it is believed that Leonardo was influenced—even “borrowed”—from the works of al-Jazari, who died two centuries before Leonardo was born. By doing so, Leonardo carried forward the torch of innovation that had been abandoned by the Islamic world after its golden age dimmed. In fact, al-Jazari’s influence over Leonardo has proven to be far greater than anyone imagined—as you will soon discover.
Still, such is the path of innovation: passed from one hand to another, from one country to another, from one century to another.
Finally, let’s return to that old adage “necessity is the mother of all invention.” If true, this begs the question: What has fired up invention and innovation more than anything else?
“I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.”
—WORDS FROM THE GHOST OF ACHILLES IN HOMER’S ODYSSEY
Happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the Dead.
—LEONARDO DA VINCI
Prologue
December 10, 1515 A.D.
Rome, Italy
The artist leaned closer to the decapitated head. The macabre decoration stood spiked atop the table of his studio, perfectly lit by the morning’s brightness. In fact, he had chosen this apartment at the Belvedere due to this wonderful light. The villa stood within the Vatican, on grounds considered holy. Still, without a tremor of hesitation, he expertly dissected the skin off the dead girl’s cheek. The poor lass had died before her seventeenth birthday.
A tragedy, but one that nonetheless made her an excellent specimen.
He exposed the fine musculature under her skin and squinted at the delicate fibers that ran from her cheekbone down to the corner of her slack lips. He spent the next hour carefully tweezing muscles and noting how the pale lips moved in response to his efforts. He paused only to scratch at a parchment, recording each movement with deft strokes of his left hand. He noted the tiny shifts of the dead woman’s nostril, the way the conformation of the cheek changed, the wrinkling of her lower eyelid.
Once satisfied, he stood with a creak of his back and stepped to the plank of wood resting on its easel. He picked up a horsehair brush and studied the left side of his subject’s unfinished face, her countenance forever fixed at a three-quarter turn. Without his subject here, he had to proceed from memory. For the moment, he ignored the fall of her painted tresses, the drape of her gown. Instead he dabbed his brush in oil and adjusted a shadow near her lip, using the knowledge he had just gained from his dissection.
Satisfied, he stepped back.
Better . . . much better.
Twelve years ago, while he had been living in Florence, a rich merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, had commissioned him to paint a portrait of his young wife, the beautiful and enigmatic Lisa. Since then, he had carried her unfinished portrait with him: from Florence to Milan to Rome. Even still, he was not ready