Uploaded December 2019 | Updated September 2026, 13 hours ago
Gods and Robots: Myths and Ancient Dreams of Technology
Adrienne Mayor, PhD
Who first imagined robots, animated statues, automatons, and Artificial Intelligence? The surprising answer is that long before technology made self-moving devices possible, concepts of artificial life and qualms about replicating nature were explored in ancient mythology. Beings that were “made, not born” feature in myths about Jason and the Argonauts, the bronze robot Talos, the sorceress Medea, the genius craftsman Daedalus, the fire-bringer Prometheus, and Pandora, the artificial woman created by Hephaestus, the god of technology. As the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, these mythologies reveal imagination as the spirit uniting myth and science.
Gods and Robots: Myths and Ancient Dreams of Technology
Adrienne Mayor, PhD
Who first imagined robots, animated statues, automatons, and Artificial Intelligence? The surprising answer is that long before technology made self-moving devices possible, concepts of artificial life and qualms about replicating nature were explored in ancient mythology. Beings that were “made, not born” feature in myths about Jason and the Argonauts, the bronze robot Talos, the sorceress Medea, the genius craftsman Daedalus, the fire-bringer Prometheus, and Pandora, the artificial woman created by Hephaestus, the god of technology. As the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, these mythologies reveal imagination as the spirit uniting myth and science.
