Navigation advances in ancient world.

Thinking about that Hellenistic world knew Earth was round, and had a good guess of circumference of the World. How about giving them something extra to try to kick their assess into Age of Discovery eventually.

So, somewhere in Rome or pre Rome Hellenistic states, or India or China astrolabe and quadrant are invented and start to be used before 100BC. I don't see anything about them demanding them be discovered only in middle ages. Sextant and octant are different story, and require knowledge of optics ancient world didnt have.

What I hope to achieve with this POD. Better navigation, opportunity to build better ships, that eventaully demand better navigation... => Age of Discovery, eventually.
 
No...If anything trade would be important but don't think this will lead to a quicker colonial period. The mediterranean does not have the suitable technology to make their colonies STICK in any one area.

Example? Greenland under the vikings.
 
It is actually quite possible that that kind of technology was kn own to the Ancients. We have only a hazy picture of Hellenistic science, but it looks pretty impressive. The problem is, I can't see it going much further than it did. I suspect that what was missing wasnm't so much the upper tier of knowledge as the underpinnings of everyday technology and skill. Being able to build an astrolabe does not mean being able to build and provision an oceangoing ship. A better aproach towards a POD might be to give the Greeks or Romans a compelling reason to go exploring.
 
L. Srague DeCamp, in his book The Ancient Engineers, pointed out that one problem that the ancient world had was that there was no patent or copyright law. A valuble new technology only gave you a competitive advantage if you kept it secret outside of your family. A primitive electrical cell was known in Syria in the first century and was used (presumeably) for silver-plating small images but was never known widely becuase it was not in the economic interests of the inventors to do so.
 
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