Quite a few movies with archaeology have as part of the plot ancient traps with elaborate automation that are triggered by pressing or lifting something (e.g. Indiana Jones and "Les rivières pourpres 2 - Les anges de l'apocalypse").

Are these ideas based on anything real? Is there any documented ancient automation on this scale? Has any survived to this day?

I am not thinking of technology that you can have in your hand (like Antikythera mechanism), but something where you activate it and something surprising/dangerous happens which is human sized (e.g. secret door opens, stone rolls to crush you, or arrows fired against you).

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I thought that I provided an answer to this question, but I can't find it.

The First Emperor of China died in 210 BC and was buried in an elaborate tomb described about a century later by the Grand Historian of China.




To repeat:


So this is a very famous direct historical claim - possibly correct - that in one case automatic weapons were installed in a tomb. Of course that claim has not yet been verified by archaeology.

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