Return to Antikythera - 2000 Year Old Computer

Maritime archaeologist, Brendan Foley, has finally received permission from the Greek authorities to explore the seabed where the extraordinary Antikythera mechanism was found.

It’s been more than 2000 years since the Roman ship sank in Greek waters and over a century since sponge divers rediscovered the wreck. That’s a lot of time passing by and our own technology had to raise its game to identify what lay within the crust and the rust.

This week, Foley and his team will begin to explore the seabeds of Antikythera and map the wreck site.

Any items found on the wreck site could provide further clues to the origin or ownership of the ship. And not all of the pieces of the Antikythera mechanism were ever found. It's a long shot, but those missing bits could still be on the seabed.

Return to Antikythera

This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.

The device that let Greeks decode the Solar System

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/vm506dfd19.jpg[/atsimg]

The history and the story of this intriguing device is almost unknown to us. Sure, we know what it was for and we know how it was constructed. What we don't know is who designed it; was it a one-off prototype or a fancy trinket for the ultra-rich patrons of a genius engineer?

If Foley's exploration is successful, they could learn where the vessel came from, what else was in the cargo and...just maybe...if there were more of these devices.

This suggests the area hasn't been looted (which makes sense given the difficulty of diving here), so any new wrecks found could be pristine. "Everyone is very, very excited," Foley says of the upcoming mission. "This ought to be extraordinary."

He also points out that the Antikythera ship, with its valuable cargo, is unlikely to have been travelling alone. When it sank, others in its fleet may have gone down too. Could one of them have been carrying another Antikythera mechanism? For the past hundred years, this awe-inspiring device has stood alone, our only glimpse into a technology lost for millennia. That might – just might – now change.

thats got to have been one of the most amazing things ever found i hope they find more treasures down there.

heres a video telling you about the mechanism.

reply to post by majestic3


It looks older than 2,000 years...much, much older. I wonder if it was already an antique back then, when it was loaded on the ship that took it to the depths. I can't help but wonder if it was as much of a mystery to the Greeks back then.

Most interesting topic!

Des

This thing has had my imagination going for years. It's elegance is fantastic. A singularly magnificent piece to human history.

I, also, can't imagine this is 2000 years old.

Nor the Egyptian pyramids 5000. Nor the Greek ruins being 4000.

An off-point moment here: I'm of the school of a longer human existence.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
What we don't know is who designed it; was it a one-off prototype or a fancy trinket for the ultra-rich patrons of a genius engineer?

My guess would be that something like this doesn't just appear out of nowhere, and that there was probably an evolution of the device up from more simpler devices we just haven't found yet.

As for the genius engineer part, our large corporations and universities put those freaky geniuses to work these days, but in the past, all you basically had were your rich people, kings, and so on. People tend to forget, but there have always been super, Einstein-level geniuses around, even in the Stone Age. Most of them worked and died (or were killed) on era-appropriate things and we'll never know who they were. Occasionally, we find out about one, like the Egyptian super-genius, Imhotep. We'll probably never know who built the Antikythera mechanism. But at least we can admire what he was able to accomplish.

Thanks for bringing this back to our attention.
I always enjoy reading about this thing.

If it is not a one off, I wonder if there might be a complete functioning one in some wealthy family's home somewhere?
Or perhaps the Vatican.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Fascinating subject mate and I think the paragraph you posted just about sums things up:

This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.

Will certainly be keeping an eye on this thread!

Thanks for bringing that to mind again, just refreshed my knowledge a little in regards to this.
The complexity is mind-blowing seeing it is 2000 years old.

Originally posted by majestic3
thats got to have been one of the most amazing things ever found i hope they find more treasures down there.

heres a video telling you about the mechanism.

This is an excellent video.

It talks about the divers that originally found the device and what other artifacts they found. The device wasn't the only found at the site.

They also found bronze statues (or pieces of).

I don't think the site has ever been thoroughly searched - so this is exciting.

Here is part 2 to go with part 1.

Originally posted by watchitburn
If it is not a one off, I wonder if there might be a complete functioning one in some wealthy family's home somewhere? Or perhaps the Vatican.

Maybe some upper level Masonic group has an actual original machine like this tucked away somewhere in a vault. Hard to say. A lot can happen over a couple thousand years. What tends to happen to artifacts from kings and other wealthy people when the eventually get overthrown or invaded by some barbaric or fanatically religious horde? They get hidden or destroyed. Squirreled away or smashed. This machine was Greek, but it was based on old Babylonian astronomy, which wouldn't necessarily sit well with some people.

Maybe they'll come up with something new at the site. Maybe there was a big shipment of these machines heading from Greece and Archimedes, going to some rich people somewhere.

Originally posted by flexy123
Thanks for bringing that to mind again, just refreshed my knowledge a little in regards to this.
The complexity is mind-blowing seeing it is 2000 years old.

Taking that in mind you can imagine what genius the guy must be who figured it all out and made a replica with just a few pieces of clogged debrie.

Although this device is fascinating - it's simple just a smaller version of the math and science ancient man has used for at least 7000 years AD - Only 2 thousand years this for this device.. when the knowledge was around 5000 years before It ! - It simply took 5000 years to be able to put some of that math and science into a small device.

Here's why I think this:


I'm reading a book just now called Earth Magic by Francis Hitching published in 1977. It's all about Stonehenge and other Megaliths throughout the world. He highlights the studies of these megaliths and the various methods of examination archeologists employed on them. It's interesting because you see how archeology changes over the years and how flawed it is, being fraught with very unscientific methods even in present day. Many so called confirmed findings have to be continually re-confirmed or tossed out altogether as real science is now starting to be applied to archeology. Many of the old beliefs that are now proven untrue are still being circulated as fact today.

He has a chapter called Unwritten Science. In this chapter he tells of how it is now accepted as fact ( based on the work of Professor Alexander Thom who discovered the megalithic yard ( a yard stick used by ancients all over the world ) en.wikipedia.org... and others that has been re-examined and shown to live up to computational scrutiny) that Stonehenge and many other megaliths are proven to be very precise instruments of calculating/observing the positions of the sun, moon, eclipse's, the moons standstill phases and other other data. These measurements were not general measurements, but very exact. It is shown in consecutive years how megalithic man kept improving his technique striving for mathematical perfection - long before written language existed. Modern man didn't re-discover these until some centuries after 100 AD. These megaliths in question and the peoples that built them predate 100 AD by at least 7,000 years. This predates the flood of the Bible by at least 3000 years !

Thanks Kandinsky!

Although a wonderful piece of machinery it does reflect what was known at that time in the Classical world and they did make one fundamental mistake, the machine reflects a geocentric solar system instead of a Heliocentric one.

I do hope the new investigation will find more on the context of the ship and what it might have been doing and where it was bound or had come from.....................

The undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau spent a couple of days at the wreck site in 1978 and brought up some precious smaller items, including some coins from the Asia Minor coast, which suggested that the ship sailed from there around 70-60 BC (probably carrying war booty from Greek colonies back to Rome). But even with their sleek scuba gear, Cousteau's divers could spend only brief minutes on the seabed without risking the bends

From the source

I guess it would be to much to hope for another mechanism? lol

Originally posted by SeenAlot
This thing has had my imagination going for years. It's elegance is fantastic. A singularly magnificent piece to human history.

I, also, can't imagine this is 2000 years old.

Nor the Egyptian pyramids 5000. Nor the Greek ruins being 4000.

An off-point moment here: I'm of the school of a longer human existence.

It parts have inscribed on them notes in Greek and use names for the calendar consistent with a Greek city, and festival and events important to the Greek world, Olympics, etc, so most probably of Greek or Sicilian Greek construction

Originally posted by Hanslune
...they did make one fundamental mistake, the machine reflects a geocentric solar system instead of a Heliocentric one.

True, but possibly with a curious twist:

Prof Edmunds said that the machine appeared to be based on a solar system with the Earth at its centre, but may have been designed with the idea that Mercury and Venus revolved round the Sun.

(excerp from link in OP)

I find that statement really interesting but it leaves me at a loss on what to think the facts may be.

Is it, isn't it or is it partly heliocentric?

reply to post by masqua


Interesting I did see that but a dual capable machine would be even more wonderful. Lets see if they can find something to confirm that.

Amazing stuff ! We really don't know our history, that's for sure.
I love the 3D animation of the clock.

Awesome find..I beleive this is not first one they have used.. there has to be some smaller devices which led to made this device..However i do beleive Ancient had the techs and brain & Awareness and they are not so dumb..

there is an ancient Greek male called Aristarkies (or similar spelling), that worked it out that the Earth, moon, planets were globes, that they orbited the sun, and that the little twinkling things in the night sky were suns like Sol, that knowledge was ignored, but thankfully not lost.

Very interesting news.

Goes to show the ancients were a lot more advanced than they want us to know.
We'll have to wait and see if they find the missing pieces, which is a long shot like the article says, but still, not impossible.

S&F