The Antikythera Mechanism — The Amazing Ancient Greek Device Decoded

I find this utterly fascinating! The ancients clearly understood far more than they are often given credit for.

See also these related threads:

Antikythera: A 2,000-year-old Greek computer comes back to life
Antikythera clockwork computer may be even older than thought

And for further discussion of other possible technological marvels of the ancients, see these two current threads:

Giza Pyramid Machines: Their true purpose finally revealed.
Mechanical Engineering in Ancient times

Cool stuff, huh?



[edit on 10-1-2010 by loam]

Excellent find!
This is what ATS is all about!
Star and Flag.

reply to post by loam
Nice thread I'll confess to rolling up my sleeves when I saw the title, in the expectation that someone had 'definite proof' of an alien gearbox. Sorry! The Antikythera Mechanism was in mystery books I read as a kid. It seemed to be evidence of that mysterious 'lost race' or ET in origin.

It's been fascinating following our modern technology being applied to discovering it's function. It's taken a lot of technology too. X-rays, CT scans and forensic analysis.

At the end of all the studying and reproducing an exact copy of the device it's proven to be an accurate calendar that even allowed for lunar eclipses...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3a07feed84b6.jpg[/atsimg]

A 2006 Nature paper goes into more detail about the mechanism and concludes...

The Antikythera Mechanism shows great economy and ingenuity of design. It stands as a witness to the extraordinary technological potential of Ancient Greece, apparently lost within the Roman Empire.

Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calculator
known as the Antikythera Mechanism

There's an illogical notion that I've held for years now. It's that most generations produce a freak genius that helps to propel our knowledge even further. The person that conceived and/or designed this timepiece was one of them. He or she was comparable to the da Vincis that history pays tribute to.

That this mechanism also recorded the schedules for the Greek Olympics shows that we haven't changed all that much in the last few centuries

reply to post by Kandinsky

Originally posted by Kandinsky
There's an illogical notion that I've held for years now. It's that most generations produce a freak genius that helps to propel our knowledge even further. The person that conceived and/or designed this timepiece was one of them.

I have always felt somewhat differently about this.

I believe this technology was far more ubiquitous than we currently believe. I mean, what are the chances that we would 'find' the single example of this mechanism on a sunken ship a few thousand years later? If there was only ever one such device, then the chances must have been astronomical!!!

Ask yourself how much of our crap will survive a few thousand years from now?

Makes you think, huh?

With the ability to design and construct a device like this they could have developed long range navigation, by making a simple 12 hour clock/watch and using it in conjunction with a sextant. They obviously had the skill.

[edit on 13-1-2010 by Blackmarketeer]

Fact is we don’t know much about the device.

Why it was on the ship?
Was it owned by the captain of the ship?
Was it owned by one of the Crew of the ship?
Was it being transported to the person who bought it?
Was the owner of the device also the one who created it, and was that person on the ship?
Was this a one off device?
Was this a prototype of other devices to be made, or was this the finished device?

I am sure there are many more questions, but without answers to these questions, it would be difficult to actually know more. We can speculate all we want, but until then all we have is the device that does what it does, which is basically a calendar, as far as we know.

[edit on 1/13/2010 by AlienCarnage]

A fascinating machine indeed.The gear wheels in the device were seriously advanced when it was built.
After the machine was lost-so was the knowledge of the gear cogs,which did not show up for another 1000 years,when they were re invented!!
I always think of that when people say that we today are at the pinnacle of our technological evolution-The Antikythera Mechanism proves that sometimes,technology and knowledge are lost in the sands of time.
Like the "baghdad battery."

Has anyone done a comparison of this "calendar device" with the mayan calendar?

Do they track the same cycles, dates, precession, etc?

Thanks OP for bringing the videos forward. Just absolutely amazing to me. Love it Love it!

I dont think such an item could be so perfected without earlier works of the like. I think we are lucky to of found such a thing but I also think there would be others.

S&F

LV

[edit on 14-1-2010 by LeoVirgo]

reply to post by loam


Truly remakable find and thanks for posting!
Can't wait to watch the videos.
I would also be intersted to find if there is indeed any correlation with with the Myan calendar and therefore an influence from the Olmecs.

Much love...

reply to post by AlienCarnage


Valid questions and surely if we knew the answer to even half of these we would have a better "view" of the matter.

There was a speculation in an old Berlitz book I read when younger (much younger!) that this was kinda like a compass was in the 16-17th century or kinda like the GPS is today, one aboard each ship to facilitate navigation. It is extremely "advanced" especially when compared to mere statues, temples or anything else we have from the ancient Greeks, technology-wise, but it was essential for seafaring so it is not that far-fetched an idea. One might ask "so, how come this is the only one found so far?". Possible answers to that could be that it was relatively "new" a technology and wasn't so widespread yet or it was quite "delicate" and didn't survive long under water (which could make this one somewhat of a "freak" for doing exactly that!)

From what I have read about its discovery (newspaper articles here in Greece), when first discovered it was almost thrown back in the water as the fishermen that discovered the wreck didn't know what it was, they just saw a mess of sea weed and wood and some metal pieces stuck together. Perhaps there have been another, in another wreck, that was treated like that, completely discarded due to advanced decay making it unrecognizable as a complex piece of "machinery". We can never be sure, until we discover another or retrieve all the ancient Greek shipwrecks and find no other mechanism like this one!

Maybe it was too complex for the average seaman to use and was abandoned in favor of simpler "tools"/methods? Sacrificing sophistication for wider usability maybe?

Here's the question of the day:

If the Antikythera mechanism was used to calculate the positions of the Sun, moon and stars, why would a machine be made over 2,000 years ago to do this? Why was the cosmos so important to them?

Unless there was higher technology back then that we're unaware of, I would think that a machine was a big deal back then. That's all I'm saying...

reply to post by loam


Just watched the video's...absolutely brilliant and well presented.
I was totally unaware of it's existance.
Many thanks for bringing it to our attention!

Much love...

Originally posted by impaired
Here's the question of the day:

If the Antikythera mechanism was used to calculate the positions of the Sun, moon and stars, why would a machine be made over 2,000 years ago to do this? Why was the cosmos so important to them?

Unless there was higher technology back then that we're unaware of, I would think that a machine was a big deal back then. That's all I'm saying...

Assuming that ancient Greeks had no clocks or other elaborate time measuring devices (if they did they knew how to hide them ;>) such a device was vital for predicting eclipses (remember, superstitions are alive today, so much so were alive and kicking back then), calculating equinoxes, planning harvest and other agricultural events (sowing perhaps?) tied to those equinoxes and of course phases of the Moon. In short, without the need for some assumed higher technology level present, the Antikythera device was their calendar, their portable, "mechanized" calendar.

It seems though that it was primarily used for navigation, without ruling out other side-uses.