The Antikythera device: Some not so obvious "implications" resulting from it's very existence.

Great post! I love the Antykethera Mechanism. I would hesitate to extrapolate from it, however, for several reasons, including that the device was in such poor condition that we can't be sure of how accurate it was. The ruling classes have always had an extraordinary interest and expertise in astronomy, much of which was due to the power it gave them (a la Apocalypto), but this may not have generalized to other classes in society or other fields of inquiry.

reply to post by tauristercus


Again, starred and flagged.

You are right when you say that you cannot look at this device without gaining some insight into the technological foundations of a society that could produce it.

To plot celestial motions with huge monoliths and exhaustive human resources is one thing; to make a device that is that compact and accurate is orders of magnitude higher in achievement than simple physical labor and observation.

It is obvious that whoever made this device possessed a skill rivaling our own, at least up to the 1800's.

I guess the big question is what happened to that society?

The Romans had some amazing and ingenious mechanical workings, before the fall of their empire.

It's not much different, though, than the little sheets you can get from a book or astronomy store with a slide wheel that you shift to show the different times of year and star formations.

This is a place to get started, follow up with the links at the bottom.
Look up Hero of Alexandria as well.

reply to post by tauristercus
I agree with you,.
I find it very intriguing that this knowledge was nearly buried in history.
For me it ties in with the plausibility that there was such a place such as
Atlantis, as that place was fabled as being of a higher intelligence.

Also, though it may seem off topic,. it could also give a plausibility to the
ancient stories of there being entire civilizations destroyed over night in what
the Mayans told in their stories as we are entering the next stage, after the destruction
of this time we are in.


We find remains of entire civilizations buried under rock and sea as if it happened in a flash.
Who were the designers of the Antikythera? and where is the history of the makers?
as we continue to find new history,. it only raises more questions and changes more history.

I think the answer is easy. It may have been developed in one of the many now sunken citys of the past. Anyone could have made use of the machine without knowledge of how it was created or even the inner workings, just what it does as a result. It could have easily been a prized family heirloom from even more long ago.

reply to post by tauristercus

Dear OP - I am afraid the conclusions you draw from you 4 points are hinting of a little lack of basic knowledge of history of the antiquity...
Mainstream historians have known for a very long time that the greeks (and many others too) had vast knowledge - scientific, mathematical, astronomical, economical, and technical. This is old news, and has been covered by scholars for ages
The greeks are the "inventors" of mathematics, the coined the very term "Planet", they theorized about the existence of the atom - etc, etc, etc
This device (if it even works) does not surprise me at all, and was certainly within the capabilities of the ancients - nothing new or "wow" about it.
The ancient greeks calulated the circumference of our earth (yes they thought is was a round globe...) to an extremely accurate degree. They way they did it was a simple as it was genious.
What we need to realise is that in antiquity the upper class had vast resources, ample time, and all sorts of speculations, art, experiments, etc were highly encourage

Sorry - though I know I am probably in for a round of slamming on this thread no doubt...

reply to post by tauristercus


Good thread, we cannot consider the device in isolation. Especially, it does not make sense for someone to build a highly sophisticated machine only to calculate eclipses. The basic idea of using gears to do mathematical computations is highly revolutionary for the time frame under considerations and why we dont see evidences for other uses is really puzzling. Also we must compare the number systems used in ancient greek/roman against that which is really required to construct such devices. That would give us clues on the origins of the theory behind the technology.

Originally posted by tauristercus

Originally posted by 13th Zodiac
This is based on the asumption that this was the only one of it's kind , these devices may have been as common as todays wrist watch or mobile phones

You may be right that eventually the device may have become commonplace.

But still, there would have had to be a sizeable capital outlay incurred in the design, development, construction and testing of the prototype unit.
Makes you wonder just who the financial backers may have been and what was in it for them. I'm sure that even as far as 2000 years ago, as today, anyone investing large sums of venture capital in an untried project would be expecting to recoup a tidy profit for their risk.

Your first sentence to me implies , that you are claiming the actual device in hand is the original prototype .There is no evidence to support this one way or another .

reply to post by Timetraveller


Actually, it does make sense. Using the knowledge of celestial occurrences and constructing events related to them has been used in many cultures by elites to "wow", threaten and subjugate the "profane" masses.

Great thread, enjoyable to read some thought-provoking speculation about this device, which completely exists, though I'd agree with an earlier poster that we tend to underestimate the Classical Greek & Roman civilizations - they were extremely advanced. Most Roman engineering wasn't even matched again until the 18th-19th Centuries.

As for the use of the device, something that would show positions of planets at any given time would be used in astrology.

There were probably many more devices like this, but since they were made of metals they were probably melted down into weapons during the Dark Ages or other troubled times, when the knowledge of what the devices were and how to use them was lost.

Heaven only knows what we lost during the fall of Rome and the burning of Alexandria. We might have had flying cars by now.

If you some kind of future dude and were to dig up a library from today you could get a very good idea of our civilizations capabilities but there are many things that our military do that are highly perfected from the civilian sources. There is no way you could take all that knowledge and build up some of the equipment found in an aircraft carrier for instance.

Superior navigation techniques were and are a major military advantage. This machine could have been a state sponsored military device that would be installed on the most advanced ships of the time.

reply to post by tauristercus


The Greeks WERE that Intelligent though. We already know that. maybe your idea of the Greeks is a bunch of temple building, play writing silly kids, but they were far more than that. The Minoans, for example. We are only 300 or so years ahead of them. The Romans, for another example. We are only 200 years ahead of them. They had brain and eye surgeries, rebar for concrete. BTW, their concrete was also strong than ours. They had cranes, gears, math, etc etc. The only thing they did not have was knowledge that electricity was a tool to be used. That alone sets them behind us.

an AntiCythera device ? ... noooooooooooooo

reply to post by tauristercus


This discovery, along with practically every other discovery of an ancient civilization, tells me that our scientific community is on the wrong path.

These days, gazing upon the stars is a dated practice, laughable at best by chemists and physicists alike. But tell me, what "advanced" civilization didn't pay close attention to celestial bodies? Seems to me that every culture payed VERY close attention to the stars, so much so that one could say there is more to them than meets the eye.

Yet, astrology is laughed at instead of scrutinized...

Great post!

These are the kind of threads I like to see on ATS. I agree there must have been an extensive amount of knowledge that has been lost from this time period, and when you piece things together it seems as if this knowledge may have been kept secret from the majority of the public. That's just my opinion though, but I mean, look at how secretive they are with the pyramids, and with the newly discovered tomb under the sphinx. Why? It makes me angry to think about the history they may be keeping from us!

Oh, star and flag btw!

the greek "Hephaestus"
anagram "A Sheep Tush"

Back to the OP
The greeks didn't invent math for example "O" was invented by the islamic mathmaticians
The math of the pyramids shows they didn't invent that either
Astronomy was well established in Babylon
The Chinese did the eclipse thing years before

Manual use, not really for navigation?
In navigation you need to know what time it is
this is critical
You have to know when you are to figure out where you are
out on the open sea especially
I would guess
You would set this to the observed phenomenon
This woud give you the when...
and using the maps of the world like the ones the piri reis map was copied from
you could fix your position
this might explain why it was found in a ship wreck and not in a temple

The europeans had to wait for the clock to do this
so
if this was a common machine it sure wasn't by the time europe started to explore.

Our known history seriously lacks knowledge of what went on in ancient Asia, namely China and India among other far eastern civilizations. I don't see the gap you report in the OP. Because right around zero great architecture began to build great Cathedrals out of stone, people sailed the oceans to new continents and survived there for hundreds of years. And then the mini Ice Age began and simple survival became paramount that not only drained resources to invent, but also divided whole civilizations to the point of man eat man. But the cathedrals grew higher, with huge vast open inside spaces never before seen on this planet.

I don't really see a gap of technological advances, I see some stalls due to the elements, and the social divides created by hardships than European civilizations balked at correcting due to their beliefs, of which the religious type of beliefs that stalled, and enhanced technological advances in those times, all at the same time.

But we still have very little knowledge of what was going on in the far east during this time and the time you reference.

Tis true. . .nothing is new under this sun. Once mankind begins to release the need to grasp imperfect perceptions of a false, allbeit secure, history. . .then that which we know as the future will reveal the deafening truth that we are not alone, nor were we ever.

The Mechanism was built by Greeks, not because i say so, but because the inscriptions on it are in Greek.

See the link below, for photographs of the incriptions.

Inscriptions On the Antikythera Mechanism