Mysteries of the ancient Antikythera Mechanism revealed

For more than 100 years the Antikythera Mechanism, a device salvaged from an ancient Roman shipwreck, has confounded scientists and academics. The device was lost when the ship that was carrying it sank in waters off the Greek island of Antikythera in 65BC. The wreck was found by a sponge diver in 1900.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Anyone who has seen pictures of the Antikythera Mechanism knows that it is a technology that seems to be a product of the 16^th or 17^th centuries rather than the first century BC. I remember as a kid wondering whether it was a remnant of some alien civilization, or perhaps an artifact from Atlantis.

The reality is even more interesting. Scientists now believe that the device was a complex and very accurate astronomical computer that could predict the positions of the sun, moon and planets, and even forecast lunar eclipses. The Antikythera device is the oldest-known device that used gear wheels and is by far the most sophisticated object from the ancient world.

“This device is extraordinary, the only thing of its kind,” Mike Edmunds, a physicist at Cardiff University in Wales, is reported as saying. “The astronomy is exactly right … In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.”

Using the latest technology, scientists have conducted detailed scans of the device, and have found that it dates to around 150 to 100 BC, and had 37 gears, including a differential gear. Previously it was thought that the differential gear was in invented in the 16^th century. The complexity and small size of the gears is similar to the technology of 18^th century clockwork.

One theory on where on how the device came to be on a Roman ship was that it was on its way to Rome after being looted from Rhodes.

The big mystery of course is why the technology for creating Antikythera device was lost. It should be a reminder to us that no matter how great and grand our technology, our world, and our life as we know it, is not immune to the same kinds of threats that have destroyed civilizations before ours.

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