quote: The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in a shipwreck by sponge divers in 1900. There’s some debate as to when exactly it dates from, however, most historians agree it was at some point between 60 BCE and 200 BCE. Using a series of bronze gears, it was used to predict eclipses, track the movements of the Sun, Moon, and stars, and the positions of the five planets then known to the Greeks: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The abilities of this enigmatic device make it stand out as hundreds, if not thousands, of years ahead of other similar technology of the time.
The new study has deciphered the text on the device‘s 82 remaining fragments using X-ray scanning and newly developed imaging technology. Many of the ancient Greek inscriptions were not visible to the naked eye, mainly because the text is so small – some letters are only 1.2 millimeters high. Hundreds of years of wear and tear to the machine, as well as build up of sediment, had equally rendered much of the writing unreadable.
Antikithera mechanism An international team of archaeologists, astronomers and historians have spent the past 10 years deciphering the many mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's first mechanical computer. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post) Item 15087 wasn't much to look at, particularly compared to other wonders uncovered from the shipwreck at Antikythera, Greece, in 1901. The underwater excavation revealed gorgeous bronze sculptures, ropes of decadent jewelry and a treasure trove of antique coins.
Amid all that splendor, who could have guessed that a shoebox-size mangled bronze machine, its inscriptions barely legible, its gears calcified and corroded, would be the discovery that could captivate scientists for more than a century?
"In this very small volume of messed-up corroded metal you have packed in there enough knowledge to fill several books telling us about ancient technology, ancient science and the way these interacted with the broader culture of the time," said Alexander Jones, a historian of ancient science at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. "It would be hard to dispute that this is the single most information-rich object that has been uncovered by archaeologists from ancient times."
Jones is part of an international team of archaeologists, astronomers and historians who have labored for the past 10 years to decipher the mechanism's many mysteries. The results of their research, including the text of a long explanatory "label" revealed through X-ray analysis, were just published in a special issue of the journal Almagest, which examines the history and philosophy of science.
The findings substantially improve our understanding of the instrument's origins and purpose, Jones said, offering hints at where and by whom the mechanism was made, and how it might have been used. It looks increasingly like a "philosopher's guide to the galaxy," as the Associated Press put it — functioning as a teaching tool, a status symbol and an elaborate celebration of the wonders of ancient science and technology.
[The key to these ancient riddles may lie in a father's love for his dead son]
In its prime, about 2,100 years ago, the Antikythera (an-ti-KEE-thur-a) Mechanism was a complex, whirling, clockwork instrument comprising at least 30 bronze gears bearing thousands of interlocking tiny teeth. Powered by a single hand crank, the machine modeled the passage of time and the movements of celestial bodies with astonishing precision. It had dials that counted the days according to at least three different calendars, and another that could be used to calculate the timing of the Olympics. Pointers representing the stars and planets revolved around its front face, indicating their position in relation to Earth. A tiny, painted model of the moon rotated on a spindly axis, flashing black and white to mimic the real moon's waxing and waning.
CONTENT FROM SIEMENS Digitizing manufacturing’s future The United States is in the midst of another industrial renaissance. The sum of all these moving parts was far and away the most sophisticated piece of machinery found from ancient Greece. Nothing like it would appear again until the 14th century, when the earliest geared clocks began to be built in Europe. For the first half century after its discovery, researchers believed that the Antikythera Mechanism had to be something simpler than it seemed, like an astrolabe. How could the Greeks have developed the technology needed to create something so precise, so perfect — only to have it vanish for 1,400 years?
But then Derek de Solla Price, a polymath physicist and science historian at Yale University, traveled to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens to take a look at the enigmatic piece of machinery. In a 1959 paper in Scientific American, he posited that the Antikythera Mechanism was actually the world's first known "computer," capable of calculating astronomical events and illustrating the workings of the universe. Over the next two and a half decades, he described in meticulous detail how the mechanism's diverse functions could be elucidated from the relationships among its intricately interlocked gears.
"Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion," he wrote.
That wasn't completely accurate — Cicero wrote of a instrument made by the first century BCE scholar Posidonius of Rhodes that "at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets that take place in the heavens every day and night." But it was true that the existence of the Antikythera Mechanism challenged all of scientists' assumptions about what the ancient Greeks were capable of.
"It is a bit frightening to know that just before the fall of their great civilization the ancient Greeks had come so close to our age, not only in their thought, but also in their scientific technology," Price said.
Still, the degree of damage to the ancient plates and gears meant that many key questions about the the instrument couldn't be answered with the technology of Price's day. Many of the internal workings were clogged or corroded, and the inscriptions were faded or covered up by plates that had been crushed together.
[Broken pottery reveals the sheer devastation caused by the Black Death]
Enter X-ray scanning and imaging technology, which have finally become powerful enough to allow researchers to peer beneath the machine's calcified surfaces. A decade ago, a diverse group of scientists teamed up to form the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (AMRP), which would take advantage of that new capability. Their initial results, which illuminated some of the complex inner workings of the machine, were exciting enough to persuade Jones to jump on board.
Fluent in Ancient Greek, he was able to translate the hundreds of new characters revealed in the advanced imaging process.
"Before, we had scraps of the text that was hiding inside these fragments, but there was still a lot of noise," he said. By combining X-ray images with the impressions left on material that had stuck to the original bronze, "it was like a double jigsaw puzzle that we were able to use for a much clearer reading."
The main discovery was a more than 3,500-word explanatory text on the main plate of the instrument. It's not quite an instruction manual — speaking to reporters, Jones's colleague Mike Edmunds compared it to the long label beside an item in a museum display, according to the AP.
“It’s not telling you how to use it. It says, ‘What you see is such and such,’ rather than, ‘Turn this knob and it shows you something,’ " he explained.
An undated photo released by the Greek Ministry of Culture shows a diver wearing a robotic Exosuit while exploring the famous Antikythera shipwreck. (EPA/GREEK MINISTRY OF CULTURE) Other newly translated excerpts included descriptions of a calendar unique to the northern Greek city of Corinth and tiny orbs — now believed lost to the sandy sea bottom — that once moved across the instrument's face in perfect simulation of the true motion of the five known planets, as well as a mark on the dial that gave the dates of various athletic events, including a relatively minor competition that was held in the city of Rhodes.
That indicates that the mechanism may have been built in Rhodes — a theory boosted by the fact that much of the pottery uncovered by the shipwreck was characteristic of that city. The craftsmanship of the instrument, and the two distinct sets of handwriting evident in the inscriptions, makes Jones believe that it was a team effort from a small workshop that may have produced similar items. True, no other Antikythera Mechanisms have been found, but that doesn't mean they never existed. Plenty of ancient bronze artifacts were melted down for scrap (indeed, the mechanism itself may have included material from other objects).
It's likely that this particular mechanism and the associated Antikythera treasures were en route to a Roman port, where they'd be sold to wealthy nobles who collected rare antiques and intellectual curiosities to adorn their homes.
Visualizations showing how researchers enhanced images of the eroded inscriptions on the Antikythera Mechanism. (Antikythera Mechanism Research Project) The elegant complexity of the mechanism – and the use its makers designed it for – are emblematic of the values of the ancient world: For example, a dial that predicts the occurrence of eclipses to the precision of a day also purports to forecast what the color of the moon and weather in the region will be that day. To modern scientists, the three phenomena are entirely distinct from one another — eclipses depend on the predictable movements of the sun, moon and planets, the color of the moon on the scattering of light in Earth's atmosphere, and the weather on difficult-to-track local conditions. Astronomers may be able to forecast an eclipse years in advance, but there's no scientific way to know the weather that far out (just ask our friends at the Capital Weather Gang).
Speaking of Science newsletter The latest and greatest in science news. Sign up But to an ancient Greek, the three concerns were inextricably linked. It was believed that an eclipse could portend a famine, an uprising, a nation's fate in war.
"Things like eclipses were regarded as having ominous significance," Jones said. It would have made perfect sense to tie together "these things that are purely astronomical with things that are more cultural, like the Olympic games, and calendars, which is astronomy in service of religion and society, with astrology, which is pure religion."
That may go some way toward explaining the strange realization Price made more than 50 years ago: The ancient Greeks came dazzlingly close to inventing clockwork centuries sooner than really happened. That they chose to utilize the technology not to mark the minutes, but to plot out their place in the universe, shows just how deeply they regarded the significance of celestial events in their lives.
In a single instrument, Jones said, "they were trying to gather a whole range of things that were part of the Greek experience of the cosmos."
Posts: 5374 | From: sepedat/sirius | Registered: Jul 2012
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posted
Most likely built by the black/colored Greeks, because White Indo-Europeans were still illiterate backwards barbarians who weren't practicing formal agriculture, or building giant sophisticated structures and their own independent civilizations, or practicing formal literacy and writing things down, or advanced tier mathematics and science and philosophy AT THIS POINT IN TIME; or sophisticated mechanical devices and machines/engines etc etc....
Add this Ancient computer, TO ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND INGENUITY OF ANCIENT BLACK/COLORED PEOPLES!
Posts: 1558 | From: US | Registered: Sep 2015
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quote:Originally posted by Mindovermatter: Most likely built by the black/colored Greeks, because White Indo-Europeans were still illiterate backwards barbarians who weren't practicing formal agriculture, or building giant sophisticated structures and their own independent civilizations, or practicing formal literacy and writing things down, or advanced tier mathematics and science and philosophy; or sophisticated mechanical devices and machines/engines etc etc....
Add this Ancient computer, TO ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND INGENUITY OF ANCIENT BLACK/COLORED PEOPLES!
Your propaganda, pre conceived notions are bullshit. Those people built Arkaim, even though it hurts your feelings. You read nationalist war propaganda from the Greeks and think that is an accurate picture. Your theory is stupid> barbaric idiots come in take over and all of the sudden all these modern inventions pop up that have never been seen before. Who is going to buy that? Not knowing and underestimating your chosen enemy is STUPID. The Antikythera Mechanismit dates from, somewhere between 60 BCE and 200 BCE. That is pretty recent. That is over 1000 years later then when even Mike who argues black Greeks were ruling. Go look at the 1st - 2nd century BC Greek sculptures. Look at the emperors. They are by a wide margin white people stupid. You are in a fantasy world of denial about the circumstances your are in. Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen - not worth shyt, it has no impact
Posts: 42920 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote: Your propaganda, pre conceived notions are bullshit. Those people built Arkaim, even though it hurts your feelings. You read nationalist war propaganda from the Greeks and think that is an accurate picture. Your theory is stupid> barbaric idiots come in take over and all of the sudden all these modern inventions pop up that have never been seen before.
Lioness Lioness Lioness, who the **** are you honestly to be talking about "propaganda" and "pro-conceived notions" on this forum, when you contribute jack **** on this forum in terms of real actual constructive content, you constantly derail important threads with your trollish stupidity and you consistently lie out of your ass all the time?
It's apparent you don't know jack **** about the subjects you actually talk about, and you continuously give red herring arguments, or already outdated and refuted arguments, that people are too tired to debunk again.
So you really don't know jack about this subject topic and are taking **** of your ass here. THE FACT OF THE MATTER, is that WHITE INDO-EUROPEANS WERE NOT building sophisticated civilizations or advanced stone work, or practicing formal agriculture or practicing mass literacy during this era, WHEN THEY WERE IN CENTRAL ASIA AND SIBERIA! AND THERE IS NO REAL EVIDENCE THEY WERE!
THEY WERE THE HUNS AND MONGOLS OF THIS TIME PERIOD! VARIOUS NUMBERS OF WHITES WERE STILL LIVING A NEOLITHIC BACKWARDS EXISTENCE IN CENTRAL ASIA AND SIBERIA AND NORTHERN EUROPE DURING THIS TIME!
And we have all sorts of records and testimony FROM THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS THEMSELVES STATING THAT THEY WERE! So no this could not have been BUILT BY WHITE INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES!
AND THE ANCIENT HELLENIC PEOPLE THAT BUILT THIS DEVICE, WERE NOT A WHITE INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES! THEY WERE A MIXED BLACK/COLORED PEOPLES AND THEY DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES FROM ACTUAL WHITE PEOPLE, LIKE THE SCYTHIANS AND GOTHS, AS A SEPARATE GROUP OF PEOPLES AND AS A SEPARATE RACE, WHEN THEY SHOWED UP IN EUROPE!
So no again, THEY WERE NOT WHITE INDO-EUROPEANS!
And no you lying ass dumbfuck, THESE PEOPLE DID NOT BUILD ARKAIM AND THEY HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH THE PEOPLE THAT ACTUALLY BUILT ARKAIM!
BECAUSE ARKAIM PREDATES THIS DEVICE BY ALMOST A THOUSAND YEARS, AND IS NOT IN THE SAME LOCATION OR REGION AS WHERE THIS DEVICE WAS FOUND YOU FUCKING DUMBASS!
And no Arkaim was not built by White Indo-Europeans, and your stupid idiotic ass never PRESENTED ANY REAL PROOF OR LOGIC OR EVIDENCE OF ANY SORT, PROVING THAT IT WAS BUILT BY WHITE INDO-EUROPEANS!
HOWEVER I DID PROVIDE EVIDENCE AND MY CLAIMS FOR THAT IN MY OTHER THREAD ON THAT SUBJECT, AND I WAS ALSO SOUNDLY BACKED BY HISTORICAL EVIDENCE, SO YES I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG ON THAT ONE!
But I am not going to discuss that here!
quote: "Who is going to buy that? Not knowing and underestimating your chosen enemy is STUPID. The Antikythera Mechanismit dates from, somewhere between 60 BCE and 200 BCE. That is pretty recent. That is over 1000 years later then when even Mike who argues black Greeks were ruling."
I don't give a **** who buys what you dumbfuck, WHAT I CARE ABOUT, IS REALITY AND FACTS! AND THE REALITY IS THAT WHITE INDO-EUROPEANS COULD NOT HAVE BUILT THIS DEVICE, BECAUSE OF HOW THEY WERE DURING THIS TIME PERIOD! WHITE INDO-EUROPEANS WERE STILL LIVING A FUCKING NEOLITHIC EXISTENCE ALL THE WAY UP TO THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE PERIOD!
And idiot, BLACKS AND COLORED PEOPLES HAD A PRESENCE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE, GOING BACK TO ALL THE WAY TO THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE CLASSICAL PERIOD IN EUROPE, THAT IS WHAT MIKE SAYS!
Damn your idiocy and lying-ass ness simply knows no bounds! Damn you are stupid and you are full of obvious lies and none-sense!
quote: Go look at the 1st - 2nd century BC Greek sculptures. Look at the emperors. They are by a wide margin white people stupid. You are in a fantasy world of denial about the circumstances your are in. Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen - not worth shyt, it has no impact
No they aren't dumbfuck, otherwise show me proof they are. And most Ancient Greeks sculptures, that most people THINK ARE OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS, WERE MADE IN THE RENAISSANCE ERA, AFTER THE MIDDLE AGES, BY PEOPLE WHO MADE DEPICTIONS OF WHAT THEY IDEALIZED AND HOPED THEY LOOKED LIKE, NOT WHAT THEY ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE! AND NOT BY THE ANCIENT HELLENIC PEOPLES THEMSELVES WHEN THEY WERE LIVING IN ANCIENT HELLENIC TIMES!
AND ALSO MANY OF THEM ARE ACTUAL RECENT FAKES MADE BY YOUR ALBINO'S!
Liarness, I am getting tired of your lies and stupidity, you keep regurgitating the same old outdated lies and bullshit again and again. Try to be original for once if you can, because it's really really obvious you don't know ABSOLUTE JACK **** ABOUT THIS SUBJECT OR HISTORY, OR HIGH BROW LOGIC IN GENERAL!
Posts: 1558 | From: US | Registered: Sep 2015
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AND ALSO MANY OF THEM ARE ACTUAL RECENT FAKES MADE BY YOUR ALBINO'S!
I do research and I have a long resume, many threads with a lot of work gone into the research. You make up nonsense. You are in a state on denial and you are coming up with bullshit to make yourself feel good. That is weak. It's a bubble of delusion you are in. White people are not idiots. They are running your world right now, that is the proof. They have numerous inventions and technology that are far beyond what came before, wake the fuk up. Your voice and fake made up history is that of a mouse
Posts: 42920 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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