The story goes that a 1st shipwreck was discovered near a Greek island. From this wreck were recovered some fragments of an ancient machine. The machine, when reconstructed, totally surprised archeologists. It turned out to be a sophiticated astronomical computer, using a clockwork mechanism that supposedly wasn’t invented until about 15 centuries later.
However, I’ve always been a bit suspicious of this. Whenever I see the actual mechanism, it seems to be just a few bits of broken wheel. It could be almost anything.
How reliable is the reconstruction? Do serious archaeologists accept it as accurate? Are there any more likely reconstructions, that don’t involve lost knowledge of the ancients?
AFAIK, no one’s seriously questioned it. Certainly the technology needed to make it is well within the skill set of the ancients, and there have been things from around that time period that we’ve known about that have used similar mechanisms. Hero (or Heron) built a number of incredibly sophisticated machines at roughly the same point in time (I’ve seen conflicting dates on when Hero lived, so it could have been well before or well after.) and the Romans used sophisticated machines to measure distance on their roads (inaddition to waging war on everyone around them).
This page shows enough detail to get an idea of how an accurate reconstruction could be made.
Lousy pictures just show an amorphous lump, but there’s a clear system of differential gears there, along with inscribed text and metrics that are enough to indicate its purpose without a doubt.
I remain amazed by the complexity of this device and the precision with which it would have to have been made in order to work; both of which seem very advanced for their time. I understand form follows function, but the components just look modern in every way - certainly in ways beyond their pure function.
Has the autheticity of the find itself been established beyond all reasonable doubt, or is there any way this could just be a Victorian-era clock that fell overboard and got corroded/concreted into a lump merely associated with an ancient wreck?
There have certainly been multiple doubts raised about the details of Price’s famous reconstruction, though everybody arguing the details has proposed that it would have achieved much the same purpose as he was suggesting. This paper (a pdf) critically assesses some of the proposed reconstructions. From about the same time, this article from The Economist describes another recent reconstruction of the device.
It’s worth noting that there’s a small amount of evidence for an astronomical interpretation beyond simply counting teeth on gearwheels and guessing what’s missing. Exactly what is inscribed on any of the wheels has also been much argued about, without any great agreement, but again all these transcriptions have referred to ancient Greek names for constellations or planets.
What is slightly more clearcut is a tantalising reference by Cicero to having seen a mechanical astronomical model on Rhodes at almost exactly the same date as the ship sank. Thus the evidence for the Greeks having been capable of building such a device isn’t quite isolated to what was found in the wreck. However, what Cicero saw was clearly somewhat out of the ordinary and more of a luxury toy than anything else. That raises the possibility that the Antikythera device was something similar and being exported as an exotic item, rather than an everyday navigational computer of a sort that might be found on the average cargo boat. That in turn would have implications for how significant it actually was as a piece of technology.
That possibility has certainly been raised and, as far as I know, there’s never been a definitive test that’s been able to confirm its age. However, the original bronze has almost entirely been replaced by corrosion, so it was presumably in the sea for quite some time before its recovery in 1901.
I should mention that I do understand that it’s all too easy to think of ancient people as stupid or primitive - a mistake I try to avoid, but among the specific things that bristle my skepticism on this device are:
-The spoked gear wheels
-The graduated markings on the dial
-The layout of various rivet holes etc
In these respects, it just looks exactly like a modern device - I suppose if a direct line of descent from these ancient devices and modern clocks could be shown, then my mind would probably be set at rest, but I would find it hard to believe that these things, which are as much about style as they are function, would be reinvented looking exactly the same by someone else later.
You seem to be forgetting a number of things in your objections. First of all, the spoked wheels are about function. Spoked wheels weigh less and use less material than solid wheels. Sundials were known to ancient Greeks and they had graduated markings on them, as did the Roman odometer I talked about above. As for the location of the rivet holes, don’t forget that you’re going to want to locate the rivets in places where they’ll be most effective at holding the parts, while at the same time being in a spot where they’re unlikely to interfere with the operation of the mechanism. Given that the Antikythera mechanism uses clock work gears, it’s not surprising that there’s similuarities in appearance to modern clocks.
Don’t forget that some of our aesthetic sense comes from the Greeks, and modern styles have frequently been influenced by works of the Ancient Greeks. Other parts of our aesthetic sense appear to hard wired in that humans as a species tend to make doors the same ratio of width to height, and so on. There doesn’t have to be a direct line of items from the Antikythera to modern clocks for modern clocks to bear a resemblance to them. The same clockwork mechanisms in mills which would have inspired the inventor of the Antikythera inventor, would have been the ones with inspired clock makers centuries later, so they both could resemble one another aesthetically, without either one influencing the other, because they were both inspired by the same common source.
Some concern is certainly justified, Mangetout, particularly since, even given Price’s attempts to argue that it was part of a wider tradition of clockwork extending from the Greeks through the Arabs to the development of the medieval clock, the Antikythera device still stands out as unusually elaborate.
However, there is a later surviving Byzantine example - discovered after Price’s death - that shows several of the features you mention in a much simpler astronomical device. Dated to about 520 from the style of the inscription and the placenames it uses, this is now in the Science Museum. There are three main parts: a backplate, a geared moon wheel (with another gearwheel on the back) and a ratchet wheel. These unambiguously fit together thus. The large wheel has 59 teeth, which is the same number that some have reconstructed in the corresponding wheel from Antikythera. With pointers attached, the mechanism would sweep out the movements of the Sun and Moon. Some of the inscriptions mean it can also be used as a sundial (of a type known from other examples).
There’s very little doubt about the function behind this 6th century device, not least because the whole thing is much cruder - in design and manufacture - than what was found off Antikythera. But there are gearwheels, one with a design akin to spokes, and a graduated dial. I’m not sure, but I think the two gearwheels may be held together by a rivet. The ratchet has no known counterpart in the Antikythera device.
None of which proves that the more elaborate Antikythera mechanism actually dates from half a millennium earlier. But this is an example of the sort of parallel one would like to see more of turn up.
All fair points, but even so, I’m looking for something that sets this apart from a device made in, say, the Victorian era, and I’m not seeing it. OK, there’s greek script on one of the parts, that wouldn’t be particularly surprising on a more modern machine, particularly if it was designed for use in, say, astrology or some such.
I suppose I’m just asking how did we arrive at the conclusion it is an ancient device? and how conclusively has that been established?
Basically context - it was found in an ancient Greek shipwreck. (Ideally, one would like to know more about the precise context of the find on the site, but that’s too late now.)
As I’ve already noted, there’s been no decisive scientific test (thus far). None of the other dating evidence is quite decisive either.
Personally, I’d be surprised if it isn’t ancient, even though I think that dating it to the same date as the wreck especially makes it a particularly tantalising and puzzling find about which little can be concluded with certainty.
Of course, trying to figure out its function from the remains is still an interesting puzzle even if the conclusion were to be that it was some obscure 19th century orrary that had happened to be lost overboard in the same place.
But there are at least serious doubts about Price’s reconstruction?
Is it possible that The Antikythera Mechanism is nowhere near as sophisticated as some claim? Could it have some other function than astronomical? Could it be an odometer/ speedometer for instance?
The gear teeth of the device are unusual - they are all simple v-shaped notches. Modern clock gears tend to come in a variety of shapes, most usually a sort of rounded off square.
