At the start of the 20th century, in 1900, some remains were found on a Roman merchandise ship at the bottom of the sea off the island of Antikythera, in Greece. Amongst these remains, there was a piece of bronze and fossilised timber that no one really paid attention to.
After a couple of years, someone noticed that the object seemed to contain some gears, and this sparked off some studies that led to some extraordinary conclusions.
It is estimated to have been constructed between 87 and 205 B.C. It has a number of arms similar to that of a clock (both in front and the back) each of which giving a particular forecast, inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, doors with instructions and other information.
The person or persons who contstructed this mechanism had information as precise as taking into consideration the fact that the moon’s orbit around the earth is not a circle but elliptical getting close on one side and further away on the other during its orbit!
This mechanism was hand-operated, with the operator turning a circle representing the date according to an Egyption calendar (it is still debated whether this consisted of 365 days and a quarter or of 354 days).
It is also speculated that it also forecasted the movement of five planets then known, that is Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Although there is no inscription or gears found that refer to them, there is a whole description of how these planets orbit our star. Apart from this, there is some empty space that indicates there may have been some other gears.
Its sophistication and complexity are extraordinary, and are on a level generally equivalent to others that appeared around 15 centuries A.C. Just consider that that the remains found to date do not weigh more than a kilogram, which includes 30 gears.
The gear teeth are just 1.6mm in size, with the space between gears just 1.2mm. Just imagine this work in miniature and precision was carried out more than two thousand years ago with hand tools!
This object attracted my attention as once again reminded me firstly how much mankind was able to observe nature, the world and the cosmos around him, and secondly the ability to develop technologies to measure their observations, doubtlessly to be able to regulate its society’s activities, for example farming, and others of a cultural or even sporting nature.
We are used to the megalithic temples in Malta that came before, which in Ħaġar Qim and Imnajdra measure the solstices and equinoxes, and others around the world do the same, such as Stonehenge in the UK and Nabta Playa in Africa. These all used enormous stones to make their observations.
The Antikythera Mechanism makes its forecasts in miniature and a breathtaking sophistication and up till now, a hundred years after being discovered, is still not fully understood.
What other sophistication remains concealed and is still waiting to see the light of day? We in this age of the internet and so much knowledge, what are we still to discover that has so far been forgotten? Do you feel like I do some humility that so many generations ago so many advances had been made in astronomy, mathematics, miniaturisation?
Do you fear like I do that a day might come in which our species might destroy our own society to an extend that all the wisdom and knowledge we think we have, becomes lost and forgotten, and disappears with us as so many other societies have disappeared in the past?
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Mechanics, retrieved 3/11/2021
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