The Antikythera Mechanism is an artifact found on a sunken boat a century ago. It’s a device that has bronze gears and apparently was used to do some sort of calculation… by ancient Greeks, because it’s about 2000 years old.
Its specific function has always been a mystery because of the deteriorated condition of the device, but new techniques (including advanced X-ray imaging) have revealed writing on the back side of the mechanism, indicating it was used as an astronomical tool. The names of the 12 months are inscribed, and other markings indicate it was used to predict solar eclipses and the timing of the four-year Olympiad.
You can read the NYT article for details, which are very cool. But I want to add something here. Ancient people weren’t stupid. They were just as smart as we are, but they didn’t have the tools we do now, including computers or even algebra and calculus. Their knowledge was derived almost solely through observations. Sometimes, such as with Aristotle, they simply decreed things to be true that weren’t (Aristotle said a lot of things that obviously didn’t jibe with very simple observations), but in many cases they took painfully detailed notes of the night sky, timing events over centuries to such a degree that they were able to predict eclipses and other phenomena.
Don’t forget, they knew the Earth was a sphere, and Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the Earth to remarkable accuracy. These guys weren’t fools.
It’s easy to forget that. But one thing they lacked that gave them a huge advantage in astronomy was light pollution. Many ancient civilizations had unfettered access to the night sky, and agricultural peoples were tied to the sky as firmly as they were to the ground, using astronomical events to time their farming activities. Nowadays, fewer people can see stars at all, and we’ve lost something precious and wondrous.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that 2000 years ago, the Greeks had a fantastic knowledge of the sky’s behavior, and built devices to help them measure it. The surprise is that we’re surprised.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:17 am
I’ve always said that the ancients were far more intelligent than we’ve ever given them credit for. We assume that we know most everything about what they did and what they know, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, as the Antikythera Mechanism shows.
Phil, somewhat offtopic: on the point of light pollution: Michael Crichton asserted in ‘Timeline’ that people could see stars on a clear day — there were fewer particulates in the sky prior to the Industrial Revolution, or so he intimated. Anything to that, or is this just more Crichton horsepucky?
August 1st, 2008 at 8:23 am
“The surprise is that we’re surprised.”
I am always telling that to people. Along with Astronomy, it is a shame that people don’t know/understand history.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:23 am
I always remember Gene Roddenberry’s coments when dealing with “Von Dannikens” who claimed they were built with 9or with the aid of) aliens; (and I paraphrase here)
“It’s demeaning; alien’s didn’t do it – WE did it, because we’re smart!”
True of almost everything else, too.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:30 am
I agree, the greeks did some awesome stuff. Yes, the whole deductive reasoning thing wasn’t that great (unless your “assumed truths” you start with are actually true). I love talking about the cool measurements the greeks accomplished – other than the size and shape of the Earth, they calculated the distance to the moon and Sun (though they were not as accurate).
August 1st, 2008 at 8:40 am
Charles,
There are still many areas around the world where you can see the sky as the ancients did before light or particulate pollution. It should be easy to test this at those locations. That said, one can see Venus in daylight if you know where to look.
Note: not 100% sure how much particulate pollution affects the unaided eye at these pristine locations, or even at observatories sites on mountains. It’s should be measurable by instruments.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:50 am
There is a program from last year about the Antikythere Mechanism showing some of the x-rays and how the interior is revealed. There is also a guy who was building a replica using ancient techniques.
Wish I knew the name of program to look up.
If anyone knows, post it please.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am
Charles, I’d need to see the reference. But at midday the sky is too bright to see any stars at all with the human eye. Venus is bright enough, as is Jupiter (though much tougher), but even Sirius is swamped by the daylit sky.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:53 am
The Earth isn’t a sphere!! It’s an oblate spheroid!
August 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am
WANT!
August 1st, 2008 at 9:02 am
Speaking of algebra and calculus, I believe Archimedes came up with a way to estimate areas that is well on the way to an understanding of integral calculus. What he couldn’t do was take his rectangles down to the width of zero and integrate. But his method could have come out of a section of a decent calulus text intended to give the student a basic understainding of the principles.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:10 am
I would be very surprised if what Charles says turned out to be true. Mainly because the ancients were so intimate with their stars that if some stars could be seen in daylight regularly, I suspect sure they would have made enough records of it that we’d have a few left and know. (Maybe the Incas, living up in the Andes, would be the best bet to check. They were the first (that I know of) to recognize and name dark nebula visible against the backdrop of the Milky Way)
Certain special stars, like supernova, of course, were visible in the day and were recorded.
I also suspect that this ancient astronomical knowledge is the origin of the modern dreck of astrology. Having seen regular patterns repeating themselves in the sky, and having gotten used to using these patterns to predict important future seasonal events on earth important to farming, it was a logical, but erroneous, assumption to make that said sky patterns could be used to predict other things.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Awesome article–thanks for posting this, Phil!
August 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am
I don’t think the surprise is so much that the ancients had adequate knowledge of the skies to know how to build a machine to make astronomical calculations, it’s that they had adequate knowledge of engineering and machining to actually construct it. We usually think of mechanical computing devices, and especially small mechanical computing devices, as something belonging to the 16th century or later.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am
LoafOfBread:
You may be interested in the book, ‘The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Blueprint of Modern Science’ by Reviel Netz and William Noel; I’m reading it now. It’s all about how close Archimedes came to discovering/inventing the calculus a long time before Newton and Leibniz. It’s a good historical read, and interesting in terms of math and science.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:15 am
CHECK out http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr
and Tony Freeth
August 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am
The Antikythera mechanism has fascinated me for a long time now. It shows
Metonic (19 year lunar) cycle. Callipic (76 year minus one day) lunar cycle and the saros eclipse cycle (6585 days and 8 hours after which the sun/moon positions recur) I only read about the Olympic connection on Wednesday. Jeepers these guys were smart
August 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
@bkallee
I think the show you are referring to is Ancient Discoveries on the History Channel. I remember the same show but I’m fuzzy on the name.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am
Phil:
Couple of things… Standing in the Athens archaeological museum and actually seeing the Antikythera device is a pretty awesome experience. Even though it’s encrusted with mineral deposits and pretty much fused into a couple of solid chunks, you can still see with your own eyes the complexity of the thing. Forgetting its purpose for a moment, just the skill involved in crafting its components and assembling them into what was obviously a very elegant instrument gives one pause.
Regarding dark skies, those of us who live in cities can forget the real impact of a deep, dark, nighttime sky. I happened to spend a month on a little greek island a couple years ago, and the brightness of the stars and the depth of the sky, and the incredible presence of all that sky contained affected me tremendously. Nothing woo-woo or goofy, but just the sheer physicality of the stars and the Milky Way was a constant reminder that all that stuff up there was a part of my world.
As much as I like electricity and lightbulbs, there really are trade-offs when they’re put to use.
Sorry. Rambling. I’ll go back to the other thread and make fun of the UFOlogists some more.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am
Like I said, guys, this was in a Crichton book, not something I said I believe. Just wanted to separate fiction from fact and it never hurts to ask an expert. Or get the opinion of several.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am
The Antikythera Device is MADE OF HAWESOME!!!1! In an Ancient Discoveries episode on the History Channel a while back, they demonstrated how the Greeks could have built the thing. I think I’d have gone even more bonkers than I already am if I’d had to file all those gear teeth by hand………
August 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am
I tend to agree with the late Carl Sagan that If it wasn’t for the cheap (to free) labor the Romans had and the following dark ages, the industrial revolution would have begin not long after the Hellenistic period. Now we could even travel the solar system …
August 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Just adding another Crichton’s full of it comment. I’m from SW Nebraska, which has plenty of areas completely without light pollution. As the others have said anything dimmer than Venus is out.
If you’ve never been to a clear area like that, I highly recommend stopping over on your way through one sometime. Most people today have no idea how incredible something as simple as the Milky Way really looks without lights screwing up the view.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:02 am
I am not surprised.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:07 am
Well, while the greeks may have been almost completely free from light polluting, that wasn’t the most important thing. An understanding of mathematics is equally important, because you need to compensate for a LOT of unknown variables.
But perhaps the most important factor is that realised that the stars don’t just “wander around”, but that there is a pattern to them. That sounds very simple, but for a people who lived in a time where the stars were basically thought to be stuck on the ceiling, that’s a major leap of understanding.
What people forget is that we have the same brain as whoever lived 2000 or 5000 years ago. They weren’t dumb, they just had fewer tools, different education and different needs. Making somthing as simpel as a rond, even toothed gear is increadibly difficult without modern machines. But the lack of a lathe doesn’t make one stupid.
It’s just that someone who has to work for 12 hours a day to get his family fed, doesn’t have much time, or much desire, to work on something to track the stars with, so innovation was slow and restricted to the rich.
And yes, do get out of the city and look up. Most people don’t even know what the Milky Way looks like at all, heck, most don’t even know you can see it.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Charles: I don’t know about the stars but I have personally seen Venus in a clear blue sky at midday withthe naked eye. It was simply a matter of knowing exactly where to look. I had been following the movement of the planet day by day when we had very clear skies for an unbroken couple of weeks (very rare in Birmingham UK!) and managed to keep track of it merely by watching its movement very closely day by day. This was about 15-20 years ago – I haven’t managed to do it since.
I too find the Antikythera mechanism jaw-droppingly awesome. Whoever made it obviously knew exactly what they were doing, which begs the question, what else was constructed in the same era that we simply haven’t found yet? This one piece can’t be the only one, surely. It would be like someone in 4000 AD finding part of a computer circuit board, and nothing else of comparable technology. Makes you think.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
I remember reading about this in Discover while I was in Afghanistan. It gets dark there. As in, new moon, you cannot see in the dark. Literally. Hand in front of your face not visible.
The stars were amazing.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am
@George K:
“the industrial revolution would have begun not long after the Hellenistic period”
And if you’ve ever walked the streets of ancient Akrotiri, which predates Hellenism by about a thousand years, you’ll be even more bummed. Multi-story houses with hot and cold running water, flush toilets (of a sort), geo-thermal baths, and a stable lifestyle based upon a pretty omnipotent navy that kept you secure from the barbarians on the mainland. Pretty cool.
Damn volcanos.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am
BA said: “But at midday the sky is too bright to see any stars at all with the human eye.”
Huh. I can usually see one pretty clearly.
*ducking and running
August 1st, 2008 at 11:17 am
This is what’s so interesting and maybe even puzzling about history. There have been many isolated bursts of technological, scientific and sociological advancement that eventually either petered out for did not reach full potential. Specially compared with how fast technology has spread and established a very permanent foothold around the world. Today one can be very confident that new beneficial technology will take hold will not be subject to decline and fall of any one country.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
What makes me SAD is that there was quite much knowledge in the world made up by the Greeks and later on by the Arabs. But for a very long time (during the middle ages) nothing really happend. In Europe most knowledge was “conserved” (if at all) and we needed the Arabs to get it back.
And then everything was going quite well since the late 15th century. A thousand years and I guess many “great brains” were just lost for the progress of knowledge… that’s sad!
well, I see this was said before, I don’t care!
August 1st, 2008 at 11:35 am
@Billsmthaz
Oh yeah? Well I can see one planet, day or night, cloudy or clear, rain or shine. So there!
August 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am
This is honestly the first I’ve heard about this device. I’m a total geek for ancient navigation instruments, so I’ll have to go look this up.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:50 am
On several science shows I’ve seen that several people have built prototype replica devices to test theories as to what the Antikythera Mechanism did, but I wonder if they now have enough data to be able to build a reasonably accurate functioning replica (of how it actually looked and worked) that one could buy. (Not that I could afford it right now.)
August 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
“The surprise is that we’re surprised.”
Quote of the week.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I was wondering. Does anyone know how the mechanism works and if it “runs out” if you go into the future far enough? Kind of like a Y2K or (don’t stone me!) a 2012 issue? It would be fascinating if it did not. It could be lucrative if it does! Imagine the books one could write.
It would also be very fascinating if the design could be directly attributed to Archimedes. He seems to have designed so many things and was truly a genius.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Looked at the Nature article.
Totally, totally, TOTALLY WANT.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
duffytvs Says: “LoafOfBread:You may be interested in the book, ‘The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Blueprint of Modern Science’ by Reviel Netz and William Noel;”
Thanks for the recommendation.
On a different tack, I agree with what some of the others have said. If it weren’t for the dark ages, technologically and scientifically we’d be light years ahead of where we are now.
For example, if Archimedes or one of his contemporaries had discovered calculus (instead of just coming close), mathematics could be 1,500 years ahead of where it is now.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:11 pm
[...] Phil has now blogged about this now __________________ Van Rijn’s original Invisible Elf was running for the North Carolina Senate, but dropped out of the contest after the paparazzi snapped him with a cute pixie just outside Disney World in Florida. Now he has settled down with her as they await their first child, writing his biography of life in Van Rijn’s backyard, – Now you prove me wrong [...]
August 1st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Newton said that we are always dwarves on giants’ shoulders. Reading ancient science books is very often an enlightening activity, because they show you how science advance, generally through little steps and sometimes though bigger leaps forward. For example, Phil commented the limitations of mathematical notation and technological aplications in the ancient Mediterranean science. However, an exception to this rule is the “Sand Reckoner” from Archimedes: mathematics (specially notation of very big numbers) and cosmology (the size of the univers, well before Ptolemy) are explored.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The ancient Summerians and Egyptians has all this ancient astronomy understood long before the Greek civilization existed … basically they educated the Greeks and of course the Greek did contribute … suggest all read the ancient records from Summer and Egypt (see many books written in the last 200 years).
August 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I read somewhere that they had made a replica of the completed device. I even saw pictures of it. Now if whoever did this went into mass production with these things, I bet they would sell in the 100s of thousands. I’d certainly want one, and judging by the other comments here, so would a great deal of people. Let’s face it, it would be a great conversation piece!
But for anyone who takes me up on the idea – remember I thought of it first – I will want royalties!
August 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
ND – I think the blame for great inventions of the ancient past being sidelined and forgotten can be laid at the door of the widespread practice of slavery at the time. Carl Sagan said as much in his Cosmos series I believe. Inventions such as steam power and electricity were mere toys which they just never considered developing and putting to use because they had no need of labour saving devices.
I might even go so far as suggesting that the rapid progress that was eventually made at the start of the Renaissance period was partly due to the decimation of the workforce in the times of the European plagues from the C14th to C16th. Maybe we have to thank the Black Death for kicking us into the Scientific age!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Didac said:
“Newton said that we are always dwarves on giants’ shoulders.”
The quote from Newton is “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. At least some modern historians of science think that Newton — at least in part if not entirely — meant this to be an insult to Robert Hooke. This is from the wikipedia entry on Newton in reference to this.
_________
Newton himself was rather more modest of his own achievements, famously writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676
“ If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants ”
Historians generally think the above quote was an attack on Hooke (who was short and hunchbacked), rather than — or in addition to — a statement of modesty. The two were in a dispute over optical discoveries at the time. The latter interpretation also fits with many of his other disputes over his discoveries — such as the question of who discovered calculus as discussed above.
__________
As I first heard this interpretation, Newton had been required by the Royal Society to acknowledge that some of Newton’s ideas in optics had been stated by Hooke first.
George
August 1st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Archimedes did design some sort of astronomical computer, according to Cicero’s De Re Publica. See, for instance, this page:
http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Sphere/SphereSources.html
August 1st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Charles, I would have to check it but I am sure that Crichton was referring to seeing Venus in daylight. As others have pointed out it is still possible to do this now so, to the best of my knowledge, he got it wrong (except in heavily-polluted areas).
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 am
It is hard to believe anything Crichton writes. His books–especially the later ones are full of anti Science attitude and distortions of science to fit his plot lines and political agenda. The man is a luddite.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:12 am
I think a certain critical mass of general technical competency, economic opportunity and need are necessary before innovations of this kind can spread and become more or less permanent.
So long as the high tech is available only to an elite few and used for a limited number of applications of interest only to that elite few, the chances are good that it will be lost through accident, if the elite should change their attitudes or be overthrown, or if the specific application disappears or becomes less important.
There are many instances of inventions associated with the industrial revolution and beyond (printing press, steam engine, mechanical clock, etc) having pre-existed in some form in antiquity is disparate civilizations all across the world, each appearing for a time in an isolated place, only to be lost. During the period we call the industrial revolution were the conditions ripe for such innovations to take root and spread widely.
(Think of what Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries might have accomplished if they had access to the technology and techniques of the Ancient Greeks as demonstrated by the Antikythera Mechanism!)
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
History Channel on 8/5-6:
Ancient Discoveries: Ancient Computer?
Check your listings for times
J/P=?
August 5th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I watched the History Channel show about the antikythera. When the narrator mentioned that the device potentially could have as many as 70 gears, I recalled something I read in “Gifts of Unknown Things,” by Lyall Watson. He reports attending a dance of fruitfulness on Nus Tarian, a small volcanic island in Indonesia. The leader of the rite waits until he senses a unity between stars and sea. At his signal, special participants ring a bronze gong. They continue to ring the gong at measured, precise intervals, which do not change as music and dance swirl around them. Exactly 24 hours after they begin, they cease, having rung the gong 69 times. Why 69? The rite leader simply knows that 69 is the number since time immemorial.
Watson got his answer from a physicist later: He “learned that the Earth-ionosphere cavity acts as a natural resonator with a period of 1,250 second. This means that our planet resounds once every twenty minutes and fifty seconds. We live on a gigantic gong that booms out exactly sixty-nine times every day!” (p. 162).
So, why did this explanation “ring a bell” for me? Because of the possibility that many ancients knew of this “music of the spheres,” this astro-planetary vibration to which all surface dwellers instinctively quiver. Man, being endlessly inventive, found many ways to interpret and express this primordial gong tone, depending on the time and society in which they experienced the effect.
As others noted earlier, the surprise is not that one man realized in mechanical form what his intellect and inner harmonics told him, but that it took us this long to understand that many men and women experienced the same phenomenon and found many different means to describe and express it.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Archimedes is dated to c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC, the Antikythera mechanism is dated to c. 150–100 BC and is based on Persian and Egyptian astronomy.
But perhaps his mechanical ideas spread during the 3-5 generations in between to be the basis for it.
That is poetic, but where is the science?
August 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Concerning the technical aspects of machining such a device, for example the ancient peoples north from Greece had very advanced goldsmithing techniques to create very intricate pieces of jewellery that today would need the use of magnifying lenses atleast or extremely, extremely good eyesight and eye-hand coordination (but it’s a wonder what being apprenticed since birth to a single profession with no other interests can do).
While bronze is not as malleable as gold, you can pour it into a mold and then file it into gears such as used in Antikythera mechanism, and Heron for instance built many gear mechanisms in ancient Alexandria, and describes them in his surviving works. Nothing in his work states that the principles were his inventions. Most of the written works of antiquity are lost to us, so his sources remain unknown.
Concerning astronomical knowledge, that is no surprise. Astronomy is the oldest science, and while some Hellenic thinkers did infact have scientifically sound methods of determining the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and thence the Sun, their naked-eye measurements of the heavens were not accurate enough to produce anything but suggestive results (as in “the Sun is atleast a 100 times farther away than the Moon, and thus must be larger of the two). It’s another thing to model what you know using a mechanical apparatus than to invent new instruments that can aid you in the accuracy of measurements.