{"id":1733,"date":"2010-12-01T08:08:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T08:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2018\/11\/28\/1010-autosave-v1\/"},"modified":"2019-07-09T11:51:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T11:51:48","slug":"antikythera-mechanism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/12\/01\/antikythera-mechanism-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Antikythera mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a nutshell, the Antikythera Mechanism is the thing that should not be. It is a mechanical artifact discovered around\u00a0a hundred years ago\u00a0at the bottom of the ocean, dated to about a hundred years before the common era, and which uses gears and other impossibilities to predict astronomical phenomenon and align calendars. Its level of sophistication\u00a0wouldn’t<\/a>\u00a0be approached until the clockworks of the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n

The Antikythera Mechanism is a useful reminder that history seldom follows simple, linear paths.<\/em>
\n(Charette 2006)<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I should let you know from the outset, that although we\u2019ve discovered some incredible things about the mechanism over the last couple of years, it\u2019s inevitable that much more remains\u00a0tantalizingly unknown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wish to dedicate this minor effort to the\u00a0existence<\/a>\u00a0of captain Demetrios Kondos and the six divers under his command; Elias Stadiatis, Kyriakos and Georg Mundiadis, Johann Pilliu, Giorgios Kritikos, and Basilios Katzaras.<\/p>\n

Discovery at Antikythera<\/h3>\n

The year is\u00a01900\u00a0and a group of\u00a0sponge divers\u00a0have finished fishing and are on their way home to celebrate Easter. A small storm forces the men to take refuge at the tiny island of\u00a0Antikythera, which sits between\u00a0Crete\u00a0and the\u00a0Peloponnese\u00a0in the\u00a0Mediterranean Sea. Given that they\u2019ve already weighed anchor when the sea calms again they decide to dive down to a rock shelf they notice below, hopefully, find a new location for harvesting sponges. When one of the divers \u2013 Elias Stadiatis \u2013 reaches the shelf he sees a\u00a0shipwreck\u00a0laden with all sorts of treasures, including a number of statues,\u00a0amphoras, and other small objects.<\/p>\n

Most storytellers at this point in the narrative make the inevitable announcement of the Antikythera Mechanism\u2019s discovery and move onto the efforts to tackle its mystery. But these stories are composed of\u00a0human beings<\/a>, and man works in mysterious ways.<\/p>\n

How did the crew respond to Elias\u2019 announcement? Hopeful scepticism I imagine. The captain, Demetrios Kondos, was the next to go down, impatient to know for himself. He returns to the surface with a bronze arm. They obviously proceeded to take some sort of measurements, co-ordinates and such to allow for a return to the wreck\u2019s site. Did they spend time taking anything for themselves? It\u2019s uncertain. Some authors, like Price (who will be important below), emphasize their decision to approach the correct authorities. Marchant, who recently wrote a book on the Antikythera Mechanism, spoke to a journalist who’d interviewed some locals; rumours tell that the crew spent a number of weeks lifting some of the small items for themselves, including the lead bars which as divers they valued for weights.<\/p>\n

In the end, it doesn\u2019t matter, but I do have my own preference. Of course, this isn\u2019t a story of\u00a0heroes<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0villains<\/a>: a handful of young and ocean-hardened Greek men, who risked their lives cutting sponges off outcrops on the sea floor, discovered a moment of glory. In the opening pages of her book, Marchant reminds us that sponge diving is an ancient career. I prefer to think that the divers\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0take a few things themselves. For their part in a\u00a0story that spans two millennia, I think that it\u2019s only appropriate.<\/p>\n

The crew returned home, and as was the custom of sponge divers, spent the next few months\u00a0celebrating<\/a>\u00a0their survival and profits. In November of 1900, Konotos and Stadiatis travelled to\u00a0Athens\u00a0with their proof \u2013 the bronze arm they\u2019d recovered from the wreck \u2013 and enlisted the help of Konotos’ old friend and\u00a0archaeologist, professor Oikonomu. Oikonomu contacted the government and before long Oikonomu and the fishermen were promised compensation for their find and assistance in recovering the rest of the wreck.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0excavation\u00a0lasted from the end of November 1900 until the end of September 1901. This period included a number of technical\u00a0setbacks<\/a>, including an initial ship which was too large to approach the site. By September one diver had been killed and two incapacitated in recovery efforts. Such was the nature of the\u00a0game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t discuss the other findings, interesting as they are in their own right, and despite the fact that many have been examined for the purpose of identifying the ship’s port of origin and age. It took until March of 1902 for the Antikythera Mechanism to be noticed, at this point just an ambiguous, albeit still unprecedented, lump of corroded\u00a0gears\u00a0and\u00a0inscriptions.<\/p>\n

Faced with the complexity and seeming anachronism of the artefact, controversy and intense debate broke out immediately. Was this an\u00a0astrolabe? It seemed too complex to be even that. It was far too sophisticated to be contemporary with the rest of the wreck, perhaps it belonged to a second wreck from centuries later?<\/p>\n

Solving\u00a0the Antikythera Mechanism<\/h3>\n

The intensity of this mystery cannot be overstated, and for that reason, attempts at a solution have consumed whole decades of individuals’ lives. I\u00a0will not be able<\/a>\u00a0to summarise all those lives here but can recount a few which give a feeling for the evolving nature of the\u00a0problem<\/a>. The first researcher to, albeit prematurely, provide significant answers was\u00a0Derek de Solla Price, a professor of history of science at\u00a0Yale University.<\/p>\n

I think that several times in history such genius has made geared astronomical clockwork so far ahead of his time that after him the development has rested for awhile to emerge with a tradition augmented more by stimulus diffusion than by direct continuation of the idea. A technological tradition is something so much more fragile than anything that was encoded into a written book and transmitted into the orderly fashion of knowledge.<\/em>
\n(Price 1974)<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Price’s most important publication was his 1974\u00a0Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism\u2014A Calendar Computer from\u00a0<\/em>circa.\u00a080\u00a0B.C.<\/small><\/em>\u00a0Price’s work depended on the most complete account of the mechanism to date, including an intensive and manual attempt at counting the precise number of teeth on each of the gears from\u00a0X-ray\u00a0pictures. Based on these rough countings, and based on Price’s knowledge of what the Greeks might have attempted to do, he suggested that the mechanism could calculate the relation between\u00a0lunar\u00a0and\u00a0solar\u00a0cycles, in particular, the\u00a0phases of the moon\u00a0over years. This is a complicated achievement, since it requires accounting for the fact that the appearance of the moon differs with the Earth’s motion around the sun, (a fact of which Greeks\u00a0weren’t aware<\/a>), and similarly that the\u00a0cycles of the moon<\/a>\u00a0do not align simply with the those of the sun (i.e. the moon does not rotate around the Earth a whole number of times over the course of a year).<\/p>\n

Price’s reports garnered interest, but not always of a positive nature. In his 1974 report, he confesses to sometimes waking up in the night, wondering if perhaps the evidence has tricked him if perhaps it is obvious that this magnificent contraption must date from a later\u00a0period<\/a>. Meanwhile, others<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0sought<\/a>\u00a0the most\u00a0outlandish explanations<\/a>\u00a0for the mechanism’s existence, they are obviously wrong, but maybe their doubts in the capacity of the Greeks to produce these gears are justified? Strong doubt is an emotion shared by all those who have dedicated themselves to the Antikythera Mechanism. And this includes the next character in my chronicle:\u00a0Michael Wright, whose story forms additional contributions to our understanding of the mechanism’s nature.<\/p>\n

I became convinced that by bringing to bear powers of observation developed as a museum curator in the study of intricate mechanism and craft techniques, together with the practical insights of a skilled workman, I might make a worthwhile contribution to the study of the Antikythera Mechanism.<\/em>
\n(Wright 2007)<\/small><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wright was a curator at the\u00a0London Science Museum\u00a0with a strong interest in the development of scientific instruments and their reconstructions. It seems inevitable that he should have come across the Antikythera mechanism and want to solve it. After reading Price’s seminal report on the mechanism, it was soon clear to Wright that it included a number of flaws, and that an important limitation was Price’s inability to properly image the artefact. Wright\u00a0combined forces<\/a>\u00a0with the scientist\u00a0Allan George Bromley\u00a0to produce better images. This was achieved by a newer technique called\u00a0X-ray tomography<\/a>, a variation of the X-ray technique Price had used, and which produces clearer images of individual planes. With these incredibly improved images, Wright could show that many of Price’s gear counts were mistaken.<\/p>\n

Wright began to work on his own model and submitted his proposal for publication in 2006. According to his reconstruction, Wright showed that the mechanism could calculate the cycle of the sun and moon, including showing the phases of the moon, and possibly the motions of some of the minor planets (including\u00a0Venus). The mechanism could account for the relationship between\u00a0synodic months\u00a0and the solar years (i.e. the relation between the length of the moon’s cycles and the apparent rotation of the sun) and could\u00a0predict<\/a>\u00a0eclipses. Wright also\u00a0hypothesized\u00a0that the Antikythera mechanism was a\u00a0horological\u00a0tool, and that maybe missing parts include wheels for showing the movement of all\u00a0five<\/a>\u00a0of<\/a>\u00a0the<\/a>\u00a0known<\/a>\u00a0planets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the same year an awesomely ambitious international group published their work on the Antikythera mechanism. The report utilized two important new techniques: (1)\u00a0polynomial texture mapping\u00a0(PTM) (which basically takes heaps of pictures with heaps of different lighting conditions and uses software to detect hardly legible etchings) and (2)\u00a0microfocus\u00a0computed tomography<\/a>\u00a0(microfocus CT) (a substantial improvement on the resolution of X-ray tomography, followed by sophisticated software to form 3D models).<\/p>\n

These new tools, combined with a number of newly incorporated fragments\u00a0which had<\/a>\u00a0not been<\/a>\u00a0available earlier<\/a>\u00a0(certainly not to Price), provided an unprecedented increase in the amount of translatable text. The new model featured 37 separate gears (of which seven are hypothetical), and with the new data could explain a number of the mechanism’s features. This includes\u00a0importantly<\/a>\u00a0the ability to account for\u00a0anomalistic months\u00a0(i.e. the nature of the moon’s cycle means that it takes it about nine years to get back to the same place, and hence that this period affects its apparent shape and speed). This would only have been possible to build by taking into account\u00a0Hipparchus’s sophisticated studies and calculations on the moon’s motions. Otherwise, much of the data agrees with Wright, including details like the mechanism’s calculating lunar eclipses and\u00a0zodiac\u00a0cycles.<\/p>\n

In 2008 the same group published a follow-up report. In addition to\u00a0coordinating lunar and solar cycles<\/a>, the mechanism displayed the month and its relation to the four-year cycle of the Panhellenic games<\/a>, which were important civic affairs and which were used for referencing the date of historical events.<\/p>\n

Rewriting the history books<\/h3>\n

The Antikythera mechanism and its story strain our conceptions of the ancient world. Here we have a clockwork mechanism which can, by use of interacting gears and their relative positions and teeth numbers, account for the unintuitively complex relation of lunar and solar cycles, including the phases of the moon, possibly the cycles of the planets, their relation to the zodiacs and the civic calendar!!!<\/a><\/p>\n

No ancient artefact has yet been found similar to the Antikythera mechanism. This does\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0mean that it was one of a kind. Quite the opposite. The skill and accuracy of the device suggest it to be a product of a workshop. Why aren’t more found? Most likely because virtually all bronze from the period was recycled. A sobering fact worth reflecting on is that while\u00a0Pliny\u00a0reports there being 3000 bronze statues in Rhodes in the first century A.D., the museum in Athens which has one of the best bronze statue collections in the world only has ten. All but one are from shipwrecks. This is the\u00a0reality<\/a>\u00a0faced by those studying history.<\/p>\n

The mechanism was not one of a kind, and must inevitably been part of an intellectual tradition, even if that tradition was attenuated and finally silenced with the fall of the Roman Empire. It seems very possible that the tradition was revived with the Arabic renaissance, and then communicated later in some abridged form into Europe. That undercurrent of knowledge could explain why, when gears were finally\u00a0reinvented<\/a>\u00a0in Europe, their presence and complexity exploded rather than just trickled in.<\/p>\n

In concluding it is worth wondering, as so many others have, about the identity of the mechanism’s craftsman. Price, for instance, had good reason to suggest the mechanism to have originated in\u00a0Rhodes, possibly in association with that island’s great polymath\u00a0Posidonios. This no longer seems likely since recent translations have revealed the mechanism to use\u00a0Corinthian colony\u00a0months, and instead it seems\u00a0likely<\/a>\u00a0that it originated from northwestern Greece. One tantalising suggestion is that this artefact is the “Globe of Billarus” referred to by\u00a0Strabo\u00a0as being looted by the Roman general\u00a0Lucullus\u00a0in 72-71B.C.<\/small>\u00a0and which was never heard of again…<\/p>\n

\n<\/span>\n

<\/small>A note on pronunciation: Antikythera has the accent on -kyth- so that it rhymes with ‘pith’.<\/p>\n

Primary references:<\/strong>\u00a0It’s important to note that in all of my summaries, especially of the primary literature, I have not done justice to the complexity and insight provided by those authors. If you\u00a0have<\/a>\u00a0the opportunity to peruse those papers you’ll see that they discuss in great detail all the different parts of the mechanisms, their method of analysis, and mathematical and mechanical reconstructions.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0amusing<\/a>\u00a0to note that the original<\/a> writeup in this node is from 2002 – four years before the paradigm changing publications of 2006!<\/p>\n