Reply #52: Gamma Ray Image [View All]

[Tims]

This is the real image of the Antikythera Mechanism, not the artist's rendition in the post.

This is the actual artifact.

In 1959 an attempt to reconstruct the original mechanism resulted in the following:



and appears that the mechanism was a component of a device to calculate the motion of stars and planets. You can find a facsimile of a 1959 Scientific American article regarding this here: http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera3.htm

Therefore we indeed know what this was and though there is some "mystery" about it, it is mostly just forcing "historians to reevaluate the technological sophistication of the Greek culture of the first century B.C."(1) There is little doubt that the Greeks made this and were capable of other things of equal complexity.

We must understand that with the invading barbarian hordes which would bring down Rome and the later Christians penchant for destroying anything related to "pagan" culture, it is amazing we know as much as we do about the ancients. To find out they were more sophisticated than we though is more a revelation than a mystery.

(1)http://homepage.mac.com/casewright/essays/antikythera.html