A 2,100-year-old bronze and iron computer that predicted eclipses and other astronomical events also showed the cycle of the Greek Olympics and the related games that led up to it, researchers reported today.
The research team also has been able to decipher all the month names from the heavily corroded fragments of the so-called Antikythera mechanism, providing the first concrete evidence that an astronomical scheme devised by the Greek astronomer Geminos was put to practical use.
Teasing out the month names was “a really spectacular achievement,” said science historian Francois Charette of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, who was not involved in the research.
Historians “had until now doubted that this scheme had actually been used in civil life, but the evidence from the Antikythera mechanism now proves them wrong,” he said.
The inclusion of the data about the Olympic Games on what is now called the Olympiad Dial of the clock-like mechanism was a surprise to the researchers because the dates of the ancient Olympics, held every fourth summer from 776 BC to AD 393, would have been well known to the populace, just as the time of the modern Olympics is now.
“The inclusion of the Olympiad Dial says more about the cultural importance of the Games than about their advanced technology,” said Tony Freeth of Images First Ltd. in London, who was a member of the research team that reported the results in the journal Nature.
The Antikythera mechanism, so named because it was found in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, is thought to have been made about 100 BC.
Its purpose was a mystery for more than 100 years, but in 2006, researchers used a massive X-ray tomography machine, similar to that used to perform CT scans on humans, to examine the heavily encrusted fragments.
Ah, what a coincedence .. I just read another piece about a similar thing they also found in a shipwreck … that could also predict solar eclipses and such, but it was not the same thing as on this picdture .. it contained lots of wheels and such … 2 in the uk had been working on the solution for a very long time.
Adding a theory to something you find … so backwards reasoning … it’s never a 100% guarantee .. if there is no manual next to it … hahaha …
Maybe I should build something very weird, completely without use and burry it somewhere …… The voynich manuscript method … sort of … perhaps …
Maybe not in this case but hey .. can’t help thinking this each time .. when they start reasoning about things they find … with knowlegde from now ..