An international team of archaeologists and divers wearing an Exosuit will be diving on the Antikythera shipwreck this month. The suit is described as a part robot and part submarine, and evocative of the suit from the “Iron Man” movies and their hero, Tony Stark. With the Exosuit, divers can descend safely to 1000 feet (300+ m) and stay for hours, without having to decompress on the way back to the surface. It is fitting that the most modern high-tech suit is using to explore the shipwreck that was the source of the most advanced high-tech device know from the ancient world, the Antikythera mechanism.
In 1901 sponge divers off the island of Antikythera, Greece found a strange device in a deep water shipwreck. It was bronze mass appearing to be a complex of gears and dials. No one quite knew what to make of it, until almost 100 years later, advanced digital radiographs revealed that it was a complex astronomical computer capable of predicting lunar and solar eclipses and the motion of the moon in the sky. The device became known as the Antikythera mechanism, and is believed to date back to around 87 BCE. About the size of a modern laptop, the device is far more advanced than had been believed to be possible to be designed and built over 2000 years ago. It has been called “the world’s first computer” and “a mechanism of staggering genius.”
The Antikythera ship must have beem a huge trading ship for its time. Intact artifacts from the wreck were spread over a huge area, about 197 feet (60 meters) long at depths ranging from 114 feet to 197 feet (35 to 60 m), Some have suggested that the wreck is not of one, but of several ships. The wreck contained the largest horde of Greek treasure ever found. Bronze and marble sculpture as well as coins and other artifacts dating back to the 4th century BC. Among the other treasures, the Antikythera mechanism came shore as a corroded mass of bronze. Only later research would reveal that it was complex instrument with at least 30 bronze gears capable of predicting the movement of the major astronomical bodies.
As reported by the New York Times: Archaeologists believe it was not a unique device. Indeed, according to Dr. Foley, there are historical references to other kinds of mechanisms in early manuscripts.
“This is the kind of thing that quite literally wakes me up in the middle of the night,” he said. “I can’t sleep because I’m so excited.”
The documentary below is 51 minutes long but well worth watching.
GREATEST MYSTERIES: The Greek Ancient Computer – Antikythera Mechanism
Its amazing how many false sattrs man kind has had before we finally “got technological” for want of a phrase…The Greeks and Romans were more advanced in many ways than those in the Dark Ages. When we’re we finally able to build the Colosuem or Great Pyramid again after the originals?! And if you think about the Enlightenment and the Dark Ages before that, the Roman / Greek cultures that were superior to much of the Dark Ages weren’t too far away from the Industrial Revolution…hard to argue that 400 years…thanks religion (dark ages) You held back human development for 1000 years!! And to think mankind hasn’t really advanced at all in 80,000 years the cradle of civilisation could have taken off at any time if the weather etc had been a little more settled…yet even when it was we stuffed it up again and again…no doubt religion will be the death of our civilisation, and for the sake (and all sides are gulity of this) of scrapping over a small patch of desert :\I strongly believe overall that religion is a force for bad in the world, and more bad than good has come from it, and will continue to do so!