New Analysis Pushes Back Possible Origin For Antikythera Mechanism

We've mentioned several times over the years the Antikythera Mechanism, the astounding early analog computer recovered from a Greek shipwreck in shape good enough to allow modern recreations. The device has been attributed to different Greek mathemeticians and thinkers, such as Archimedes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius, but as reader puddingebola writes, "Current research suggests its origin may be much earlier, and its working based on Babylonian arithmetical methods rather than Greek Trigonometry, which did not exist at the time. Puddingebola excerpts from the NYT article: Writing this month in the journal Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Dr. Carman and Dr. Evans took a different tack. Starting with the ways the device's eclipse patterns fit Babylonian eclipse records, the two scientists used a process of elimination to reach a conclusion that the "epoch date," or starting point, of the Antikythera Mechanism's calendar was 50 years to a century earlier than had been generally believed.

Comments

Training set...

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems like a weak assumption to start from, that is, if you were trying to make a device that predicted eclipses and wanted to check that it was working wouldn't you set the device to begin calculations for some time period during which you have reasonable records, say 50-100 years in the past...

Re:Training set...

[fadethepolice]

Although I agree that the extra 100-200 years has been over emphasized I disagree with your general premise. These type of astronomical occurrences are easily predicted (past / future) by ancient mathematicians and were easily predictable at the time by civilizations worldwide from mesoamerica to china for the probable dates presented for the creation for the mechanism. The knowledge of astronomy, planetary and motion were pretty much common knowledge at 200 bc. This makes the 'revelations' of galileo rather comical in retrospect. What is remarkable about this mechanism is the degree of precision of its mechanical design which was unsurpassed at the time (as far as we know). The complexity of this device to accurately predict astronomical phenomena for centuries, mechanically, at the date of its creation belittles the acheivements of the renaissance and calls into question the belief that rome contributed significantly to mediterranean civilization.