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New Analysis Pushes Back Possible Origin For Antikythera Mechanism

Posted by timothy on from the spin-the-dials-backwards dept.

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.

14 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Training set... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Training set... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      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...

      Not only that, but also 205 B.C. (this "new" date for the calendar's starting point - just seven years after Archimedes died) it was not even an "old" date for Greeks...
      (disclaimer: i am Greek!)

    2. Re:Training set... by fadethepolice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Training set... by mrbester · · Score: 3, Informative

      The etymology of "renaissance" answers your last snark.

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    4. Re:Training set... by RockDoctor · · Score: 2

      generally speaking epoch points are selected to be at some point in the past, for a variety of reasons. Just consider computer date epochs - virtually all of them count from years or decades before the software was developed, and many start from a point thousands of years in the past.

      Particularly relevant to the Antikythera Mechanism is the date system that astronomers use : the Julian Date, whose zero point is at mid-day January 01 4713 BCE. This software standard was introduced in 1583, though the definition of "year" was taken from work attributed to Julius Caesar in 46BC. Which is a citation separation time that is going to take some beating. I suppose that it would be just about plausible for modern biological work to cite Aristotle, for nearly 2400 years of separation, but it would probably be a little forced.

      As I recall modern simulation resets the epoch every few decades to compensate for cumulative errors,

      My copy of "Uranometria (North)" is plotted to epoch 2000.0 (i.e. midnight, Jan 1st 2000), but my tabulated copy of the Bright Star Catalogue (which covers most of Uranometria's plates - I found it in a second-hand bookshop, IIRC) was done to epoch 1950.0. The difference is because stars do move - slowly (proper motion, e.g. Barnard's Star does 10 seconds of arc per year), but also reflection nebulae do change (slowly), things like planetary nebulae expand (the Crab Nebula is only 960 years old and is 420 seconds of arc across, so in that 50 year epoch it should have widened by about 25 seconds of arc.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. Re:look up also by jeffasselin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except for the fact that it's complete pseudo-scientific bunk, promoted by the likes of frauds like Von Daniken:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
  3. I wonder by koan · · Score: 2

    How many ideas and creations have been lost only to be rediscovered, like the Baghdad battery, or the antikythera mechanism.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:I wonder by lannocc · · Score: 2

      42. Gotta catch 'em all!

      --
      -IOVAR Web Dev Platform
    2. Re:I wonder by sound+vision · · Score: 2

      Who's that Pokemon??

    3. Re:I wonder by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

      The process of manufacturing concrete was lost, the process of manufacturing wootz steel aka damascus steel is still lost, there are ancient Chinese tombs with stainless steel swords. In all of these cases the manufacturing method relied on some naturally occurring material which was eventually exhausted and eventually painstakingly recreated from more basic sources much, much later on.

  4. Re:look up also by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2

    Hey, he may not have been Tolkien, but it was still some great fantasy there. . .

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  5. Re:A lesson about History- and the liar narrative by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Informative

    If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'.

    Correctly so because science is based on evidence, not wild speculation or serendipity.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. Re:A lesson about History- and the liar narrative by umafuckit · · Score: 4, Informative

    If this device hadn't been found, anyone and I mean ANYONE who dared to suggest that such technology existed in this time-frame would be described, ESPECIALLY on forums like this one, as a complete 'anti-scientific' 'nutter'.

    There are records of such devices (or at least related ones), but the Antikythera mechanism is the only surviving one. Cicero, for instance, describes an orrery which shows the motions of the moon and planets. Ancient Rhodes was famous for its automata.

    --
    soylentnews.org
  7. Re: A lesson about History- and the liar narrative by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Difference being that relativity was mathematically deduced from a simple set of hypotheses.

    Are you saying that archeologists don't follow scientific method? Because that is not how I have experienced archeology. Archeologist have to construct hypotheses based on certain evidence and then set out to prove them like everybody else. Of course you can't obtain your proof sitting on your ass in an air conditioned office deducing mathematical formulae, you have to go out and dig around in the dirt to find you proof. If an archeologist finds marble sheets in Roman ruins around Europe and the the Middle East bearing clear saw marks he can go with conventional wisdom which for a long time would have had us believe these slabs were produced by slaves using bronze hand-saws in painstaking and wasteful manual labour. However, an archeologist, with a bit of imagination might note that the slabs are a bit too uniformly sawed to have been produced by hand and he might also recall from conversations with his colleagues in the department of history that there are plenty of accounts in ancient sources pointing to sophisticated machinery being used in ancient times even though these accounts are often dismissed as fantasy or written off as references to grain mills etc. So taking the risk of applying a bit of imagination to the scientific process the archeologist could perhaps hypothesise that the Romans weren't stupid and that it is likely they developed the process of sawing stone to a high degree of technological sophistication. He could then go and try to confirm that hypothesis by looking for remains of stone processing facilities like, say the stone saw mill at Gerasa in Jordan where large blocks of half sawed marble blocks have been found with several parallels saw marks in them. This site and others like it demonstrates conclusively that the stone was being mechanically sawed into sheets of marble using water wheels at least some 1300 years before the industrial revolution. While I'm sure that mathematics is more logical, rigorous and absolute than many other disciplines of science I'm pretty sure that Einstein in particular with his numerous and fascinating thought experiments found plenty of room for imagination in his work.