The Greatest Discovery You’ve Never Heard About

You're excavating ancient pyramids and open a tomb sealed shut for the past 2,000 years. Amongst the normal treasures you might expect to find; jewelry, trinkets, ceremonial regalia, you also find a computer. Wait. What? A computer? Yes, a computer. What would you think?

It sounds outlandish, maybe someone placed it there as a joke? But no, it's not a joke. What I'm talking about is neither nonsense nor science fiction. The equivalent to the above scenario happened to sponge divers in the spring of 1900. Off the coast of Antikythera, a Greek island, a group of sponge divers made the discovery of the century. Perhaps of the millennia. They never intended to and you've probably never heard of it, but on that fateful day in spring, those divers discovered what has come to be known as the Antikythera Mechanism. It was found amongst a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea and it is the oldest example of an analogue computer to have ever been found. It is a mechanical computer, but more precisely, it's an astronomical clock. It could show the movement of the sun and the moon, as well as when the next major sporting event was (think Olympic equivalent). It is thought to have had more functions, but after going through a shipwreck, and disintegrating at the bottom of the sea for over two millennia, parts have been lost and others have been turned to dust.

The device is highly intricate, as you can imagine a mechanical device designed to predict the positions of the heavenly bodies and everyone's favorite sporting event would be. This is no doubt impressive, but we've known about the science for these calculations. Impressive, but not mind blowing. It's easy to talk about things and write about them. What is mind blowing is that these calculations were translated into a mechanical mechanism and the quality of the parts are magnificent. To put it in perspective, the level of quality with which the manufacture of these parts were carried out predates anything similar by over 1,500 years. A 2,000 year old computer, found at the bottom of the sea.

At some point this knowledge of manufacturing was lost. Did it go down with the ship? This specific mechanism did, but who made it, and for whom, we have no idea. It's strange that we don't have any other examples of similar mechanisms. The historical records indicate that other mechanisms similar in intricacy have existed in ancient times, but we've never found an example of any of them and have no idea if they worked or not, or for that matter, if they ever really existed. This example is undeniable proof of such complex mechanisms existing in ancient times and points to the high level of skill the craftspeople of that time had. The undertaking of such a mechanism must have been enormous, especially when you consider that once this knowledge was lost, it didn't appear for another 1,500 years.

The Antikythera Mechanism brings up the very serious question of what else has been lost to time, or in this case, the sea? The fact that technology was in some ways set back more than a millennia by the loss of the Antikythera and other similar mechanisms is in some ways devastating. How would civilization been different if this knowledge was not lost? It brings to mind other devastating events to human knowledge, like decline and eventual destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria.

This reminds me of the fragility of human knowledge and history. The fact that you may have never heard of such an important discovery, I believe, only serves to illustrate this point. Hopefully this article can serve as a small step to never forgetting again.