![]() Today we have a reasonable grasp of some of its workings, but there are still unsolved mysteries. The device appears to be a geared astronomical calculation machine of immense complexity. Over the decades the original mass split into 82 fragments, leaving a fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzle for researchers to put back together. The lump is known as the Antikythera mechanism, an extraordinary object that has befuddled historians and scientists for more than 120 years. According to historical knowledge at the time, gears like these should not have appeared in ancient Greece, or anywhere else in the world, until many centuries after the shipwreck. Months later, however, at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the lump broke apart, revealing bronze precision gearwheels the size of coins. One object recovered from the site, a lump the size of a large dictionary, initially escaped notice amid more exciting finds. Soon after, their discovery prompted the first major underwater archaeological dig in history. The “dead naked people” were marble sculptures scattered on the seafloor, along with many other artifacts. When the storm subsided, they dived for sponges and chanced on a shipwreck full of Greek treasures-the most significant wreck from the ancient world to have been found up to that point. They had sheltered from a violent storm near the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and mainland Greece. In 1900 diver Elias Stadiatis, clad in a copper and brass helmet and a heavy canvas suit, emerged from the sea shaking in fear and mumbling about a “heap of dead naked people.” He was among a group of Greek divers from the eastern Mediterranean island of Symi who were searching for natural sponges.
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