The first computer hails from the ancient world: anti-cheater mechanism

A random find at the beginning of the last century turned our ideas about the level of technical knowledge of ancient people.

Discovery story

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of fishermen near the island of Antikythera (also Andikitira) in the Ionian Sea discovered the remains of an ancient shipwreck. On the "Titanic of Antiquity" there were many statues and their fragments, jewelry, furniture, dishes. In the history of underwater archeology, this is perhaps the largest "catch" in terms of quantity, value of finds, and their uniqueness. Among such a variety, at first no one paid attention to a small piece of metal: everyone took it for a fragment of a statue.

However, a year later it was this piece of metal that became a sensation: the archaeologist Valerios Stais examined the subject in more detail and revealed some parts that resembled a dial and a gear. But such details of the mechanisms developed only in the 14th century!

Mechanism study

Actively starting to study the device and its surviving parts, the researchers came to the conclusion that it was created between 200 and 70 years. BC. in Greece. The device itself consisted of two panels: the front working panel and the rear. It took almost 114 years to get closer to unraveling the effects of the mechanism, and research has not stopped so far.

The front panel, apparently, was used as a portable planetarium. She showed the movement of the Sun, Moon and five more planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. In addition, 42 astronomical events (full moon, eclipse, new moon, solstice, etc.) could be calculated on the mechanism for years to come. That is, what the computer is now calculating, could have done the antikythera mechanism in antiquity. Fantastic, because, as previously thought, the level of knowledge needed to create such a device appeared only in the XVII century.

But the back panel of the mechanism is “devoted” to more social issues. She combined the lunar and solar calendars (this is important, as some peoples lived on the lunar calendar), tracked a four-year cycle of games (Olympic, Pythian, Isthma, Nemean).

So research into the capabilities of the mechanism can be expressed by the words: "but we did not know that the ancient Greeks were capable of this."

However, the question of why this mechanism was constructed remains open. Watch the stars? Use as a training aid? Schedule the Olympic Games? Or even predict the future? Or maybe for something else? Research is ongoing, and perhaps scientists will soon find out the answer to this question.

Is this the only device

It is interesting that if today the antikythera mechanism for us is the only and unique technical achievement of ancient times, then for contemporaries it was clearly not such. Scientists have compiled a long list of historical works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which speak of a similar structure. The most famous, of course, is the description of Cicero in the treatise "On the State." If you believe him, then the first devices, similar to the anti-Kythera mechanism, were machined by Thales of Miletus, that is, in the VI century. BC.! It turns out that the antikythera mechanism was known much earlier than anticipated.

The question that interests all researchers is how can this knowledge, which has been improved over the centuries, simply be forgotten for 15 centuries? The Western Roman Empire fell, but after that there was not a single evidence or mention of devices that at least somehow resembled an anti-cheaters mechanism. It was only in the 14th century that the Italian Giovanni de Dondi designed Astrarium - an astronomical clock that can be considered a direct descendant of a unique device found on the island of Antikythera.

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