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Workings of Ancient Calculating Device Deciphered
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 30, 2008 02:40 PM
from the nearly-unbelievable dept.
from the nearly-unbelievable dept.
palegray.net writes "Scientists have discovered new meaning behind the functions of the Antikythera Mechanism, which has been referred to as the oldest known analog computing device. In addition to providing a means to calculate the dates for solar eclipses, the device apparently tracked the four-year cycles of the Olympiad. From the New York Times article: 'Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument's back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar.'"
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Data Sets (Score:5, Informative)
For those interested here are the data sets and some nifty images available to download:
The Data [antikythera-mechanism.gr]
it just needed to be set... (Score:5, Funny)
when they found it, it was flashing 12.
Where would we be today? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe a big "thank you" is in order for organized religion.
Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe a big "thank you" is in order for organized religion.
Actually, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had more to do with it.
The Church, if anything, managed to save some of the knowledge that would otherwise would have been lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_ages [wikipedia.org]
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Church, if anything, managed to save some of the knowledge that would otherwise would have been lost.
Sure, if by "save" you mean "appropriate for exclusive use".
Yes, the fall of the Roman Empire immediately preceded the Dark Ages. However, problem of the Dark Ages was not so much that there was no central empire to act as a beacon of light, but more that education and knowledge was available only to the clergy (and the wealthy, via the clergy). It is very telling that the Renaissance only began with the translation of the Bible into a common tongue, instead of being exclusively in Latin - that only pries
Re:Where would we be today? (Score:4, Interesting)
Points of order:
* "exclusive use", while not perfect, is far preferable to "left to rot", which is pretty much what would've happened if there wasn't at least some entity willing to preserve what would otherwise be disposed of by various invading armies, hordes, etc).
* Throughout Europe (save for Spain during the Islamic occupations), Latin was the common metric of literacy and fluency among anyone who had even the most rudimentary of noble titles. For most of the early portions of the Dark Ages, IIRC it was pretty much the only language of inter-kingdom commerce (which meant that import-export type merchants either knew it, or they got ripped off a lot).
* Err, The Bible wasn't printed in any non-Latin language until the 1450's CE, during the Italian Renaissance, which began quite a bit earlier (13th century), with the arrival of Islamic mathematics and philosophies that came back with returning crusaders... and not by Latin-to-Vulgar biblical translations. You were close, though - in that one invention during the same time period made knowledge easier to access... though not for the reasons you state.
Don't think "Bible", think "Printing Press". Scribe-time before the press was invented was hella expensive for anyone not in the Church wanting copies of something (said church was otherwise busy trying to keep copies of not only internal liturgical and dogmatic script, but to maintain legible copies of everything they could scrounge from the by-now-dead Roman and Greek empires).
HTH a little,
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Informative)
The Renaissance was in part as a result of the sacking of Kostantinopole were phylosophers and scientists had to flee to Italy.
The Bible and espcialy the new tesament was written in Greek the language of teh Byzantium as opposed to Latin.
G
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that would certainly be telling. If it were true.
During the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was the language of educated Christians, just as Arabic was the language of educated Muslims - all REAL scholarship was written in Latin or Arabic (Yah, yah, Hindus used another language for scholarship, but since we're talking "Dark Ages", we're talking Europe), depending on the source. Latin (or Arabic) was not exclusive to the priesthood - it was taught everywhere literacy was taught, as PART of literacy.
Note that a bit later, French filled a similar role - it was the Lingua Franca for any person who laid claim to education. Still later, English has taken up that role, which is perhaps why you didn't understand the relation between Latin and Education - you grew up speaking the modern equivalent of Latin.
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To be entirely fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm an atheist (ok, more agnostic) and swift to blame religion myself. Butm to be entirely fair, I'm not sure why you blame the church there.
1. The early Franks were pretty proud that they're warriors, not scribes. They're not the only ones.
Charlemagne was the first monarch there who even tried to learn to write. Very late in life and, while he must be commended for his real efforts and time dedicated, it seems to have gone nowhere.
2. Antiquity itself wasn't that much more literate. Yes, in the middle ages only the rich learned to read and write. Guess what? The Hellots of Sparta and the poor of Rome, but especially _outside_ Rome weren't much richer and nobody taught them to read and write. And even in Egypt, while for the rich it was a thing of _pride_ to be literate (and addressing a letter "to your scribe" was a form of flattery, meaning, "I know you're your own scribe"), don't think that the poor working the fields had time to go to school.
We have a somewhat distorted view of Greece and Rome, in that basically we have a distorted tunnel view of it. We see the greatness of Athens at its peak, or Sparta... which were populated only with rich slave owners, whose only job was to be soldiers and philosophers. Athens additionally had managed to cheat the other Greek states, who had joined as _allies_ against Persia, with Athens as merely heading and organizing the army and funds, but found themselves actually turned into vassals of Athens and paying tribute as... well, more like a form of paying for protection. And not against the Persians, if you know what I mean.
So, yeah, the Athenians of Pericle could build great statues and temples, and sit around debating politics and philosophy, on the money of the whole rest of Greece and on the work of countless slaves. They _were_ the rich guys, and yeah, they could read and write. Big improvement over the Dark Ages, where also the rich guys could read and write, eh?
Ditto in Rome. We look mainly at what happened inside Rome itself, and the great democracy they had, but forget about the whole regions where they reduced the peasants to utter poverty by confiscating the lands and distributing the lands of a whole bloody province to half a dozen rich families. Again, we see the rich and maybe also middle classes this time, getting an education and living in nice cities. And a few slaves used as personal clerks. But forget about the 80% of the population, who was working the fields outside the cities, and who lived a heck of a lot worse and nobody educated those. Don't think that anyone educated the slaves in Sicily, which are documented to have been borderline starved and sometimes outright starved, so their masters could sell more grain to Rome. Or don't think that the slaves in the mines, which was little more than a slow death sentence, got educated first.
Ancient times were a lot shittier than some people assume. Maybe a little better than the darkest of the Dark Ages, but for most of the poor people, not by much or not at all.
3. Romans insisted on your learning Roman or Greek too, so...
4. What we inherited as the idea of the Dark Ages is, well, partially (though not totally) just the eternal circle of nihilism. Each time people go disillusioned, it seems to be a common reaction to go basically "OMG, our contemporary culture is nothing, we're living in the (new) Dark Ages" and "somewhere else / somewhere in the past, now that was Teh Golden Age, and the land of milk and honey!"
So back then, someone thought Rome was all that. Funnily enough, Rome at various points had thought Greece had been all that. And Greece had thought that their Mycaenean ancestors had been all that. And if you go forward in time instead, you find a disillusioned 19'th century England thinking that the middle ages had been such a golden age of chivalry. Some still do.
Others look with nostalgia at the peak of the age of disease, social injustice, broken social contracts, nobles _and_ cities plundering the former common lands
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you are accusing the Church of suppressing education and civilization.
He may not be, but I am. If you do not think the Church has suppressed education, then you need to go have a long look at texts describing the Inquisition. One single example is how the Church dictated the wholesale burning of every scrap of paper documenting the Mayan civilization because it was declared heresy. (Ref: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/maya [pbs.org]). Another very famous example is the Church excommunication of Galileo for daring to suggest the earth orbits the sun. And of course there's the modern-day refusal to accept natural selection as a concept they'll tolerate being taught in schools. Many, many other examples are out there for the learning if you care to look.
Are you saying the collaspe of education and civilization had nothing to do with that whole burning and pillaging thing from the pagan barbarian hordes such as the Goths and Vandals?
They were largely disorganized. The Church is far and away the longest lasting, best-funded, globally-organized suppressor of education that has ever existed. No other example even comes close.
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:4, Insightful)
I stand by the point that the church certainly did not go to pains to educate the people.
Anyone who could afford the time to be educated, was educated. Cathedral and monastery schools dotted the landscape and you didn't have to become a monk or priest to join these schools.
Unfortunately most peasants couldn't afford the time to get educated. They were too busy growing crops and living like peasants. That isn't the Church's fault. That's the result of the inefficient food production system at the time. It would be dishonest to ascribe sinister motives to this simple fact of life.
On the other hand, those that could afford the time, would usually prefer to become doctors, lawyers or priests after they were educated instead of going back to their peasant lives. In other words, there were no educated peasants because once a peasant was educated, he was no longer a peasant.
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Informative)
The cause of that fall is still under debate, but the least that can be said is that it was closely correlated to the rise of the Roman Church. OK, correlation is not causation, but there is no causation without correlation, causation hasn't been disproved either.
Yes, and the rest of that knowledge was lost when they scraped old parchment to write their own texts [wikipedia.org]
And the Church murdering scholars and librarians [wikipedia.org] that didn't belong to the Church didn't help too much either. The Church Father known as "Pillar of Faith" [wikipedia.org] who had Hypatia killed was the same man who had Mary mother of Jesus proclaimed as an "eternal virgin".
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Funny)
The Church Father known as "Pillar of Faith" who had Hypatia killed was the same man who had Mary mother of Jesus proclaimed as an "eternal virgin".
Eternal virgin? If that was true, then to heck with this "saint Mary" stuff... Joseph was more of a saint than she was!
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Re:"eternal virgin" a blatent lie (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just silly. Where then did Jesus's brothers ands sisters come from?
I agree, but for fairness' sake I'll add that some people think that "brothers and sisters" referred to his cousins (linguistically it's perhaps possible, but again, I agree with you: they were biological children of Mary and Joseph). Better evidence, IMO, is Matthew 1:25a: "But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son." If that doesn't say they "did it", I don't know what would...
Anyway, the whole "virgin Mary" business is silly: Jesus was born of a virgin. Nothing says she had to remain a virgin after that. The idea of a "sinless Mary" is silly, too: "My soul doth magnify the Lord. / And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. [wikipedia.org]" Savior from what, if she was sinless? And if she was sinless, Jesus wouldn't have had to die for sin: she could have done it.
Of course Joseph "knew" his wife. I think that was the mangu's point.
I know... I was responding to the quoted "Pillar of Faith". It was just too good to pass up... can't you picture Joseph? - "You mean we can't ever WHAT?!"
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, bad or ugly, it's still a fact that more knowledge was preserved with the Church than would have been without. The monks may have shown bias in which texts they copied, but it's not like anyone else was copying or distributing other works on as large a scale.
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can say it, sure. You can also say "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".
Translation: "I want to make it sound like I'm educated and unbiased without actually being either, especially the latter. Learning is hard."
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasn't it a mob of rabid Christians that finally succeeded in destroying the great library of Alexandria? It might have been the single greatest loss of knowledge/history/culture in the entire existence of mankind. Just think of one of tens of thousands of losses, the complete works of Imnhotep, the man who invented modern architecture, medicine, mathematics and who knows what else, thousands of years before anybody else.
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Re:Where would we be today? (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't it a mob of rabid Christians that finally succeeded in destroying the great library of Alexandria?
We don't know. The Wikipedia page lists at least four theories about how or when the library was destroyed. Two are due to conquests by the Roman Emperor, one due to conquest by Muslims and one by Christians when the pagan temples were ordered destroyed by the Roman Emperor.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right, but not the way you think. Modern science was started by the Catholic church. The dark ages were brought about by the fall of the Roman Empire. Had it not been for the church we might well still be in the dark ages.
not just the first known analog computer... (Score:5, Funny)
Need one today (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...or maybe the Antikythera Mechanism is actually a time machine!
good news is... (Score:3, Insightful)
now we, computer geeks, can claim ancient greek heritage.
how cool is that, hmmm ?
The Nature Article (Score:5, Informative)
You kids, I swear (Score:5, Funny)
With your bronze gears and such tomfoolery. Back in my day we sisn't even have abacuses. We had to count everything by hand, do the math in our heads, and remember it!
Now get off my lawn, and take your newfangled gizmo with you!
That's great but... (Score:5, Funny)
It Computes Dates (Score:5, Funny)
Computer Model Proves GeoCentrism (Score:3, Interesting)
So my point here is that "scientific" computer models should be greeted with skepticism, even when they accurately predict. They should be absolutely scorned when they fail to accurately predict. There are a whole bunch of "scientists" out there running computer similations that are far less predictive than this device that is likey based on a geocentric theory of the universe.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dear HighOrbit,
Please take a history class, or read a book. There were plenty of heliocentric and round-earth hypotheses put forward during the classical Greek period. Often, the observations and measurement-taking were fantastically good. Furthermore, science doesn't seek to prove anything.
Re:Computer Model Proves GeoCentrism (Score:5, Insightful)
ALL models should be greeted with skepticism. Hell, all THEORIES and all HYPOTHESES should be greeted with skepticism.
That is the very foundation of successful application of the scientific method.
There's a big problem with what you're saying, however... you say that a model that does not accurately predict should be scorned. That is false. Models are often revised to account for inaccurate predictions. As one famous scientist explained, it is not the Eureka! moments that drive true discovery, it is the "That's funny..." moments. In other words, the failure of a model to accuately predict will often lead to greater understanding of what is being modeled. Do you think that the General Theory of Relativity should be scorned, even though, as a modeal, it fails to accurately predict the existence of dark energy and dark matter?
So, to sum up -- yes, skepticism is important in all science. But a model that does not predict accurately may still have value to the scientific community... at the very least, it can be the starting point for a revised model that does accurately predict.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm imagining Beowulf imagining a Beowulf cluster of these things.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm imagining Beowulf imagining a Beowulf cluster of these things.
Nah, if anything, I can imagine Beowulf ripping out one of its clock hands and throwing it to the sea
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new analog computing overlor...
What do you mean, "They're dead"?
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Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)
I think you've mistaken the ancient Greeks for the Crab People [wikipedia.org]. That's ok. It's a common mistake.
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Yes (Score:5, Funny)
But some idiot lost the boot cog and it won't work with any known version of GRUB, LILO, SYSLINUX or LOADLIN :(
Historians speculate that if someone could get it to boot up, it would run faster than a modern PC running Vista!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Ha! Never underestimate the powers of a dead walrus! (or a twisted imagination)
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Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
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Rebuild? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once they finish working this out, I would really be interested if someone manages to reproduce a working version.
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Re:Rebuild? (Score:5, Funny)
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cute but... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)
I predicted these very first two posts. Ahhhh Slashdot, how your constant familiarities of Beowulf clusters, Linux, Soviet Union, Goatse and frosty pissers never tend to cease!
You must not be new here...
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Re:Again? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't this the eighth or ninth time this year that they've "discovered" the inner workings of this damn thing?
It's hard to say. They're also using the device to keep count... They think.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You hook it up to the Baghdad Battery [wikipedia.org].
Re:Why calculate timing of the Olympiad? (Score:5, Insightful)
The wikipedia article indicates that people think the device was designed with compactness in mind. So why would you add the feature of calculating when 4 years had passed? It's already keeping track of the months, so couldn't you just count them as they went past? Did I miss something?
You've clearly never developed software for salespeople.
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Re:12 months? (Score:5, Informative)
The original Roman calendar had ten months, yes, and actually only covered about 300 days, with most of winter considered off-calendar. However, by tradition, the second Roman king, Numa Pompilius reformed this calendar and added January and February (at the end of the calendar), giving the year 12 months (and so at this time, the names of December, etc. as numbered months still made sense). This was the calendar used (with modifications) from roughly 700 BC to the introduction of the Julian calendar in 46BC. The calendar of Numa Pompilius ended up with some crazy leaps and intercalations to keep it reasonably in line with the solar year, so reform was definitely due.
In doing so, the Romans consulted with Greek astronomers, who had a lot of data about such things (though the Julian calendar is merely a solar calendar that keeps pretty good time with the moon, and not a true lunisolar calendar like one based on the Metonic cycle would be). Greece at the time of the Antikythera mechanism (about 50-100 years earlier than the Julian reform), had in fact just come under Roman control.
In addition to reforming the "leap" system, January got pushed to the start of the year, making the "number-names" months no longer descriptive, and the months of Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed for Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, respectively.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The didn't exactly LIKE one another but they intermarried and got along. Alexander the Great (or rather more to the point, his father Phillip the Great) was Macedonian and would come to rule pretty much all the Greek Islands and (by the end of Alexander's life) most the known ancient world all the way to India.
There is clear references in Alexander's diary that he suffered some discrimination as a child for being a Macedonian but it was like the difference between a modern-day Scottish and Welsh. Very much
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>I don't even want to imagine a computer with the developers' manual carved on it!
One of the Corinthian Letters mentioned in the bible actually was named "Read me first!" (in Corinthian Bold Condensed), but since they didn't understand what it was about, it was not included in the bible.