The Antikythera device: 2,000 year old clockwork?

"Once again, this is just cutting and pasting from the internet."     Randy

The Antikythera Mechanism

Ancient Computer More Than 2000 Years Old 

See a very illuminating reproduction at this YouTube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk

"There is at least one artifact that proves beyond all doubt that one civilization in the ancient world possessed technical knowledge which no modern scientists had previously suspected. As it was found in the sea off Antikythera, a small island northwest of Crete, it is known as the 'Antikythera Mechanism.'

"Though it is over two thousand years old, it represents a level which our technology did not reach until the eighteenth century. If the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity, the industrial revolution might have begun a thousand years before Columbus. By this time we would not merely be puttering around on the Moon, we would have reached the nearer stars." -- Arthur C Clarke in "Technology and the Limits of Knowledge" 

"In 1900, on the day before Easter Sunday, a team of divers discovered a shipwreck off Antikythera whilst attempting to find sponges. The sunken ship's hull was full of bronze statues and other ancient artifacts that were later retrieved and delivered to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for cleaning and restoration.

It was not until 17th May, 1902 that a leading archaeologist examined the artifacts and recognized the outline of cogwheels in one of the lumps of bronze and wood. The writing on the case confirmed that the item had been made in 80 B. C. 

In 1958 Derek J. Solla Price, an Englishman who then worked at Cambridge University and who later worked as the Avalon Professor of the History of Science at Yale University in America, examined the mechanism. Using a process for restoring oxidized objects, Dr. Price was able to salvage some of the mass and from these pieces he attempted to rebuild the device.

However it was not until 1971 when X-ray photographs were taken of the artifact by the Greek Atomic Energy Commission, that the mechanism's array of meshing gears was finally revealed. 

Price remarked that, "nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic age, we should have felt that a device could not exist".

Work on the artifact revealed that on the outside it had consisted of dials set into a wooden box with at least 20-gear wheels inside. The box was covered with inscriptions that included an astronomical calendar. The mechanism also included a system of differential years. A crank spindle set the gears in motion at various speeds, turning pointers on three dials that calculated the rising and setting times and phases of the Moon, and the positions of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all with a high degree of accuracy . "

"It appears that this was, indeed a computing machine that could work out and exhibit the motions of the sun and the moon and probably also the planets" ...Solla Price 

It could well be that the technology is pre-Greek, since there are no other indications that they had this type of technical ability.

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians. 

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern. 

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.



Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (New American Standard Bible)


That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.