Clever Ancients

Posted on November 29, 2006 in History

I have not said it enough: our ancestors were smarter than we give them credit sometimes. There’s no need to resort to explanations that require UFOs to build the pyramids. The mathematics and the science was there in the heads of a few clever devisors. A case in point is the Antikythera Mechanism, a gizmo recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of Greece nearly a century ago:

The mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for seasons of planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers reported. An ingenious pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth.

The functions of the mechanism were determined by the numbers of teeth in the gears. The 53-tooth count of certain gears, the researchers said, was “powerful confirmation of our proposed model of Hipparchos’ lunar theory.”

Damn, they were good.