00:00.43 archpodnet Hello and welcome to episode 96 of the pseudo archeology podcast and I am your host Andrew Kinkella and tonight we talk about the antikythera mechanism. So what is. The antikythera mechanism. Ah, the reason why I picked this one was because I promised that this show would vaguely split in half meaning about half the themes would be old school classics that everyone is curious about and I would also talk about ah. Modern or ah, actually let me let me cut there for a minute. Um, let's do this again. 01:44.90 archpodnet That's here. 01:50.11 archpodnet Tonight we're talking about the antikythera mechanism. So what is this? The reason why I wanted to answer this question was because I had thought about doing this show basically split in half thematically meaning. None the themes would be old school classics that everyone's curious about like Atlantis and the other half would be recent right? things of the week that you might find as you look on your phone and so what I did was I did a little search on my phone. For key terms like archeology archeological finds. You know things that anyone would be curious about and one of the search results that came up ah kind of again and again was the antikythera mechanism and I'm like okay. This is something that's going to come up on just about anyone's phone and the terms that would go with this before you looked further in the in the title. Ah here wait let's see I'm just going to start this. You know what I'm going to start all this again. I'm just. Oh I'm mush mouthing it horribly. 04:23.21 archpodnet Ah. 04:35.51 archpodnet What let's see. 04:59.45 archpodnet Welcome to episode 96 of the pseudo archeology podcast and I'm your host Dr Andrew Kingkella on tonight's episode. We will be discussing the antikythera mechanism found in Greece in None so what is this mechanism and why did I choose to talk about it. Well I chose to talk about it because I had made a pledge to myself for this show that I would split the topics about none the time I would talk about old school classics. That everyone's always curious about like Atlantis or rule of the sphinx or this kind of thing and the other half I would talk about current events in archeology and so in order to figure out what current events were I just took out my phone and I googled. Common terms like archeology archeology finds. Um archeology in the news and I just want to see what would come up and 1 of the first things to come up was the antikythera mechanism and I thought ok this is great because when you. Search for antikythera mechanism the descriptive terms associated with it are things like mystery device world's none computer alien technology right. This kind of thing and and I'm like okay here's a great example of an archeological artifact that if you're truly curious and want to know more about it. It's actually kind of hard sometimes to just find reliable facts. And so I thought it would be fun to kind of take a tour through the story of the antikythera mechanism to talk about what it really is reconstructions of it and what we truly can answer about it using today's modern archeology and at the same moment. Refute some more of the foolish silly claims that it is somehow alien technology so I actually have an angle on talking about this thing as well because I was actually asked about it a while back? um. As part of a television show. So every once in a very long while I get interviewed for like a ah documentary on the science channel or the discovery channel or this kind of thing and in those interviews I get asked about all kinds of things and None of them. 10:15.87 archpodnet Was the antikythera mechanism and I didn't know that much about it I knew a little and I tried to fill in as much as I reasonably could and honestly as I talked about it and I looked over some notes about it I was a little worried I was like oh man you know is this is this fake. Ah, what what is this you know is this some sort of fraud am I perpetuating it by talking about it. You know on on some sort of television show. So I didn't want to screw up I wanted to do my due diligence and tell people the right thing. So thankfully I did few. Bullet dodged. Um, but I thought I would share with everyone what I found as I did a deep dive into what this mechanism actually is so first the background to the story. The antikythera mechanism was found in None right? off the coast of a very small island in Greece and it was found by sponge divers now it was at one hundred and fifty feet deep so this is not shallow. For those of you who are divers will will know this one hundred and fifty feet is counts if that makes sense for modern recreational diving. It's basically too deep. So if you have normal scooby equipment really the. Line that you don't want to go too far under is about none now None is doable but it's dangerous and you cannot spend very much time underneath at that depth whatsoever or it can be really really bad for your health. And at this time you got to realize this is 191 they didn't have Scooby equipment right? So what they're diving down these sponge divers are going down to this this depth using an old school spongebob square pant style dive gear. You guys know what I mean like the brass helmet thing. Right? Where they pump in the oxygen from the surface down to the diver and so add none 1 of the sponge buyer. Ah divers is down there and he's like oh my god and he needs to be pulled up right away they pull him up and he's like there's dead bodies down there I think there's a lot of dead people down there. You guys. You got to go check it out now. They only had one one suit. So the diver took a suit off and they gave it to like the project leader right? The the the leader of the sponge divers. Maybe it was the captain of the ship and he dives down and he takes a closer look and these are not dead bodies. 15:43.61 archpodnet They're statues right? These are what they've stumbled across are a huge pile of Greek statues that are from a shipwreck so that all this stuff is part of a shipwreck and it was later figured out that this shipwreck had. Had a met his fate somewhere around a none bc give or take you'll hear 200 bc you'll hear 70 bc but I think a hundred bc is a really good guess as to when this ship sunk hundred bc maybe None Dbc right in there. And so what happens you have all these bronze statues that had been pulled up and honestly the wreck of the um, the wreck off Antichytherra Island is just as famous for the statues that were found. You know this is this is 19 ah one so these statues are 2000 years old so the big deal was then to go there and recover these statues as they're recovering these statues. They find this funky bronze gear thing in in the. Chipwreck right? as they're pulling up these statues. They're like oh what's this and they pull this up as well. It's not very big. Um, it's it's smaller than the size of a shoebox It's a it's not you know it's not large it's not super imposing. But It's really really intricate and it just looks like all these gears kind of stacked one on top of the other you know is this is this a piece of a grandfather clock is this a piece of a car transmission. It almost looks like that. But but no right? Ah, it's it's something something else entirely. Made out of bronze so it didn't it didn't rust into oblivion but it's still kind of concreted together in a lump so you basically have this concreted together bronze lump with gears sticking out. You can tell it's something intricate. And you can tell there's these circular gears with really precise teeth in them. But that's about it shall it comes up with the rest of the rest of the hall now they ah start to look at this as the as the years go by right found in 191 there there are times here in in the past when they didn't really care about it that much so you're you're going to see as you see with a lot of very specific unique artifacts that they're analyzed. Um, sometimes they aren't sometimes they aren't meaning sometimes they can spend years or decades in the. 21:15.70 archpodnet In the back of a lab somewhere with nobody caring I've seen this in my own career. You know where you kind of look into the deeper dark corners of lab space somewhere and you see something oh collected in None oh what is this and you open some old. Moldy bag and you're like oh my god this is this is important. You know so the antikythera mechanism does have that story a bit to it where it has times of kind of times a feast and times of famine in terms of of being studied. But what's great is over the years. There was study. Undertaken on it at several different times and of course since None the technology has gotten much better in terms of looking at something like this. So as we get. x-rays that are that are more precise the the antikythera mechanism gets x-rayed as you get ct scan technology. The device gets ct scanned and with each time you can you get more and more appreciative of the very. Fine construction of the antikythera mechanism like wow these gears are really precise and they're really lined up. You know, really well and this is something that at face value doesn't really even look like it belongs to. The grease of hundred bc. At none glance. It does look super complex you know and it does look very much out of place when we think of Greek culture from that time right? But ah, but as as we'll see it actually it's really not. And and that's what in some ways makes it so great. No it does represent greek culture of the time we just maybe need to be a little more appreciative of how complex certain aspects of Greek culture were how far they've gone technologically with. With some of this stuff. So with this new study with better technology as the century has gone by. We have to remember it's been one hundred and twenty years since this has been found. We really have a very good idea of what the antikythera mechanism was and how it worked. What we can say now is the actual piece that was found by the ah sponge divers is only about a none of the entire device so you have oh is it as is so typical in archeology you have None thirds missing one third there well fill in the rest and. 26:43.81 archpodnet What I find is really really impressive in terms of what modern science has done with this is they've very very recently filled in the rest of the blanks to where they have a really really good idea of what this mechanism was specifically. And how it worked the reason why the antikythera mechanism was coming um, um, oops going to say that again. The reason why the antikythera mechanism was coming up on my phone was because. This new study has just recently been concluded in terms of the reconstruction of the the device and how it worked and of course when you have good archeological research. That's recently been concluded then you're going to get all. The naysayers saying like no no now it must be aliens but let's not miss the trick and just actually let me say that again, but let's not miss the trick. When all this stuff gets covered over with oh my god it's more complex than any swiss watch ever made it must be alien technology and we want to just enjoy the fact of how good modern archeology is at reconstructing things like this. Now what is the antikythera mechanism specifically and what does it do? Well, we'll be back right? after this and I'll tell you I'll say that None more time. Now what specifically is the antikythera mechanism and what does it do? Well I'll tell you right after this break.