00:00.00 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 96 and we were discussing the antikythera mechanism in the last segment we talked about the history behind it how it was found by sponge divers in 19 oh 1 and now we want to talk more specifically about what what is this thing you know? Ok I've heard so much about the antikythera mechanism and I've heard that it's the world's none computer. Ok what? what precisely is this all right? It's actually pretty cool if. We're honest when you when you look at this thing. It's pretty neat now in vision in your head this is about the size of a shoebox like a like a moderately large shoebox so not a shoebox for boots that's too big and not a shoebox for kids shoes. That's too small right? sort of a mid range. Shoebox and it's going to be a wooden box but inside it's going to be all all the gears and stuff going to be made out of bronze and actually the faces will ah maybe bronze as well. So there's a lot of bronze going on in in the construction of this. On the outside of the box is in on the the large face on the large flat face you're going to see ah it divided out in in a circle the the None signs of the zodiac right? sort of going with the. But the months actually let me start start that again. 03:34.40 archpodnet On the large flat face of the box. You're going to have the zodiac laid out in a circular pattern right? The None signs of the zodiac. You'll also have days and months but what's cool is what's. Inside the large circle so inside the large circle you'll you'll have smaller concentric circles and those are showing where the None known planets in the sky from that time in Greece are located based on the time of year. You also have. The sun and the moon in there and you you have the ah let me start this all over again. Let's start this all over. 05:28.50 archpodnet So the antikythera mechanism is about the size of a shoebox. Not a big shoebox like you have boots in and not a tiny shoebox like for kids shoes a medium sized shoebox. So it's not that big inside. It's full of bronze gears that run with each other that time out all kinds of things that you can see on the large flat face of the of the shoebox if you're thinking of it as a shoebox you kind of look at on the on the large flat side. See what's going on. So what's going on what's going on is a lot of things that are moving in circles. So if you if you look at at the front you will see sort of concentric circles from the center and then you have all these all these circles going out. Um. What? What are all these circles. Well they're the positions of the planet. So what this device shows and now you have to crank it. Okay there's no springs in it. It doesn't it doesn't have batteries or anything like that you you have a crank on the side of this box and you crank it and all this stuff goes around. So in the center you have the earth remember this is 100 bc they don't know that the sun is the center of the solar system. They think that earth is so the earth is in the center and then and then as you go out. You have a moon that will go around and also show the phases of the moon. You have a sun that will go around and time out the days then you have mercury you have venus you have Mars you have Jupiter. And you have saturn pretty good right? And those are all the planets that would have been known to Greece at that time right? because they would not have been able to to necessarily catch ah uranus or Neptune and there's yeah. No way at all. They would see pluto. Although yes I know pluto isn't defined as a planet anymore. But what you're seeing is a metered out description of the night sky and it's. All kind of timed with itself with these gears pretty complex and you know what makes it worse is because they thought of the earth as the center of the universe. Really you know the center of the solar system that to time out. 10:59.48 archpodnet How we're going to see the planets. It's going to be extra hard because you can't just have the planets go around in a in a smooth circle. You're going to have to time in what's called retrograde which means from our vision because we're going around the sun. The greeks didn't know this. Um. Every so often and based on where we are going around the sun versus let's say where where Jupiter is jupiter will appear to go the wrong way for a little while you know so it'll be it'll be cruising across the night sky then a little little backwards for a while and then it'll go forwards again and that's just because. Where we are is changing right? We're not in a in a set location. We're going around the sun too. So that happens with with the with the planets and that makes it so much harder and to me one of the most interesting aspects. Of the antihithera mechanism is that oh man they planned in retrograde to that because oh that's got to be a pain so but they did it very very cool and if you're impressed so far. Well, that's not all you also have the zodiac laid out sort of um. Around the entire thing so you you can see what planets are within which zodiac symbol depending on what day it is. You know you're also going to have the days and the months on there as well. All very very finally marked into the into the ah bronze face cover right. pretty pretty amazing um you you are also adding the olympic games to into all this so the olympic games came every four years just like they do now and so you're also timing the olympic games to all this too. So you have all this cool stuff. Oh you can also do. Um, eclipses you got eclipses in this too so you got lots of stuff happening in this little box. That's about the size of a shoebox. It sounds pretty pretty amazing which it is my favorite part of all of this. I think is actually the math involved where what they had to do. They were always looking to be economical in terms of making this and I don't mean economical in terms of money I mean economical in terms of how many gears you use, you're dealing with retrograde and all that stuff. You know you've got a lot of. Different motions all going on at once. So what they were able to do is basically through very careful measuring of the night sky you know over days and weeks and years they were able to kind of come up with the lowest common denominator of timing. 16:36.82 archpodnet These different things. So what that means is you could use the same gear for a couple different things so they were able to narrow down the total number of gears to basically the minimum minimum amount that they would need as you crank this box and all this stuff happens at the same time. So the experience of cranking this box. You. You'd have the flat side towards you, you'd crank it and then all these little things would go around the earth in the center and then you could crank it to a specific day and you could go oh Jupiter's in pisces on the none of December or whatever, right? you could you could kind of you could crank it forward a month or 2 and be like oh ok, this is what. This is what the night sky is going to show us in two months and you know this is when the olympic games are going to be cranking crank it forward to the next olympic games be like oh hey, um, ah for for the olympic games to ah you know two months from now a ah venus is going to be in. Ah, aries or whatever you know and you and you can kind of you kind of go from there. Oh on the moons in in the waxing gibbus. However, you want to do really really interesting. Really really intricate now. Is this the world's none computer. Ah, it really defends ah depends it really depends on how you define computer for me I tend to say no and really again, it defend and really it depends though on. What you think of as a computer I'm not trying to be harsh on the ancient greeks. Okay, this device is really really impressive. But I think defining it as a computer especially in terms of how we think of computers in the modern day. It might be a bit of a step too far. It's much better I think to define this kind of None of two ways. The first way is as an orary that's o or I say I can barely even say that's orrery and orary and what that is is simply a mechanical solar system model. That's what this thing is. None and foremost now it is intricate. It is impressive but I guess you could argue that yes you can it'll show you in two months you know where the moon is in in terms of gemini but is that a computer. 21:49.14 archpodnet You know, whatever, but we just we we want to be honest with what this thing truly does and what it does not do so in terms of figuring all this out I can sit here and tell you oh all these things spin around isn't that great. You have to have the actual archeological work to show how this really happens so this gets into the world of experimental archeology and this is one of the best parts of the story that as the decades have gone on archeologists have been able to make better and better models. Of how this thing ultimately worked and the most recent team which I believe was through the university college london ah they just did it within the last year or so they made the most recent model and I think they basically got it like I think we're basically there now. And and what do I mean by god it based this thing was so complex that that over the years people were trying to figure out well, how precisely did the gears all go together. You have the archeological artifact of the antikythera mechanism but you only have a none of the whole thing right? So you so you're trying to. Yeah, you're you're trying to take that none and add to it the rest that would all make sense and so there's the devils in the details in terms of what goes where and how many gears precisely and you know what gear controls what and and and this sort of thing but ah I really do think they nailed it and it's. Special props to the world of experimental archeology I love the world of experimental archeology because it's such a great proof on what happened in the past like you can say oh the antikythera mechanism isn't it impressive. Well yeah, okay, but how did it work well with gears or something. Yeah, but if you actually make one using the same materials that they use two thousand years ago then you can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt you go oh you're wondering how this ah how this device worked. Well watch as I crank my to scale model and show you exactly how it worked so experimental archeology is a powerful tool for us in in archeology and again I think they got the last bits and bobs. How did they do it. Well, the short answer is through hard work and through the longer answer is how I talked about before how technology has gotten better as better and better ct scans were done on the remains. They could see that there were carvings in the bronze itself. 27:11.70 archpodnet Basically directions on how to use it now they weren't all there but this was great. You actually have sentences very finely carved into the into the bronze that you can read. You can get bits and bobs of like ah this shows this. Do this to make sure this goes around at this time now you got to remember you got to think of it as its directions that are all torn up and you only have a couple pieces of it but it really gives you an idea of how it was used what it was used for what was meant for this kind of thing so we get better and better better clues. I think they've they've really done it. They've also even made a lego model of this now. The lego model is not exact to the box. But it does the same things which is really really great I love it when companies like that do things that are related to archeology because it really gets it out. To the general public see like hey look man isn't this cool. So as I talk about how great the antikythera mechanism is I'm sure a couple other questions come out like ok if this. Is real if it's not a hoax. Why don't we have any more you know what? Why aren't any more of these found. Why is there only 1 ah why make this in the none place you know I mean it's cool and all but do you really need it. Can't you just look at a chart. It's fair was this a navigational aid of some kind because it was found on a in a shipwreck. Um and the answers to that you know there there's there's a lot there. What I what I will say in terms of why you know how come. Nothing else has been found the answer is because it was made out of bronze and so so much of answering this question goes back to the idea that this is this was found in a shipwreck. Okay, this was found. Underwater in basically a time capsule that nobody messed with for 2000 years um here wait give me I'm going to pause for a none. 31:58.76 archpodnet So why? Why were no others found this is because it was part of a shipwreck and the shipwreck just serves as a time capsule for 2000 years right so this thing has been in cold stores for 2000 years and it's made out of bronze all the other ones would have been long ago melted down because bronze is very worthwhile and you got to think yes the antikythera mechanism is really really cool but is an antikythera mechanism that's forty years old still cool. You know, ah have you been saving your iphone 4S now you haven't because you have an iphone 12 you know and my point is. Recycling was the thing in the ancient world too. So the chances of finding another one of these is very very low. We do know there were others though because they wrote about it. So the ancient greeks did write about having these devices and there are several different accounts of using these devices of talking about them I've talked about how great they were. So we know for sure this was a thing in ancient greece so this is not a hoax of any kind. This is a real device from the time. So I think that aspect of of questioning about if the antikythera mechanism is somehow true or not is. Solved there. You go you have the written records you have the device itself you have real reasoning as to why you wouldn't find others I'm happy with it now in terms of why make this in the none place. Why not just use charts and is this a navigational aid or not let's talk about that. When we come back.