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2,000 year old man found dead near 2,000 year old computer
The ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera has already yielded up archeological wonders but now marine archeologists have found a body buried in the wreck that could yield up some clues as to the ship’s origins. The shipwreck, one of the largest found from the ancient world, was discovered in 1900 and is best …
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 07:34 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Any black oil attacks being reported yet?
have claimed the Antikythera mechanism was of extraterrestrial origin
I hate this self-hating shit. It's like claiming that only Sun People can be the source of good love and rythmic music and we need wild foreigners to learn how to commune with nature/the universe/leftover marmelade in the fridge.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 08:48 GMT Tom 7
Re: Any black oil attacks being reported yet?
These people are genuinely so stupid as to not realise that they would be the first people to line up with pitchforks and torches if they ever met anyone clever enough to think up something like this. They are the very people who stop progress in its tracks.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 23:16 GMT Jim Birch
Re: Any black oil attacks being reported yet?
It's still hard to work out why ETs would traverse interstellar distances using space technology way more advanced than ours then resorted to a clunky inaccurate mechanical device that incorporates inadequacies in Greek astronomical theory to determine planet positions. But who knows, maybe they were so busy building starships that they forgot to invent the pocket calculator.
If the bones turn out to be extraterrestrial then there's a case for the mechanism being ET too. Otherwise, maybe not.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 03:25 GMT Brian Miller
Re: Any black oil attacks being reported yet?
"Aliens made it!"
As if aliens, who have journeyed from another star system, would bother making a bunch of lame gears for some semi-evolved simian.
Hero of Alexandria invented the vending machine 150 years before the computer was made. So, really, is the Antikythera mechanism really that astounding? What's really astounding is none of this did that much to move their society forward. Hero also invented the aeolipile, a type of steam turbine. Did he rig it up to do any work, or did he just do a demo?
Perhaps the state of metallurgy was too primitive for general-purpose steam engines. Hard to say.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 07:41 GMT John Smith 19
There is a simpler explanation
Keep in mind that knowledge is power. And the ability to predict things this mechanism granted it's operator were considerable.
So how about early prototype of something which would have changed the world lost at sea, possibly with it's developers? With the knowledge of how it worked and how to make it lost at the same time.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 07:54 GMT Dan 55
Re: There is a simpler explanation
Unfortunately it was a beta, often got the sky map wrong, and that's how they sank the ship.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 07:52 GMT MrDamage
Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
Really? If it truly was hauling the plunder of a Roman general, then the DNA from the body won't prove a thing.
The legions were crammed full of diverse nationalities from regions either conquered, or settled.
There is just as much chance of the DNA resolving to eastern European, sub-saharan Africa, British Isles, or anywhere in between.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 08:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
No, if it was from the 1st century BC the Roman Republic (it wasn't an Empire yet...) was still smaller. Cesar didn't conquer Gaul yet (nor landed in Britain), but after the Punic Wars the Iberic Peninsula and the coasts of North Africa were already part of the Republic. IMHO there's a good chance sailors at the time came from the conquered marine settlements, both Italian, Greek or Carthaginians. Still, DNA can tell something about the ship crew and thereby from where it came from.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 08:55 GMT Tom 7
Re: Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
Probably not - Cornwall had been exporting tin via the sea for possibly 2000 years already by this time and I'd put good money on there being a considerable number of itinerant traders from all around the Med by the time this went down. Wood might help tell where the ship came from but we need a lot more DNA from shipwreck victims to see if the traders were not perhaps from all over the place. After all in those days I can easily imagine crew dying on trips and needing replacing on a regular basis from wherever the boats ended up - and people being hell bent on getting out of town too!
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 12:55 GMT Chris Evans
Re: Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
"Still, DNA can tell something about the ship crew and thereby from where it came from."
Not quite, it hopefully will give where that particular individual came from. Whilst probably a crew member that is not a certainty. But it would be a significant part of a big jigsaw.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 21:09 GMT Mark 85
@LDS --- Re: Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
Still, DNA can tell something about the ship crew and thereby from where it came from.
Given the ways ships and crews, all the DNA will tell us is about this one person. Passenger? Crew? Freeman? Slave? Who knows but if we look to history, ships crews were seldom all from the same country nor even the same race.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 14:24 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Finding DNA could tell archeologists more about the ship and where it came from.
> origin of remains is usually determined by analysis of minerals in the teeth, rather than DNA
Having either will give you indications of origin (the minerals will give you where the person was born and information about their diet) whereas the DNA will give you indication as to their familial origin. So, for example, it's entirely possible that the DNA might give a north African haplopype but that the minerals info will mean the person was born in Italy.
With the two bits you can have a fair stab at working out the background involved (with some error weasel-words).
(Not a professional archeologist but I have watched a fair few programmes about it and have a number of friends and colleages who are or were bonediggers)
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 12:10 GMT Peter2
Re: "have claimed the Antikythera mechanism was of extraterrestrial origin"
Can't be. If you accept Plato made an infamous factor of ten translation error then Atlanean civilisation was the Minoan empire, and Atlantis was Santorini, which was blown to bits by a volcanic eruption before the volcano sunk into the ocean.
That was about 1500BCE though, and this is 200BC so it's unlikely the device is Minoan/Atlantean in origin.
Santorini/Atlantis might also be the original story behind the ten plauges of egypt; three days of darkness caused by a mini nuclear winter, flying debris from a multi gigaton explosion (fire and hail) massive growth of populations of red algae (rivers of blood), the fish dying as they couldn't breathe in the water, insects feeding on the dead fish leading to huge plagues of insects, which in turn led to a plague of frogs as their population grew, finished off with a plague of locusts. Even the boils are accountable for (Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt) as volcanic ash landing over the entire of Egypt.
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 13:35 GMT Graham Cunningham
Re: "have claimed the Antikythera mechanism was of extraterrestrial origin"
"That was about 1500BCE though, and this is 200BC so it's unlikely the device is Minoan/Atlantean in origin."
No, the author stated that this was the first century before Christ. I assume the last century before Christ was about 2100 to 2000 years ago, but the first century before Christ must have been a lot longer ago than even your 1500BCE, right?
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Tuesday 20th September 2016 14:11 GMT Peter2
Re: "have claimed the Antikythera mechanism was of extraterrestrial origin"
The Antikythera mechanism is ~100BC to ~200BC, nobody knows precisely but this is 200BC, 2216 years ago.
1500BC is 3516 years from 2016AD so ~1300 years prior to 200BC. Dates run backwards from 1BC rather than forwards, as in AD.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
