Reply to post: This is seriously interesting. We may be able to discover more....

By the Rivers of Babylon, where the Antikythera Mechanism laid down

tiger99

This is seriously interesting. We may be able to discover more....

All joking apart, I remain seriously impressed by this mechanism, and wonder just how much ancient history we are missing, because it is hard, proven fact that this was made in a period when no such things were assumed to be happening. I am not a historian or archaeologist, but occasionally delight in the work of such experts, so I am hoping that those who research manuscripts and other sources of historical evidence will be able to come up with some references to such stuff, and maybe open a fresh line of investigation into what the ancients actually were able to achieve.

Work in metal, including brass, copper, iron and bronze, is recorded in the Bible well before this date, but there is no suggestion, as far as I can see, of complex mechanisms.

It is also apparent to a casual observer that, contrary to what we are generally conditioned to believe, long before acknowledged pioneers such as Marco Polo, there was occasional long distance travel across continents, so despite the Babylonian mathematics, we should not automatically assume that it did not come from much further afield.

All in all, there is yet much scope for fact-finding by those with the correct skill set. It may even be useful to correlate translations of every ancient manuscript, tablet etc that has been found, and this is where the hacking community, meaning any member of the public with some coding inclination, could make their contribution by doing some good data mining, given freely available translations of everything. That of course depends on the willingness of the custodians of such items, and some are guarded with obsessive secrecy, in the Vatican and elsewhere.

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