A stunningly complex piece of mathematical craftsmanship, the world's earliest known analogue computer, and the so-called "scientific wonder of the ancient world" -- the Antikythera mechanism was discovered by chance in 1900, by Greek sponge divers who stumbled upon the wreckage of an ancient ship that foundered on its way from Greece to Rome. An object of bafflement, controversy, and misrepresentation for more than a century, thought to be an astrolabe or a planetarium, the Antikythera mechamism has only recently been proved by x-ray analysis to be a calendrical computing machine intended, for the purposes of astrology, to forecast heavenly events, especially eclipses, into the indefinite future.

Suggested further reading: Alexander Jones, "A Portable Cosmos."

Image: reconstruction of the Antikythera's "back" panel, with Metonic and Saros dials, by Tony Freeth & the AMRP

My previous lecture on astrology: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/unlocked-myth-of-the-month-14-astrology

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