What do you think about this?
In 1900, Greek sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera surfaced with what they thought was a corpse. It turned out to be a bronze statue, part of a Roman shipwreck dating to roughly 60 BC.
Over the next year they pulled up coins, jewelry, pottery, and a misshapen, corroded lump of bronze and wood that nobody could identify. It sat in a museum drawer in Athens for 50 years, ignored, while researchers cataloged the more obvious treasures.
Then in 1951, a British science historian started taking the lump seriously.
X-rays revealed at least 30 interlocking gears inside, machined to a precision that would not be matched in Europe for another 1,400 years. The teeth were cut at angles that allowed differential rotation. The whole thing was a clockwork model of the cosmos.
It predicted lunar and solar eclipses. It mapped the cycles of the moon, the wandering of the five known planets, even the four-year cycle of the Olympic Games. It could account for the elliptical, non-uniform orbit of the moon long before Kepler.
Built around 100 BC.
We do not know who designed it. We do not know how many existed. We do not know how the knowledge was lost.
Whoever built the Antikythera mechanism understood mathematics, astronomy, and mechanical engineering at a level we did not credit to them.
Could it be we have been underestimating the ancient world this whole time?
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