Ancient Greek Astronomy Calculator Linked to the Olympic Games

In 1901, divers retrieved a complex mechanism from a Roman merchant shipwreck dated to the 1st century BC. It appeared to be an ancient astronomy calculator that also made references to Greek games, from which the modern Olympic Games have been inspired, and which took place every four years. Now, the discovery of an inscription describing the ancient mechanism reveals the names of the competitions that used to take place during the Olympic cycle in several city-states belonging to the Greek civilization.

"It's a surprise to find this on what we thought was an astronomical instrument," said science historian Alexander Jones of the New York University, part of the research team detailing the new finding.

The device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, consists of a complex gearwheel system that could have helped predict the position of the Sun and the Moon, the latter's phase and eclipses, which was probably also the reason why scientists studying it might have mostly regarded it as a device with application in mathematical astronomy. "It's not an instrument of pure science. However it does demonstrate the relationship of cosmic time to human time," Jones said.

Since the mechanism is still rather fragile and contains solid sediment encrustations, investigations have been mostly restricted to 3D X-ray scanning. Nevertheless, information has not been short about the inner workings of the device. "The first clues that suggested a link with the ancient cycle of Greek games came when the word 'NEMEA' was read near a small subsidiary dial on the Mechanism," said Tony Freeth, a scientist with Images First Ltd.

Freeth says that the word Nemea stands for the Nemean Games, one of the competitions that were part of the Olympiads. In Corinth for example, the name of the games was 'ISTHMIA', while in Delphi the competition was called 'PYTHIA'. "It's not a calendar of the sort that astronomers would use. It's more of a regional calendar that belonged to certain Greek cities such as Corinth," said Jones about the fact that the mechanism describes a 19-year lunar cycle calendar.

Still, the most mysterious feature of the device is the eclipse dial prediction, which is divided into five or six month intervals. It would have been able to predict solar and lunar eclipses and the time of the day when they would occur, but research indicates that it does not match precisely the eclipse times. "There's more work we need to do on this, I think," said Freeth.