That debate about the Antikythera Mechanism's true purpose keeps bugging me

I was reading a paper last week that said the device was just a fancy astrological calculator, not a navigation tool like some people claim. But then I saw a reply from a diver who worked on the site who said the positioning of the gears points to it being used for tracking Olympic games and eclipses. So which is it? Are we overthinking a simple gadget or underselling a genius piece of tech? What do you guys think based on the actual evidence?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan13022d ago

Nah, the wine press timer thing was from a different wreck altogether, different era even. The Antikythera is way more complex than that.

gavin69222d ago

Didn't someone find a similar gearbox in a Roman shipwreck that turned out to be a wine press timer?

alice8922d ago

Wait actually I'm not so sure that's right. There's this one researcher who argued the Antikythera might be way more common than we think, like people just found a lot of different gear gizmos back then. Could be the wine press thing was just a simpler version of the same tech, maybe they all came from the same workshop or something.