Ancient Computer Provides More Questions Than Answers
Artist's reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism.image source: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Kythera.htm
Shankar Vedantam writes in The Washington Post:
The device is so famous that an international conference organized in Athens a couple of weeks ago had only one subject: the Antikythera Mechanism.More here.
Every discovery about the device has raised new questions. Who built the device, and for what purpose? Why did the technology behind it disappear for the next thousand years? What does the device tell us about ancient Greek culture? And does the marvelous construction, and the precise knowledge of the movement of the sun and moon and Earth that it implies, tell us how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?
posted by Fergie @ 12/10/2006 04:50:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home