04x09 - Decoding the Mysterious Antikythera Mechanism

[bunniefuu]

Tonight, an ancient

mechanical device

found on a 2,000-year-old

shipwreck.

It's so complex that even

the world's top scientists

can't figure it out.

It's like finding a jet plane

in the tomb of King Tut.

But who actually made it?

Known as

the Antikythera mechanism,

its origin and purpose

are shrouded in secrecy.

The entire

façade of it is covered

with writing that had

never been seen previously.

How is it possible that

this thing was made

over 2,000 years ago?

Now, we'll explore

the top theories

surrounding

this cryptic machine.

This is essentially a device

tracking the motions

of the heavens.

What if it was made

in the future,

and traveled back to the past?

Is there any evidence

that aliens

built the Antikythera mechanism?

Can modern technology

unlock its secrets?

Suddenly, it's capable of making

life and death decisions.

This is one of the greatest

mechanical inventions

of all time.

What is the Antikythera

mechanism?

Where did it come from?

And how does it work?

The Greek Isles, 1900.

A team of sponge divers

are on their way home

from their fishing grounds

off the coast of North Africa

when they're hit

by a powerful storm.

The sponge divers' boat

swept into an area

off the island of Antikythera,

which is located north of Crete,

and south of the Greek mainland.

It is a rocky and barren island

with swift currents

right off of its coast.

It's a very dangerous

and treacherous area.

So, the group is incredibly

lucky

that they don't wreck out there.

And after the storm

settles down,

they decide to go back out

and dive for sponges

one more time.

Diver Elias Stadiatos

goes first.

He's underwater

for about a minute,

and then he just jumps

back into the boat terrified.

He's mumbling about men,

women, horses in the deep.

The team's captain,

Master Diver

Demetrios el Kondos,

decides to go see for himself.

El Kondos

descends into the water,

and when he comes back up,

he has an arm in his hands

a bronze arm from a statue.

The quote-unquote "bodies"

down there

were actually corroded statues

from a shipwreck.

The team can't believe

what they found.

This ship is huge.

It's 180 feet long,

even though only parts

of the cargo

and the vessel still remain.

It's clearly very old,

and it lies at a depth

of about 150 feet,

just to the north

of Antikythera Island.

It's an incredible find,

but you have to remember,

it is the year 1900,

and scuba diving

is in its infancy.

By that, I mean the suits

are made out of canvas,

you've got copper helmets.

Scuba tanks, not a thing yet.

And many consider this

to be the first major discovery

in underwater archaeology.

Eventually,

Greek authorities ask the divers

to help salvage items

from the shipwreck.

They start pulling out statuary,

and pottery, and silver

and bronze coins, and jewelry.

It's an unimaginable bounty.

As the treasure haul grows,

authorities begin to ask,

what is this mysterious ship,

and where did it come from?

The coins and pottery on board

appear to be Ancient Greek

and come from about anywhere

from 80 to 50 B.C.

Because it's such a huge ship

and contains many

high-end marvelous goods,

it's believed the ship

was on its way to Rome

for a triumphal parade

of Julius Caesar.

It does fit the timeline,

since Julius Caesar ruled

until his death in 44 B.C.

But not everything

appears to be valuable.

Amongst all

these amazing artifacts,

they find this squarish piece

of, you know,

corroded metal and dirt

that looks like a rock.

It's about seven inches wide,

and they bring it up with them,

but we're not really sure why

they even looked twice at it.

Frankly, I'm surprised

they even bothered

to bring it up

from the sea floor.

It isn't until a year later

that archaeologist

Valerios Stais

is going through this pile

of some of the more unimportant

artifacts that were found.

And he comes across this piece

of corroded metal,

and at first

doesn't think much of it,

until he looks inside,

and he comes across

what appears to be

a mechanical gear.

And he is confused,

he is puzzled by this.

Most scholars were convinced

that the gear technology

was invented primarily in Europe

maybe during the Renaissance

or later.

So, we can imagine

the astonishment and confusion

of Mr. Stais.

The device is dubbed

the Antikythera mechanism,

named for where it was found.

And it's much more complex

than originally thought.

Turns out that they brought up

about three main pieces

of the mechanism,

with 82 separate fragments,

many of which also had gears.

But it appears that this is only

a small part of the machine.

And Stais is looking

at all of this

and trying to figure out

how it all goes together.

The fragments are not

in great shape.

I mean, they're really,

really hard to get at.

They're covered in dirt,

they're aged.

Imagine trying

to put this thing together.

It'd be like putting together

a 3D puzzle

and all of the pieces

are the exact same color.

Two-thirds of this thing

are missing,

and the parts that we do have

are covered in sediment

because they've been sitting

at the bottom of the ocean

for 2,000 years.

Faced with these challenges,

Stais ultimately gives up,

and no one attempts to decode

the machine for decades.

Then in 1951,

a British physicist

named Derek de Solla Price

is studying the history

of scientific instruments

of the ancient world,

and he becomes fascinated

with the Antikythera mechanism.

He goes to Greece

to see it in person.

He examines what he thinks

are inscriptions on the device.

Now, that in and of itself

is remarkable,

because it's pretty uncommon

to see Greek writing

inscribed in metal.

Many of the letters

are rubbed off

or corroded beyond recognition.

But they do manage

to translate one word,

which translates

to "ray of the sun"

in Ancient Greek.

And then,

there are other letters

which might be part of the word

"Aphrodite."

As Price manages

to translate more of the text,

he develops a theory.

Most of the words

that you could read

had to do something

with the sky.

So, because of the gearing

and the inscriptions,

this is what convinced

Derek de Solla Price

that he was dealing with

an astronomical computer.

Think about that,

and really let it sink in.

This makes it a computer

that was built

more than 2,000 years ago.

Price sketches out

a rendering of what he thinks

the original mechanism

must have looked like.

We're talking about a box

with dials on the outside.

You've got a hand-turned crank,

and on the inside,

you've got a series

of very complex gears

interlocking and interweaving

with each other.

Price believes that this device

actually calculates

the movement of the sun,

of the moon,

and possibly the planets.

What the user would have to do,

is they'd have to input,

for example, a date,

and then it would spit back out

the information for you

as to where the sun,

or the moon,

or potentially a planet

was in the sky at that time.

That is just one definition

of a computer, right?

You input information,

and then it will output data

right back to you.

The entire concept of that

is so far ahead of its time,

like over 1,000 years ahead.

Having the math, the astronomy,

the technological prowess

to create it,

it's just completely baffling.

The discovery

challenges everything

scientists thought they knew

about the ancient world.

There weren't astronomical

calendrical computers

in Ancient Greece.

There were sundials.

That's what we thought was

the height of their technology.

The Ancient Greeks

get a lot of credit

for being very advanced

in the realms of places

like arts, philosophy,

architecture.

But building a computer,

that's out of the realm

of possibility.

This device should not

have existed in 80 B.C.

For this level of technology,

it's really when we start

making mechanical clocks

in the 1300s that you finally

get gears like this

on a regular basis.

And the first

analog calculators,

we really don't see

till the 1600s,

so it's like at least 1,500,

1,600 years

after this device was built.

This is considered

to be one of the greatest

mechanical inventions

of all time.

And Price sums it up by saying

that from all we know

of Hellenistic math and science,

we would think that a device

like this could not exist.

Price spends

the next two decades

trying to uncover more answers.

Price becomes convinced

in his study

that it is a planetary computer,

but he's never really able

to figure out who built it,

or how it could have been built

in that time period.

So, Price works with what he has

and with what he can see,

but remember,

there are still two-thirds

of this device missing.

So, what are those components,

what might they do,

and could they help

to truly explain

what the purpose is behind

the Antikythera mechanism?

Not only that, but the pieces

that Price does have

are all fused together.

It's almost like

a solid piece of stone.

It's very hard to discern

what's going on inside.

But it won't be for long.

The mysterious

Antikythera mechanism

stumps scientists

for 10 decades.

How could something this complex

date to Ancient Greece?

And what is its purpose?

British physicist

Derek de Solla Price

thinks he knows.

He believes that the device

is an astronomical computer

that was able to track

the heavenly bodies over time.

But the technology

that he's using

to study the mechanism

just isn't very advanced.

The best he can do

is an X-ray machine

in the 1970s.

And those images are flattened.

You can't see the detail

of the gears inside.

So, some of his conclusions are,

by necessity, educated guesses.

Then in 2002,

the British Science Museum's

curator of mechanical

engineering, Michael Wright,

applies new technology

to the device.

Wright and his research partner

take radiographs of the machine

to fill in more of its

functionality.

As opposed to just a flat

two-dimensional scan,

these scans can focus

on one plane at a time,

which allows for a more

precise location

for each of these gears

inside the machine.

After analyzing his scans,

Wright believed

that this machine

was far more complex than what

Price had originally asserted,

and additionally, there was

a turntable on the inside of it

that rotated for each planet.

One of the other

cool things Wright finds

is a half-white,

half-black marble

that he postulates can be used

to predict the phases

of the moon.

This is confirmation

of Price's theory

that this is

essentially a device

tracking the motions

of the heavens.

But now, we know

more specifically

what it's tracking

the moon, the sun,

and the several planets

the Greeks were aware of.

The question is,

why was it used?

In 2013, a team

at Cardiff University

performs even more

advanced scans.

Led by astrophysicist

Mike Edmunds

and mathematician Tony Freeth,

the approach that they take

is two-pronged.

They use high-resolution

surface scanning

to make their way

through all of the corrosion

and the sediment that had

built up on the device.

And they also use

a computed X-ray tomography

to get closer looks

on the inside.

What this will help them to do

is to create a highly detailed

3D image of the mechanism

for the very first time.

The approach yields

yet another breakthrough.

After they were able to finish

their thousands of scans

of the 82 pieces,

something truly amazing emerges,

and that is, they find writing.

It's extremely

difficult to read something

that is corroded.

But because they had

more advanced technology

in their scanning of the device,

now you have hundreds,

hundreds of letters.

The entire façade of it

is covered with writing

that had never been seen

previously.

Now, keep in mind

that a lot of the parts

of the machine

are still missing.

But the pieces

that they're looking at

have about 3,400 pieces of text

that are written

in Ancient Greek.

So, what they're really

looking at

is a partial user's manual

for the machine.

The manual confirms

the mechanism can track stars

and planets, but it also

reveals something new.

There's a lower dial

on the back of the device

that no one has been able

to figure out yet.

But Freeth and his team,

they think they have the answer,

because there are glyphs

etched onto the segment

in the intervals of one,

five, and six months.

And Freeth thinks

that this is used

to predict the timing

of eclipses.

Now, why is this important?

Because to the Ancient Greek,

predicting eclipses

is predicting the future.

In the machine's instructions,

there are references

to the size, and even

to the colors of the eclipse.

And that's what keys Freeth in,

because eclipses don't have

colors in nature.

But what's interesting here

is that the colors

are what the Greeks used

for what they called

astral divination.

In Ancient Greece,

astral divination,

or the reading of the stars,

is a vital part of daily life.

The Greeks used

this large-scale astrology

to determine the fortunes

of entire countries

and civilizations.

Eclipses were omens,

and the colors

determined whether

they were good or bad omens.

They inherited this belief

system from the Babylonians

who used to obsess over the sky

and everything in it.

They would record

whatever they saw

and the effects that it

may have had on their lives.

For instance, on the day

they set sail on a voyage,

any particular planet

is in the sky

and the ship wrecks,

the next time that planet

happens to appear,

they won't send a ship out.

Now, we might call that

superstition,

but to them

that is very, very real.

Now, imagine the value

of being able

to have

this information in advance.

Before the Antikythera

mechanism,

if they had planted

a bunch of crops,

and then an eclipse came

and it was a bad omen,

and the crops die out,

bad luck, right?

But with this device,

they can now plan in advance,

because they know when

the eclipses are coming.

This would allow them

to plan far up ahead

when the best time

to make offerings to the gods,

when to plan for big events,

and especially when

to embark on campaigns

and to inv*de and launch wars.

If this theory is correct,

the Antikythera mechanism

is much more significant.

Suddenly, it's capable of making

life and death decisions.

It's quite possible the device

could operate the government

and make decisions

about state craft.

And as some historians

are quick to point out,

they've only recovered

a third of the machine.

Just imagine what the mechanism

may have been tracking

or predicting in its full form.

Perhaps the weather,

perhaps natural disasters.

Maybe even the rise and fall

of entire dynasties

and civilizations,

all laid out like clockwork.

A map of the stars,

or a way to predict the future?

Whatever its purpose,

the ancient

Antikythera mechanism

is a technical marvel.

Scientists have been studying

this device

for over 100 years now,

ever since it was first

discovered

on that shipwreck in 1900.

And again, with something

so enigmatic,

by all rights,

something that should not exist,

you are dying to know,

what was its original purpose?

What is it meant to do?

But perhaps even more,

you want to know

where it comes from,

what brilliant civilization

built this.

MICHAEL When we think about

whoever created this device,

and compare 'em to other

creative geniuses,

like Leonardo da Vinci,

Thomas Edison,

Albert Einstein,

clearly, this person

is in the same class,

if not somewhat above them

because of the nature

of the time they were in.

Da Vinci conceived

of a helicopter

400 years before

a working one was built.

And then you have

this society in 80 B.C.

that imagines this complex

mechanical device,

the likes of which weren't seen

for another 1,500 years.

And not only

did they imagine it,

they built the thing.

So, that might have

Leonardo b*at.

But who actually made it?

Was it really

the Ancient Greeks?

I mean, the writing

inscribed on it

would suggest that it

comes from there,

but what workshop

in Ancient Greece

has the skillset to actually

build something like this?

And we know the great minds

of Ancient Greece,

and it seems that almost nobody

fits that bill.

Almost.

Probably the only person

in Ancient Greece

who comes to mind

as maybe possessing

the constellation of skills

needed to build

something like this

is Archimedes.

Archimedes is an inventor,

a scientist, an engineer,

whose fame grew

and whose legend grew

amongst those

who lived even soon after him.

Around 50 B.C.

the Roman statesman Cicero

actually writes about Archimedes

owning a sphere

quote,

"binding the disparate motions

of the seven heavenly bodies."

Could that have been

the Antikythera mechanism?

If Archimedes'

workshop is the source,

the device would be even older

than anticipated.

Archimedes dies

around 212 B.C.

and archaeologists and experts

thinks the device was made

about 20 years

before the ship sank,

which would have been 80 B.C.

That's almost 130 years

after Archimedes d*ed.

Does this rule out Archimedes?

Not necessarily.

Maybe the device

was already quite old

when it set out on this

fateful journey.

Recent evidence

proves this could be possible.

Thanks to those 2013 scans,

we were able to calculate

a day zero for the machine,

or the first date

that it was calibrated,

when it started doing these

really complex calculations

of astral positions.

And this date is way before

80 B.C.

Their best guess is about

204 B.C.,

which is around

Archimedes' time.

So, maybe he started the device

and his workshop

finished it off.

The device's inscriptions

also may support this theory.

Many of these inscriptions

have to do with datings

and calendars,

which really helps us

narrow things down,

because the Greeks

did not have a simple

universal dating system.

In 2008, researchers

at the Antikythera Mechanism

Research Project

discovered that the names

of the months on the device

are the same ones used

for the Corinth colonies

one of those colonies

being Syracuse,

the home of Archimedes.

But this theory is disputed

by NYU professor Alexander Jones

in a 2017 book.

Jones considers the possibility

of Archimedes' workshop,

but ultimately rejects it,

because it doesn't line up

with where the mechanism

was found,

which was on a voyage

that was heading between Crete

and the Peloponnese.

Because we know for a fact

that the ship was headed

out of the Aegean

and into the Ionian Sea,

and Corinth and its colonies

are nowhere on that path,

so the cargo

couldn't have come from there.

Around the same time,

astrophysicist Mike Edmunds

also challenges the idea

that Archimedes

or his team

created the mechanism.

Edmunds heads the Antikythera

Mechanism Research Project,

and he has something that a lot

of the other researchers don't,

because he is an astrophysicist,

and he understands

the mathematics

that the mechanism was built

to calculate.

The thing is, the mechanism

is extremely precise when it

comes to position tracking

of heavenly bodies,

but only if you're standing

in the right spot.

There are some limits,

though, to the genius

of whoever built

the Antikythera mechanism,

because it was designed

around the belief

that Earth is at the center

of the universe

and everything goes around us.

Now, of course,

we know that's not true,

and we can calculate

the position of a celestial body

no matter what vantage point

we're coming from.

But back then,

with the math that they had.

it's all relative.

Based on Edmunds' calculations,

the Antikythera mechanism

was built

at 35 degrees north latitude.

This is where the machine

works perfectly.

Now, Archimedes lived up

at about 37 degrees,

and up there, the machine

would have worked okay,

but it would have drifted

towards inaccuracy,

because it's about

150 miles too far north.

And that finding

opens up a new possibility.

When you look at that line

that runs through

35 degrees latitude,

through the Eastern

Mediterranean,

you realize there's not

a whole lot there.

There's Crete, there's Cyprus,

and that's about it.

And neither of those were hubs

of technology, really.

This leads some

theorists to suggest

that the location

the device was built vanished.

In 1996,

author David Hatcher Childress

proposes the lost city

of Atlantis

as the Antikythera mechanism's

place of origin.

In a way, there is no more

fitting home

for the mechanism than Atlantis.

Greek philosopher Plato

describes it

as a powerful, advanced,

mechanically superior

civilization

that was on a large island

and succumbed

to natural disasters.

For centuries,

researchers have looked

for the remains

of that lost city.

When you start

thinking about Atlantis,

if it existed

and that's a big if

there are a couple

of top candidates

for where it might have been,

and one is off Santorini.

What the modern

Greece call Santorini,

the real name is Thera.

They had a volcano.

In 1650 B.C.E. it blew up

and destroyed two-thirds

of the island.

And it triggered off

these enormous earthquakes

and tsunamis that swallowed up

a lot of Santorini

and also impacted Crete,

and possibly any other islands

that sat in between the two.

Now, I know most people

might think Atlantis,

it's a place of fiction, right?

But there actually was

a real-life civilization

that was submerged by water,

and they were called

the Minoans.

And many historians think that

the Minoan civilization

actually inspired

the story of Atlantis.

And the location actually

lines up with the origins

of the Antikythera mechanism

a now-missing island

just north of Crete

that sits at 35 degrees

latitude.

But not everyone is convinced.

One of the challenges

with the Atlantis theory,

even if Atlantis existed,

is the timing.

It would have been long gone

by 80 B.C.

If this is a relic

from Atlantis,

it would have been

quite old by the time

you load it onto the ship.

Now, it's not

completely impossible,

because after all,

it's a partial thing

that survived 2,000 years

at the bottom of the sea.

It might be even older

than that.

But this one's gonna be

really difficult to prove.

Scientists have worked for over

a century to understand

the Antikythera mechanism,

yet one key question remains.

How could this device

from 80 B.C.

be so far ahead of its time?

In 1997, one author

proposes a shocking idea.

The machine may not be

as old as we think.

Pretty much

everyone who has studied

or even looked at or read

about the mechanism would say,

how is it possible

that this thing

was made over 2,000 years ago?

That is,

until author J.H. Brennan

presents a novel new approach

to the problem.

What if it wasn't made

2,000 years ago?

What if it was made

in the future

and traveled back to the past?

In his book "Time Travel:

A New Perspective,"

Brennan asks,

was the Antikythera mechanism

carried to Ancient Crete

from the future?

It sounds preposterous,

but does it sound

any more preposterous

than thinking that

the Ancient Greeks

made this device?

Some would say no.

Its sophisticated

understanding of astronomy,

its mathematical prowess,

as well as its mechanical

engineering genius

we have no other evidence

that this type of skill

ever existed in 80 B.C.

other than this device.

We have no other device that has

a similar level of technology.

There's no evidence

for anything else

like this mechanism in 80 B.C.

Even pioneering

researcher Derek de Solla Price

says that finding this device

on a Roman shipwreck

is like finding a jet plane

in the tomb of King Tut.

Just the fact that

it's a clockwork

gear-based mechanism

is something

we didn't think existed

in Ancient Greece.

One of the gears

on the Antikythera mechanism

is what's called

a differential gear.

A differential gear is a gear

in which the cogs

are of different sizes.

So, you have a large gear

and a smaller gear.

The large gear has to spin

at a more rapid rate to keep up

with the smaller gear.

So, a common differential gear

exists in your car,

because when you make a turn,

the outer wheel has to spin

faster than the inner wheel.

The differential gear

in the Antikythera mechanism

is used to determine the angle

between the sun, the moon,

and the phases of the moon,

and there it is, in 80 B.C.,

in this machine.

The next time that we see

a differential gear

used in a device

is in the year 1720

in a clock made by

Joseph Williamson.

And it is not in common use

until the early 1800s.

Maybe now

Brennan's time travel idea

isn't so far-fetched.

If the mechanism

features technology

from 1,800 years

into the future,

how do you reconcile that?

Proponents of this theory

also point to the fact that

nothing else like it exists.

Breakthroughs in the history

of science

are generally

developed over time.

When you look at the history

of something

like the printing press,

or a telephone,

or an automobile,

there are precedents.

There are partial steps

in the development of the device

that get it to where

it is today.

We didn't just suddenly

have a Corvette.

There were a lot

of rudimentary attempts

at a vehicle that got us

to the Corvette.

But the mechanism

has no precedents

in ancient times.

We have found nothing else

like this, not even close.

So, you have to ask,

where are the other devices?

Why haven't we found

any other mechanisms

that could do even a fraction

of what this one does?

When we think about clockworks,

and you wanna look

at its development

from rudimentary clockwork

to more advanced,

you're really gonna be looking

at the period

just before the Renaissance,

that's when it started.

You're not gonna be looking

at Ancient Greece.

For all these reasons, the idea

that the Antikythera mechanism

traveled through time

does have some supporters.

But then there are other

theorists

who are even more out there,

who say

the Antikythera mechanism

didn't just time travel,

it is the time machine.

So, on the front of the device,

you have the positions

of various objects

the sun, the moon,

and the planets.

You then have a crank

that you use

to rotate to a particular date

that then puts

everything in the position

where they're gonna be

in the sky.

So, therefore you have a device

that is calculating

both space and time.

When physicists

like Albert Einstein

and Stephen Hawking

talk about time travel,

the question becomes

whether or not space and time

can fold in on itself

to allow a person

to jump in between time periods.

So, those inputs on

the Antikythera mechanism,

could they be coordinates

for a journey

through space-time?

The mechanism

could literally be an atlas

to the cosmos

in four dimensions,

including time.

It's a map to get you

to your destination.

But with only one-third

of the Antikythera mechanism

to examine,

its additional functions

or its possible purpose

can't be fully determined.

Nothing of what we currently

have is a time machine,

let's just be clear about that.

But could the mechanism's

missing parts

help power

a journey through time?

It makes for a fun story.

The very first time traveler

finishes their prototype.

They decide they want to encode

the instructions

in Ancient Greek,

because they've long admired

the society for its

well-known wisdom,

so much so, that that's actually

where they wanna go

on their first destination,

so they go back to Ancient Greek

in the time machine.

They're there,

some tragedy befalls them

the shipwreck and poof.

The only Antikythera mechanism

is now stuck in 80 B.C.

In 1968, one influential author

suggests he knows the secret

to the Antikythera mechanism.

In his 1968 book

"Chariots of the Gods?",

Erich Von Daniken questions

numerous ancient technologies

which he believes were too

advanced to have been created

by the humans in those

respective eras.

So, these are things

like the pyramids,

and Machu Picchu, Stonehenge,

and the Antikythera mechanism.

According to von Daniken,

the reason is clear.

These things were not created

by humans, they were made

by highly intelligent

extraterrestrials.

The theory

is definitely out there,

but it attracts a lot

of believers.

If this machine is beyond

human knowledge,

what other option do we have?

Von Daniken believes

that in the distant past,

extraterrestrials land on Earth,

they make contact with humans.

They share their knowledge

and wanna help

advance scientific progress.

And in the places

where this happens,

we see these unexplainable

advancements,

like in Ancient Egypt,

or in this case, Ancient Greece.

The theory is that this

is extraterrestrial technology

given to humans that's based

on their understanding

of tracking the stars

and the planets

so that they can help

humans better understand

the universe around them.

According to von Daniken,

the reason

you have Ancient Greek language

written on the device

is that either

the extraterrestrials

built it for them and then

translated the instructions

into Ancient Greek, or taught

them how to build the device,

and the Greeks themselves

put the instructions on it.

In 1999, von Daniken publishes

"Odyssey of the Gods,"

in which he suggests

that Ancient Greece was once

a nexus of alien activity.

Von Daniken sees evidence

of this all around.

The Antikythera mechanism,

the advanced political structure

and civilization

that they build,

even the stories that

they tell about their gods.

Extraterrestrials

capable of traveling

distant galaxies

would look like gods

to ancient humans.

Von Daniken believes

these visitors

are an inspiration

for the Greek gods

Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite,

and the other residents

of Mount Olympus.

Another thing that comes up

in Greek legends is flying.

Gods fly, chariots fly.

This is unusual in a society

where they've never seen

anything that flies

other than birds and insects.

As we know, there are no

flying vehicles

in Ancient Greece,

but maybe some came to visit.

Is there any evidence

that aliens

visited these ancient cultures?

Not exactly.

But the Greeks and Romans

observed and recorded some

strange happenings in the sky,

and some of those accounts

are pretty curious.

In 2007,

Goddard Institute astrophysicist

Richard Stothers

publishes a report

on unexplained aerial phenomena

in the ancient world.

Stothers analyzes these texts

from Ancient Greece and Rome,

and finds a ton

of unusual phenomena

in the skies at that time.

Now, some of it can be explained

as meteors and asteroids,

but a lot of it

remains unexplained.

In 65 A.D.,

historian Josephus

in his "History of the Wars"

records an event in Judea

that can only be described

as a battle in the sky,

with chariots

and troops of soldiers in armor

sh**ting fire at each other.

This event had many witnesses

and has led some people to argue

that this was an alien

encounter.

Stothers compares these accounts

to modern UFO reports,

which as we know,

our m*llitary

has begun declassifying.

Other ancient records

describe objects in the sky

that are disc-shaped,

and metallic in texture,

and have soundless movement,

and are able to hover.

And this actually sounds

a lot like modern UFO sightings.

So, it doesn't prove that aliens

visited Ancient Greeks,

but it's interesting.

Could this origin

hint at the true purpose

of the Antikythera mechanism?

So, let's assume

just for a minute

that it is alien technology.

Well, then what was it used for?

I mean, why give

the Greeks this machine?

Von Daniken suggests

that due to its portable size,

it was probably made

as a navigation device.

It would have been

easily carried

and mounted on a ship.

According to

von Daniken, the aliens

were hoping that the humans

would advance from ships at sea

to ships in the sky,

or spaceships.

This device

was ultimately designed

to navigate our solar system,

not just the Mediterranean.

Some speculate the machine

might be capable of even more.

Don't forget all

the missing parts.

While the pieces we have

help track the planets

closest to Earth,

alien theorists

think that the full device

might have been used

to track aliens' home world,

or other navigational aids

that might have helped us

get from here to there.

Alien theorists also speculate

that there might be

a communications component

within the missing section.

Maybe it doesn't just track

the aliens' home,

maybe it is a way

of sending messages.

Let me be very clear.

Was this incredibly

precise machine

made by highly intelligent

extraterrestrials?

No, probably not.

I mean, probably not.

But I think

it is absolutely amazing

how the mechanism

inspires wonderment

in everyone who comes across it.

How did it get here,

where did it come from?

The stories that people

come up with

for this thing are incredible.

The possibilities are endless.

In 2021, a team

led by Dr. Tony Freeth

completes a significant

breakthrough

a working model

of the Antikythera mechanism.

Dating back to one

of the original researchers,

Derek de Solla Price,

many people have tried

to recreate the mechanism,

or partial versions

of the mechanism.

But this one is different.

It includes every gear,

every inscription,

and every functionality.

It even includes

the wooden case.

Everything we know,

every piece we've found,

all put together

in working order.

It doesn't reveal

any additional functions,

but it's definitely

a useful tool to have

to see this all come together.

And it could lead

to future discoveries.

Freeth building this model

has an unintended consequence.

It leads many people to argue

that the mechanism

never worked at all,

and all the theories around

its possible uses

are in fact wrong.

Over the years,

many have questioned

whether the Antikythera

mechanism ever worked.

In 1980, the American scientist

and Nobel Prize winner

Richard Feynman goes to Greece,

and he sees the Antikythera

mechanism for himself in Athens.

And he wonders whether

it could have functioned.

Freeth's model works.

However, we have no proof

that the original mechanism

ever actually did.

And Freeth takes some liberties

in assuming

how certain gears fit

and how they may have

fit together.

With the benefit

of modern technology

and the ability to work

backwards,

he can kind of guesstimate

and put the thing together

the way he feels it should work.

This does not mean

it's accurate to the original,

and Freeth makes no such claim.

It's not meant to be taken

as a literal reconstruction

of the mechanism.

He points out, however,

that it does prove

that something

with this functionality

could fit in a box that size.

But is there

any evidence the device

ever actually functioned?

Theorists quickly

point to the fact

that it took us

more than 120 years

since the object was found

in 1900

to build a replica

that works the same way,

and that's with hundreds

of top scientists studying it

and the benefit

of modern technology.

This just wouldn't have been

possible in 80 B.C.

People point out

that Freeth's model

does not look

exactly like the mechanism,

which is currently a mass lump

with no moving parts.

The mechanism

is a few hunks of metal and rock

with a few gears

sticking out of it,

looking more like something from

a Frankenstein movie

or a class project

than a computer.

It wouldn't be the first time

experts were fooled.

In the 18th century, a man

named Johann Kempelen de Pazmand

creates a clockwork

robotic chess player

that becomes known

as the Mechanical Turk.

The machine has a life-size

human head and torso

with arms that are resting

on a cabinet.

And on the cabinet

is a chess board,

and human beings come up

and play chess

against this machine,

and the machine wins.

The Turk makes

its official debut

in 1770 in Schönbrunn Palace,

which is the summer residence

of Austrian rulers.

Before it starts to play,

the audience is invited

to come up and check the machine

to see that it is actually real,

that there are no strings

moving the arms,

or no devices of any kind

allowing it to move.

But it all checks out,

and people,

when they're playing

the Mechanical Turk,

try to perform

some illegal moves,

but the machine will start

to shake its head and say "No,"

as if it's recognizing that

that move is not allowed.

It's really incredible.

The Mechanical Turk

becomes a sensation

across Europe.

It tours

European capitals in 1783,

stopping at Versailles

and playing

all of the best

chess players in the world.

It plays Benjamin Franklin,

Napoleon Bonaparte,

the King of Prussia

brilliant minds

who all marvel at this

chess-playing automaton.

But in 1834,

a series of articles

reveals the device

to be fraudulent.

For 60 years it fools everyone,

but it turns out

that it's all an illusion

with a human chess master

inside the cabinet

playing and manipulating

the machine.

But even though

the Turk doesn't work

without a human operator,

it is still a brilliant design.

The device is put on display

in Philadelphia in a museum

until it burns down in 1854.

People celebrate it

as a cunning piece of clockwork,

regardless of the fact it didn't

automatically play chess.

Can the same be said

of the Antikythera mechanism?

The parallels are clear.

The Antikythera mechanism

could be the original

Mechanical Turk, and maybe

it was a showpiece,

a marvelous clockwork housed

inside of a statue

that appeared to track

the heavens

through time automatically,

but it wasn't

actually a*t*matic.

Inside the statue

there was an operator

making it all work.

Despite the questions it raises,

most historians still believe

the Antikythera mechanism

is genuine.

We know the Greeks were big fans

of amusements and entertainment.

But if that's the case

for this device,

why engrave it all over

with the detailed instructions?

What purpose does that

serve an audience?

I don't think it was meant

to be gawked at

and for entertainment,

it was meant to be used.

And if it didn't work,

why was it on a ship

with all of these

other marvelous treasures

bound for someone potentially

as important as Julius Caesar?

I think they thought this

was a really valuable object.

Dozens of academics

have dedicated their lives

to studying this thing,

and it has rewritten

the history books to show

what mankind is capable of.

Our species is incredible.

We may not know what

the Antikythera mechanism

actually did, but we can take

pride in the fact

that somebody

was brilliant enough

to create this thing

over two millennia ago.

And hopefully someday soon,

there will be somebody

brilliant enough

to solve its mysteries.

Recovery efforts

continue to this day

at the site

of the Antikythera shipwreck.

In 2017, an additional gear

was recovered.

Scientists are now working

to determine its function.

Perhaps new discoveries will

unlock the machine's secrets,

or they may simply leave us

with more unanswered questions.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."