Archaeological wonder: Could they Mechanism have included information on the ancient Olympics?

Credit: Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

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PARIS: A clockwork machine hailed as the supercomputer of the ancient world may have provided a calendar for the Olympic Games and has even been linked to early mathematician, Archimedes.

The 2,100-year-old device has bemused and bedazzled experts ever since its corroded and calcified bronze wheels and dials were recovered from a Roman shipwreck by Greek sponge divers in 1901.

For decades, they speculated that the machine, called the Antikythera Mechanism, was an astronomical calendar, although how it worked was unclear.

Antikythera Mechanism

In 2006, experts using X-ray computed tomography confirmed the theory by getting a three dimensional (3-D) view of its 29 surviving gears and used high-resolution imaging to get a close up of tiny letters engraved on the surface (see, Enigma of ancient computer solved, Cosmos Online).

They figured it was able to estimate a 365-day calendar with the leap day ingeniously included; the 19-year Metonic calendar devised by the Babylonians; and a predictor of eclipses over a 223-month cycle, including a complex motion that became notorious as the "First Anomaly" of the Moon.

Now, in a new study, published today in the U.K. journal Nature, the sleuths say they have discovered that one of the dials recorded the dates of the ancient Olympics, possibly to provide a benchmark for the passage of time.

"Astonished"

"We were astonished," said Tony Freeth, author and member of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project – a team of experts at the University of Cardiff in Wales, the universities of Athens and Salonika in Greece, and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

"The Olympiad cycle was a very simple, four-year cycle and you don't need a sophisticated instrument like this to calculate it. It took us by huge surprise when we saw this," said Freeth. "But the Games were of such cultural and social importance that it's not unnatural to have it in the Mechanism."

The gadget was so cleverly engineered that it could fit into a small box about the size of an encyclopaedia, enabling it to be transported. But what was it used for?

Freeth speculates that it may have helped the rich and powerful predict times for marriage and births – or for waging war or agreeing to peace. No evidence has ever emerged to back such ideas though, he said.