Scientists from the University of Nacional de Quilmes (Argentina) and the University of Puget Sound (USA) have found that the famous Antikythera mechanism is almost a century older than previously thought.
The Antikythera mechanism is a kind of astronomical computer of more than thirty gears and dials with arrows, with which you can determine the position in the sky of the Moon, Sun, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn on a specific date, as well as calculate solar and lunar eclipses. The mechanism was found in 1900 by a Greek diver in the Aegean Sea near Antikythera Island at the site of a 1st century BC shipwreck. and is considered the first ever analog computing device.
The mechanism became widely known after the article "Ancient Greek Computer", published in 1959 in Scientific American by Derek de Soll Price, but references to it were also found in ancient chronicles, for example, in Cicero's book "On the Nature of the Gods": "a ball that recently made by our friend Posidonius, reproduces what happens in the sky with the Sun, Moon and five planets on different days and nights. " The Antikythera mechanism itself and a functioning version created by scientists are kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (Greece).
Radiocarbon analysis of the mechanism determined its age to be from 150 to 100 BC, and now scientists have examined the part of it necessary for determining eclipses. The theoretical basis of the study was saros - the period after which the order of solar and lunar eclipses is repeated. Saros is equal to 223 synodic months of the moon, which is 6585.32 days, or almost 18 calendar years. In practice, ancient astronomers used exceligmos - a period equal to three saros, and convenient in that it is a whole number of days - 19,756 days.
Scientists managed to calculate that the mechanism for predicting eclipses will show the most accurate results if May 12, 205 BC is chosen as the "starting point" of Saros. This discovery allowed them to conclude that the device was made in the late III - early II century BC. However, the researchers noted that this fact may not determine the date of assembly of a particular mechanism, but the time of development of its design.