Funny, I don’t remember this being on any episodes of Ancient Aliens.
But a computer was yanked from the watery depths of a Roman ship that sunk in 60 B.C.
Yes, I said a computer.
(Oh, my dad has one of those in the basement.
Pretty sure it runs on MS Dos with a black screen and yellow font.)
The antikythera mechanism (called that because it was found inside a Roman shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera), is an ancient computer thought to be at least 2,000 years old. It’s believed that this complex clock-like device was used by ancient Greeks to calculate the movement of the stars and planets and the horoscopes they put in their papyrus printed version of Cosmo probably too (can’t be too far fetched if there’s computers around can it?) The mechanism was composed of at least 30 different bronze gears and the whole thing was housed in a wooden frame decorated with at least 2,000 characters.
It’s all part of this big ongoing journey into the Aegen Sea they’re doing called “Big Fat Greek Expedition”. And the badboy above runs on what you might expect a computer at that time to run on (assuming that you were expecting any computer of any kind for that time – which I certainly wasn’t): clockwork and grinding gears and probably a bit o’ witchcraft too. And – yes – this gadget was estimated to have been made around the time grandfather caveman started making year counting a thing.
(No religious anachronism to see here, folks).
The belief is that the 30 or so bronze gears encased in a wooden frame all cooperated to make this tinkering toy aid in sea travel. But I guess it didn’t work too well at navigating them to safety when they were transferring the chick on the ship that was getting married off. ‘cause that’s when this the ship crashed – computer, marble and bronze statues, gold jewelry, and other priceless riches from the Asia Minor. I started trying to unearth a video from the Youtube ocean halfway through this news piece to see how it works – but I read further and saw that there are “missing pieces” that they’ll hopefully recover during expedition next.
Then they can put it together and watch it morph into a hell portal before we all learn that someone sacrificed their lives and sunk the ship intentionally – in hopes that no one would ever recover this evil technology that’s actually an entrance to a demonic dimension.
But even when that happens, you can be sure of one thing:
It’ll still be a better love story than me and anything made by Apple.
#InAnUnhealthyControllingRelationship