1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Tonight, an ancient mechanical device

2
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000
found on a 2,000-year-old shipwreck.

3
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:13,000
It's so complex that even the world's top scientists

4
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,000
can't figure it out.

5
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:19,000
It's like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.

6
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:21,000
But who actually made it?

7
00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Known as the Antikythera mechanism,

8
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:27,000
its origin and purpose are shrouded in secrecy.

9
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:30,000
The entire façade of it is covered with writing

10
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
that had never been seen previously.

11
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:38,000
How is it possible that this thing was made over 2,000 years ago?

12
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:43,000
Now we'll explore the top theories surrounding this cryptic machine.

13
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:47,000
This is essentially a device tracking the motions of the heavens.

14
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,000
What if it was made in the future and traveled back to the past?

15
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:55,000
Is there any evidence that aliens built the Antikythera mechanism?

16
00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:58,000
Can modern technology unlock its secrets?

17
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,000
Suddenly, it's capable of making life and death decisions.

18
00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:07,000
This is one of the greatest mechanical inventions of all time.

19
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:10,000
What is the Antikythera mechanism?

20
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,000
Where did it come from?

21
00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:14,000
And how does it work?

22
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:30,000
The Greek Isles 1900

23
00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,000
A team of sponge divers are on their way home

24
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,000
from their fishing grounds off the coast of North Africa

25
00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:41,000
when they're hit by a powerful storm.

26
00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:45,000
The sponge divers boat swept into an area off the islet of Antikythera

27
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:49,000
which is located north of Crete and south of the Greek mainland.

28
00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:54,000
It is a rocky and barren island with swift currents right off the coast.

29
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000
It's a very dangerous and treacherous area.

30
00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:01,000
So the group is incredibly lucky that they don't wreck out there.

31
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:07,000
And after the storm settles down, they decide to go back out and dive for sponges one more time.

32
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,000
Diver Elias Stadiatus goes first.

33
00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,000
He's underwater for about a minute and then he just jumps back into the boat terrified.

34
00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:20,000
He's mumbling about men, women, horses in the deep.

35
00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:28,000
The team's captain, master diver Demetrius Elcondos decides to go sea for himself.

36
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:33,000
Elcondos descends into the water and when he comes back up he has an arm in his hands.

37
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:36,000
A bronze arm from a statue.

38
00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:40,000
The quote-unquote bodies down there were actually corroded statues from a shipwreck.

39
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,000
The team can't believe what they found.

40
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:45,000
This ship is huge.

41
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:51,000
It's 180 feet long even though only parts of the cargo and the vessel still remain.

42
00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:59,000
It's clearly very old and it lies at a depth of about 150 feet just to the north of Antikythera Island.

43
00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:06,000
It's an incredible find but you have to remember it is the year 1900 and scuba diving is in its infancy.

44
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000
By that I mean the suits are made out of canvas, you've got copper helmets, scuba tanks, not a thing yet.

45
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:18,000
And many consider this to be the first major discovery in underwater archeology.

46
00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:24,000
Eventually Greek authorities ask the divers to help salvage items from the shipwreck.

47
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:32,000
They start pulling out statuary and pottery and silver and bronze coins and jewelry.

48
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:35,000
It's an unimaginable bounty.

49
00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:41,000
As the treasure hall grows authorities begin to ask what is this mysterious ship

50
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,000
and where did it come from?

51
00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:51,000
The coins and pottery on board appear to be ancient Greek and come from about anywhere from 80 to 50 BC.

52
00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:57,000
Because it's such a huge ship and contains many high-end marvelous goods

53
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:02,000
it's believed the ship was on its way to Rome for a triumphal parade of Julius Caesar.

54
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:08,000
It does fit the timeline since Julius Caesar ruled until his death in 44 BC.

55
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,000
But not everything appears to be valuable.

56
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:19,000
Amongst all these amazing artifacts they find this squarish piece of corroded metal and dirt that looks like a rock.

57
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:25,000
It's about 7 inches wide and they bring it up with them but we're not really sure why they even look twice at it.

58
00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:28,000
Frankly I'm surprised they even bothered to bring it up from the sea floor.

59
00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:36,000
It isn't until a year later that archeologist Valerius Stice is going through this pile of some of the more unimportant artifacts that were found

60
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:42,000
and he comes across this piece of corroded metal and at first doesn't think much of it until he looks inside.

61
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:48,000
And he comes across what appears to be a mechanical gear and he is confused. He is puzzled by this.

62
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:56,000
Most scholars were convinced that the gear technology was invented primarily in Europe maybe during the Renaissance or later.

63
00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:01,000
So we can imagine the astonishment and the confusion of Mr. Stice.

64
00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:10,000
The device is dubbed the Antikythera Mechanism named for where it was found and it's much more complex than originally thought.

65
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:19,000
Turns out that they brought up about three main pieces of the mechanism with 82 separate fragments many of which also had gears.

66
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:28,000
But it appears that this is only a small part of the machine and Stice is looking at all of this and trying to figure out how it all goes together.

67
00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:34,000
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.

68
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:42,000
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.

69
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:52,000
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.

70
00:05:53,000 --> 00:06:01,000
Faced with these challenges, Stice ultimately gives up and no one attempts to decode the machine for decades.

71
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:13,000
Then in 1951, a British physicist named Derek de Sola Price is studying the history of scientific instruments of the ancient world and he becomes fascinated with the Antikythera Mechanism.

72
00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:20,000
He goes to Greece to see it in person. He examines what he thinks are inscriptions on the device.

73
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:27,000
Now that in and of itself is remarkable because it's pretty uncommon to see Greek writing inscribed in metal.

74
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:38,000
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.

75
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:42,000
And then there are other letters which might be part of the word Aphrodite.

76
00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:48,000
As Price manages to translate more of the text, he develops a theory.

77
00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:52,000
Most of the words that you could read had to do something with the sky.

78
00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:01,000
So because of the gearing and the inscriptions, this is what convinced Derek de Sola Price that he was dealing with an astronomical computer.

79
00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:10,000
Think about that and really let it sink in. This makes it a computer that was built more than 2,000 years ago.

80
00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:16,000
Price sketches out a rendering of what he thinks the original mechanism must have looked like.

81
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:25,000
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.

82
00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:32,000
Price believes that this device actually calculates the movement of the sun, of the moon and possibly the planets.

83
00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,000
What the user would have to do is they'd have to input, for example, a date.

84
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:44,000
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.

85
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:51,000
That is just one definition of a computer, right? You input information and then it will output data right back to you.

86
00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:58,000
The entire concept of that is so far ahead of its time, like over a thousand years ahead.

87
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:04,000
Having the math, the astronomy, the technological prowess to create it, it's just completely baffling.

88
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:10,000
The discovery challenges everything scientists thought they knew about the ancient world.

89
00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:15,000
There weren't astronomical, calendrical computers in ancient Greece. There were sun dials.

90
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,000
That's what we thought was the height of their technology.

91
00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:27,000
The ancient Greeks get a lot of credit for being very advanced in the realms of places like art, philosophy, architecture, but building a computer.

92
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:33,000
That's out of the realm of possibility. This device should not have existed in ADBC.

93
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:41,000
For this level of technology, it's really when we start making mechanical clocks from the 1300s that you finally get gears like this on a regular basis.

94
00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:50,000
The first analog calculators we really don't see until the 1600s. So it's like at least 1500, 1600 years after this device was built.

95
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:56,000
This is considered to be one of the greatest mechanical inventions of all time.

96
00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:04,000
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.

97
00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:10,000
Price spends the next two decades trying to uncover more answers.

98
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:20,000
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.

99
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:26,000
So Price works with what he has and with what he can see, but remember there are still two-thirds of this device missing.

100
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:35,000
So what are those components? What might they do? And could they help to truly explain what the purpose is behind the Antikythera mechanism?

101
00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:45,000
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.

102
00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:47,000
But it won't be for long.

103
00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:57,000
The mysterious Antikythera mechanism stumps scientists for ten decades.

104
00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:04,000
How could something this complex date to ancient Greece? And what is its purpose?

105
00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:10,000
British physicist Derek DeSola Price thinks he knows.

106
00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:18,000
He believes that the device is an astronomical computer that was able to track the heavenly bodies over time.

107
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:23,000
But the technology that he's using to study the mechanism just isn't very advanced.

108
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:34,000
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.

109
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:39,000
So some of his conclusions are, by necessity, educated guesses.

110
00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:49,000
Then, in 2002, the British Science Museum's curator of mechanical engineering, Michael Wright, applies new technology to the device.

111
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:54,000
Wright and his research partner take radiographs of the machine to fill in more of its functionality.

112
00:10:54,000 --> 00:11:04,000
As opposed to just a flat two-dimensional scan, these scans can focus on one plane at a time, which allows for more precise location for each of these gears inside the machine.

113
00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:11,000
After analyzing his scans, Wright believed that this machine was far more complex than what Price had originally asserted.

114
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:16,000
And additionally, there was a turntable on the inside of it that rotated for each planet.

115
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:24,000
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.

116
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:30,000
This is confirmation of Price's theory that this is essentially a device tracking the motions of the heavens.

117
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:38,000
But now we know more specifically what is tracking the moon, the sun, and the several planets the Greeks were aware of.

118
00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:42,000
The question is, why was it used?

119
00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:49,000
In 2013, a team at Cardiff University performs even more advanced scans.

120
00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:56,000
Led by astrophysicist Mike Edmonds and mathematician Tony Freeth, the approach that they take is too prompt.

121
00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:03,000
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,

122
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:08,000
and they also use a computed x-ray tomography to get closer looks on the inside.

123
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:14,000
What this will help them to do is to create a highly detailed 3D image of the mechanism for the very first time.

124
00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:17,000
The approach yields yet another breakthrough.

125
00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:24,000
After they were able to finish their thousands of scans of the 82 pieces, something truly amazing emerges,

126
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:26,000
and that is they find writing.

127
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:35,000
It's extremely difficult to read something that is corroded, but because they had more advanced technology in their scanning of the device,

128
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:38,000
now you have hundreds, hundreds of letters.

129
00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:44,000
The entire façade of it is covered with writing that had never been seen previously.

130
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:47,000
Now keep in mind that a lot of the parts of the machine are still missing,

131
00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:53,000
but the pieces that they're looking at have about 3400 pieces of text that are written in ancient Greek.

132
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:58,000
So what they're really looking at is a partial user's manual for the machine.

133
00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:06,000
The manual confirms the mechanism can track stars and planets, but it also reveals something new.

134
00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:11,000
There's a lower dial on the back of the device that no one has been able to figure out yet,

135
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:15,000
but Frith and his team, they think they have the answer,

136
00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:21,000
because there are glyphs etched onto the segment in the intervals of one, five, and six months.

137
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:25,000
And Frith thinks that this is used to predict the timing of eclipses.

138
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,000
Now why is this important?

139
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:32,000
Because to the ancient Greek, predicting eclipses is predicting the future.

140
00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:40,000
In the machine's instructions, there are references to the size and even to the colors of the eclipse,

141
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:45,000
and that's what keys Frith in, because eclipses don't have colors in nature.

142
00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:52,000
But what's interesting here is that the colors are what the Greeks used for what they called astral divination.

143
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:59,000
In ancient Greece, astral divination, or the reading of the stars, is a vital part of daily life.

144
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:06,000
The Greeks used this large-scale astrology to determine the fortunes of entire countries and civilizations.

145
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:12,000
Eclipses were omens, and the colors determined whether they were good or bad omens.

146
00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:19,000
They inherited this belief system from the Babylonians, who used to obsess over the sky and everything in it.

147
00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:24,000
They would record whatever they saw and the effects that it may have had on their lives.

148
00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:31,000
For instance, on the day they set sail on a voyage, any particular planet is in the sky and the ship wrecks,

149
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:35,000
the next time that planet happens to appear, they won't send a ship out.

150
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:41,000
Now we might call that superstition, but to them, that is very, very real.

151
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:45,000
Now imagine the value of being able to have this information in advance.

152
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:54,000
Before the Antichythera 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?

153
00:14:54,000 --> 00:15:00,000
But with this device, they can now plan in advance because they know when the eclipses are coming.

154
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:09,000
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,

155
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:16,000
and especially when to embark on campaigns and to invade and launch wars.

156
00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:21,000
If this theory is correct, the Antichythera mechanism is much more significant.

157
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:26,000
Suddenly, it's capable of making life and death decisions.

158
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:32,000
It's quite possible the device could operate the government and make decisions about statecraft.

159
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:38,000
And as some historians are quick to point out, they've only recovered a third of the machine.

160
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:43,000
Just imagine what the mechanism may have been tracking or predicting in its full form.

161
00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:54,000
Perhaps the weather, perhaps natural disasters, maybe even the rise and fall of entire dynasties and civilizations, all laid out like clockwork.

162
00:15:54,000 --> 00:16:04,000
A map of the stars or a way to predict the future, whatever its purpose, the ancient Antichythera mechanism is a technical marvel.

163
00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:10,000
Scientists have been studying this device for over 100 years now, ever since it was first discovered on that shipwreck in 1900.

164
00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:17,000
And again, with something so enigmatic by all rights, something that should not exist, you are dying to know what was its original purpose.

165
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:19,000
What is it meant to do?

166
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:25,000
But perhaps even more, you want to know where it comes from. What brilliant civilization built this?

167
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:36,000
When we think about whoever created this device and compare them to other creative geniuses like Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein,

168
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:44,000
clearly this person is in the same class, if not somewhat above them because of the nature of the time they were in.

169
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:50,000
Da Vinci conceived of a helicopter 400 years before a working one was built.

170
00:16:50,000 --> 00:17:00,000
And then you have this society in ADBC that imagines this complex mechanical device, the likes of which weren't seen for another 1500 years.

171
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:05,000
And not only did they imagine it, they built the thing. So that might have Leonardo beat.

172
00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:12,000
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.

173
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:17,000
What workshop in ancient Greece has the skill set to actually build something like this?

174
00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:25,000
And we know the great minds of ancient Greece. And it seems that almost nobody fits that bill. Almost.

175
00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:36,000
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.

176
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:47,000
Archimedes is an inventor, a scientist, an engineer whose fame grew and whose legend grew amongst those who lived even soon after him.

177
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:56,000
Around 50 BC, the Roman statesman Cicero actually writes about Archimedes owning a sphere, quote,

178
00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:03,000
binding the disparate motions of the seven heavenly bodies. Could that have been the Antikythera mechanism?

179
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:10,000
If Archimedes workshop is the source, the device would be even older than anticipated.

180
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:20,000
Archimedes dies around 212 BC, and archaeologists and experts think the device was made about 20 years before the ship sank, which would have been 80 BC.

181
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:27,000
That's almost 130 years after Archimedes died. Does this rule out Archimedes? Not necessarily.

182
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:32,000
Maybe the device was already quite old when it set out on this fateful journey.

183
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:36,000
Recent evidence proves this could be possible.

184
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:50,000
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.

185
00:18:50,000 --> 00:19:00,000
And this date is way before 80 BC. Their best guess is about 204 BC, which is around Archimedes' time.

186
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:05,000
So maybe he started the device and his workshop finished it off.

187
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:09,000
The device's inscriptions also may support this theory.

188
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:18,000
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.

189
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:33,000
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 current colonies, one of those colonies being Syracuse, the home of Archimedes.

190
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:41,000
But this theory is disputed by NYU professor Alexander Jones in a 2017 book.

191
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:53,000
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.

192
00:19:53,000 --> 00:20:04,000
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.

193
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:15,000
Around the same time, astrophysicist Mike Edmonds also challenges the idea that Archimedes or his team created the mechanism.

194
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:29,000
Edmonds 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.

195
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:38,000
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.

196
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:48,000
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.

197
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:56,000
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.

198
00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:01,000
But back then, with the math that they had, it's all relative.

199
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:08,000
Based on Edmonds' calculations, the Antikythera Mechanism was built at 35 degrees north latitude.

200
00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:24,000
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.

201
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:28,000
And that finding opens up a new possibility.

202
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:37,000
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.

203
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:45,000
There's Crete, there's Cyprus, and that's about it, and neither of those were hubs of technology, really.

204
00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:53,000
This leads some theorists to suggest that the location the device was built vanished.

205
00:21:53,000 --> 00:22:04,000
In 1996, author David Hatcher Childress proposes the lost city of Atlantis as the Antikythera Mechanism's place of origin.

206
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:10,000
In a way, there was no more fitting home for the mechanism than Atlantis.

207
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:21,000
Greek philosopher Plato describes it as a powerful, advanced, mechanically superior civilization that was on a large island and succumbed to natural disasters.

208
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:27,000
For centuries, researchers have looked for the remains of that lost city.

209
00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:37,000
If 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.

210
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:43,000
What the modern Greeks call Santorini, the real name is Thira, Zejadebokenno.

211
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:48,000
In 6050 BCE, it blew up and destroyed two-thirds of the island.

212
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:59,000
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.

213
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:03,000
Now, I know most people might think Atlantis, that's a place of fiction, right?

214
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:10,000
But there actually was a real-life civilization that was submerged by water, and they were called the Minoans.

215
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:16,000
And many historians think that the Minoan civilization actually inspired the story of Atlantis.

216
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:25,000
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.

217
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:28,000
But not everyone's convinced.

218
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:33,000
One of the challenges with the Atlantis theory, even if Atlantis existed, is the timing.

219
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,000
It would have been long gone by ADBC.

220
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:41,000
If this is a relic from Atlantis, it would have been quite old by the time you loaded onto the ship.

221
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:48,000
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.

222
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:53,000
It might be even older than that, but this one's going to be really difficult to prove.

223
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:17,000
The author proposes a shocking idea. The machine may not be as old as we think.

224
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:30,000
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?

225
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:36,000
That is, until author J.H. Brennan presents a novel, new approach to the problem.

226
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:42,000
What if it wasn't made 2,000 years ago? What if it was made in the future and traveled back to the past?

227
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:50,000
In his book, Time Travel, A New Perspective, Brennan asks,

228
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:55,000
Was the Antikythera mechanism carried to ancient Crete from the future?

229
00:24:55,000 --> 00:25:03,000
Sounds preposterous. But does it sound any more preposterous than thinking that the ancient Greeks made this device?

230
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:05,000
Some would say no.

231
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:11,000
It's sophisticated understanding of astronomy, it's mathematical prowess, as well as its mechanical engineering genius.

232
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:18,000
We have no other evidence that this type of skill ever existed in ADBC other than this device.

233
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:28,000
We have no other device that has a similar level of technology. There's no evidence for anything else like this mechanism in ADBC.

234
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:38,000
Even pioneering researcher Derek DeSola Price says that finding this device on a Roman shipwreck is like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.

235
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:46,000
Just the fact that it's a clockwork gear-based mechanism is something we didn't think existed in ancient Greece.

236
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:51,000
One of the gears on the Antikythera mechanism is what's called a differential gear.

237
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:56,000
A differential gear is a gear in which the cogs are of different sizes.

238
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:02,000
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.

239
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:10,000
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.

240
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:17,000
The differential gear in the Antikythera mechanism is used to determine the angle between the sun, the moon and the phases of the moon.

241
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:21,000
And there it is in ADBC in this machine.

242
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:31,000
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.

243
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,000
And it is not in common use until the early 1800s.

244
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:39,000
Maybe now Brennan's time travel idea isn't so far-fetched.

245
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:47,000
If the mechanism features technology from 1800 years into the future, how do you reconcile that?

246
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:53,000
Proponents of this theory also point to the fact that nothing else like it exists.

247
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,000
Breakthroughs in the history of science are generally developed over time.

248
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:03,000
When you look at the history of something like the printing press or a telephone or an automobile, there are precedents.

249
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:08,000
There are partial steps in the development of the device that get it to where it is today.

250
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,000
We didn't just suddenly have a corvette.

251
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:16,000
There were a lot of rudimentary attempts at a vehicle that got us to the corvette.

252
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:21,000
But the mechanism has no precedents in ancient times.

253
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:24,000
We have found nothing else like this, not even close.

254
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:28,000
So you have to ask where are the other devices?

255
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:33,000
Why haven't we found any other mechanisms that can do even a fraction of what this one does?

256
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:39,000
When we think about clockworks and you want to look at its development from rudimentary clockwork to more advanced,

257
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,000
you're really going to be looking at the period just before the Renaissance.

258
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:46,000
That's when it started. You're not going to be looking at ancient Greece.

259
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:52,000
For all these reasons, the idea that the anti-kithera mechanism traveled through time does have some supporters.

260
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:56,000
But then there are other theorists who are even more out there who say,

261
00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:02,000
the anti-kithera mechanism didn't just time travel, it is the time machine.

262
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:08,000
So on the front of the device, you have the positions of various objects, the sun, the moon and the planets.

263
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:17,000
You then have a crank that you use to rotate to a particular date that then puts everything in the position where they're going to be in the sky.

264
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:22,000
So therefore you have a device that is calculating both space and time.

265
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:27,000
When physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking talk about time travel,

266
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:35,000
the question becomes whether or not space and time can fold in on itself to allow a person to jump in between time periods.

267
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:42,000
So those inputs on the anti-kithera mechanism, could they be coordinates for a journey through spacetime?

268
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:48,000
The mechanism could literally be an atlas to the cosmos in four dimensions, including time.

269
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:50,000
It's a map to get you to your destination.

270
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:55,000
But with only one third of the anti-kithera mechanism to examine,

271
00:28:55,000 --> 00:29:00,000
its additional functions, or its possible purpose, can't be fully determined.

272
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:04,000
Nothing of what we currently have is a time machine. Let's just be clear about that.

273
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:09,000
But could the mechanism's missing parts help power a journey through time?

274
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:15,000
It makes for a fun story. The very first time traveler finishes their prototype.

275
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:19,000
They decide they want to encode the instructions in ancient Greek,

276
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:23,000
because they've long admired the society for its well-known wisdom.

277
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,000
So much so that that's actually where they want to go on their first destination.

278
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:31,000
So they go back to ancient Greek in the time machine, they're there,

279
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:35,000
some tragedy befalls them, the shipwreck, and poof!

280
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:40,000
The only anti-kithera mechanism is now stuck in 80 BC.

281
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:52,000
In 1968, one influential author suggests he knows the secret to the anti-kithera mechanism.

282
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:55,000
In his 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods,

283
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:58,000
Eric Von Daniken questions numerous ancient technologies,

284
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:04,000
which he believes were too advanced to have been created by the humans in those respective eras.

285
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:09,000
So these are things like the pyramids and Machu Picchu, Stonehenge,

286
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,000
and the anti-kithera mechanism.

287
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:14,000
According to Von Daniken, the reason is clear.

288
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,000
These things were not created by humans.

289
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:22,000
They were made by highly intelligent extraterrestrials.

290
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,000
The theory is definitely out there, but it attracts a lot of believers.

291
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,000
If this machine is beyond human knowledge, what other option do we have?

292
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:36,000
Von Daniken believes that in the distant past, extraterrestrials land on Earth,

293
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:42,000
they make contact with humans, they share their knowledge and want to help advance scientific progress,

294
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,000
and in the places where this happens, we see these unexplainable advancements,

295
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:50,000
like in ancient Egypt, or in this case, ancient Greece.

296
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:54,000
The theory is that this is extraterrestrial technology given to humans

297
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,000
that's based on their understanding of tracking the stars and the planets

298
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,000
so that they can help humans better understand the universe around them.

299
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:06,000
According to Von Daniken, the reason you have ancient Greek language written on the device

300
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:12,000
is that either the extraterrestrials built it for them and then translated the instructions into ancient Greek,

301
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:16,000
or taught them how to build the device and the Greeks themselves put the instructions on it.

302
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:22,000
In 1999, Von Daniken publishes Odyssey of the Gods,

303
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:27,000
in which he suggests that ancient Greece was once a nexus of alien activity.

304
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:30,000
Von Daniken sees evidence of this all around.

305
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:37,000
The Antikythera mechanism, the advanced political structure and civilization that they build,

306
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,000
even the stories that they tell about their gods.

307
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:46,000
Extraterrestrials capable of traveling distant galaxies would look like gods to ancient humans.

308
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:55,000
Von Daniken believes these visitors are an inspiration for the Greek gods, Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite,

309
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,000
and the other residents of Mount Olympus.

310
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,000
Another thing that comes up in Greek legends is flying.

311
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,000
Gods fly, chariots fly.

312
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:09,000
This is unusual in a society where they've never seen anything that flies other than birds and insects.

313
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:14,000
As we know, there are no flying vehicles in ancient Greece, but maybe some came to visit.

314
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:18,000
Is there any evidence that aliens visited these ancient cultures?

315
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:25,000
Not exactly, but the Greeks and Romans observed and recorded some strange happenings in the sky,

316
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:29,000
and some of those accounts are pretty curious.

317
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:40,000
In 2007, Goddard Institute astrophysicist Richard Stuthers publishes a report on unexplained aerial phenomena in the ancient world.

318
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:48,000
Stuthers analyzes these texts from ancient Greece and Rome and finds a ton of unusual phenomena in the skies at that time.

319
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:53,000
Now some of it can be explained as meteors and asteroids, but a lot of it remains unexplained.

320
00:32:53,000 --> 00:33:03,000
In 65 AD, historian Josephus in his History of the Wars records an event in Judea that can only be described as a battle in the sky,

321
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:09,000
with chariots and troops of soldiers and armor shooting fire at each other.

322
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:16,000
This event had many witnesses and has led some people to argue that this was an alien encounter.

323
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:24,000
Stuthers compares these accounts to modern UFO reports, which as we know, our military has begun declassifying.

324
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:34,000
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.

325
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:43,000
And this actually sounds a lot like modern UFO sightings, so it doesn't prove that aliens visited ancient Greeks, but it's interesting.

326
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:49,000
Could this origin hint at the true purpose of the Antikythera mechanism?

327
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:54,000
So let's assume, just for a minute, that it is alien technology.

328
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:59,000
Well then what was it used for? I mean why give the Greeks this machine?

329
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:09,000
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.

330
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:18,000
According to Von Daniken, the aliens were hoping that the humans would advance from ships at sea to ships in the sky or spaceships.

331
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:24,000
This device was ultimately designed to navigate our solar system, not just the Mediterranean.

332
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:29,000
Some speculate the machine might be capable of even more.

333
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:34,000
Don't forget all the missing parts. While the pieces we have helped track the planet's closest to Earth,

334
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:39,000
alien theorists think that the full device might have been used to track aliens' homeworld,

335
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:45,000
or other navigational aids that might have helped us get from here to there.

336
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:51,000
Alien theorists also speculate that there might be a communications component within the missing section.

337
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:57,000
Maybe it doesn't just track the aliens' home, maybe it is a way of sending messages.

338
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:05,000
Let me be very clear, was this incredibly precise machine made by highly intelligent extraterrestrials?

339
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:11,000
No, probably not. I mean, probably not.

340
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:17,000
But I think it is absolutely amazing how the mechanism inspires wonderment in everyone who comes across it.

341
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:23,000
How did it get here? Where did it come from? The stories that people come up with for this thing are incredible.

342
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:25,000
The possibilities are endless.

343
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:38,000
In 2021, a team led by Dr. Tony Freeth completes a significant breakthrough, a working model of the Antikythera mechanism.

344
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:47,000
Dating back to one of the original researchers, Derek deSola Price, many people have tried to recreate the mechanism, or partial versions of the mechanism.

345
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:52,000
But this one is different. It includes every gear, every inscription, and every functionality.

346
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:58,000
It even includes the wooden case. Everything we know, every piece we've found, all put together in working order.

347
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:07,000
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.

348
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:11,000
But Freeth building this model has an unintended consequence.

349
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:19,000
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.

350
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:24,000
Over the years, many have questioned whether the Antikythera mechanism ever worked.

351
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:35,000
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.

352
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:41,000
Freeth's model works. However, we have no proof that the original mechanism ever actually did.

353
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:47,000
And Freeth takes some liberties in assuming how certain gears fit and how they may have fit together.

354
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:55,000
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.

355
00:36:55,000 --> 00:37:00,000
This does not mean it's accurate to the original, and Freeth makes no such claim.

356
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:05,000
It's not meant to be taken as a literal reconstruction of the mechanism.

357
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:12,000
He points out, however, that it does prove that something with this functionality could fit in a box that size.

358
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:17,000
But is there any evidence the device ever actually functioned?

359
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:27,000
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.

360
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:33,000
And that's with hundreds of top scientists studying it and the benefit of modern technology.

361
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,000
This just wouldn't have been possible in ADBC.

362
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:44,000
People point out that Freeth's model does not look exactly like the mechanism, which is currently a mass lump with no moving parts.

363
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:54,000
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.

364
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:58,000
It wouldn't be the first time experts were fooled.

365
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:07,000
In the 18th century, a man named Johann Kemplendepasmen creates a clockwork robotic chess player that becomes known as the Mechanical Turk.

366
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:15,000
The machine has a life-sized human head and torso with arms that are resting on a cabinet, and on the cabinet is a chessboard.

367
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:21,000
And human beings come up and play chess against this machine, and the machine wins.

368
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:29,000
The Turk makes its official debut in 1770 in Schoenbrunn Palace, which is the summer residence of Austrian rulers.

369
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:41,000
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.

370
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:47,000
But it all checks out, and people when they're playing the Mechanical Turk try to perform some illegal moves,

371
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:55,000
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.

372
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:59,000
The Mechanical Turk becomes a sensation across Europe.

373
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:06,000
It tours European capitals in 1783, stopping at Versailles and playing all of the best chess players in the world.

374
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:16,000
It plays Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, the king of Prussia, brilliant minds who all marvel at this chess-playing automaton.

375
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:22,000
But in 1834, a series of articles reveals the device to be fraudulent.

376
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:33,000
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.

377
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:38,000
But even though the Turk doesn't work without a human operator, it is still a brilliant design.

378
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:43,000
The device is put on display in Philadelphia in a museum until it burns down in 1854.

379
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:49,000
People celebrate it as a cunning piece of clockwork, regardless of the fact it didn't automatically play chess.

380
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,000
Can the same be said of the Antikythera mechanism?

381
00:39:53,000 --> 00:40:01,000
The parallels are clear. The Antikythera mechanism could be the original Mechanical Turk, and maybe it was a showpiece,

382
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:11,000
a marvelous clockwork housed inside of a statue that appeared to track the heavens through time automatically, but it wasn't actually automatic.

383
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:16,000
Inside the statue, there was an operator making it all work.

384
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:24,000
Despite the questions it raises, most historians still believe the Antikythera mechanism is genuine.

385
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:33,000
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?

386
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:40,000
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.

387
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:49,000
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?

388
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,000
I think they thought this was a really valuable object.

389
00:40:52,000 --> 00:41:02,000
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.

390
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:17,000
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,

391
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:24,000
and hopefully someday soon there will be somebody brilliant enough to solve its mysteries.

392
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:34,000
Recovery efforts continue to this day at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck. In 2017, an additional gear was recovered.

393
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:46,000
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.

394
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:52,000
I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.