The wreck of the ancient Greek ship Antikythera, from which the Antikythera Mechanism was was salvaged in 1900, continues to yield treasures. The shipwreck, discovered by sponge divers, dates from 70 to 60 BC and is thought to have been carrying a luxury cargo of Greek treasures from the coast of Asia Minor west to Rome.
The most recent dive team of international archaeologists including Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Theotokis Theodoulou of the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities has just completed their summer dive on the site and retrieved tableware, parts of an ornate bed, and a huge bronze spear. (See photos at these two links).
This is in addition to their principal task which was making a high resolution 3D Map of the site which turned out to cover a much larger area than previously thought.
Components of the ship, including multiple lead anchors over a meter long and a bronze rigging ring with fragments of wood still attached, prove that much of the ship survives. The finds are also scattered over a much larger area than the sponge divers realized, covering 300 meters of the seafloor. This together with the huge size of the anchors and recovered hull planks proves that the Antikythera ship was much larger than previously thought, perhaps up to 50 meters long.
“The evidence shows this is the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered,” says Foley. “It’s the Titanic of the ancient world.”
The fifty five meter depth of the wreck means it is too deep for SCUBA gear, so re-breather units are used. For the first time the team used an Diving Exosuit which vaguely resembles Robbie the Robot. The Exosuit doubles the time the diver can spend on the bottom.
Related Stories
Scientists move closer to solving mystery of antikythera mechanism:
Researchers claim breakthrough in study of 2,000-year-old Antikythera mechanism[*], an astronomical calculator found in sea
[...] The hand-powered, 2,000-year-old device displayed the motion of the universe, predicting the movement of the five known planets, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses. But quite how it achieved such impressive feats has proved fiendishly hard to untangle.
Now researchers at UCL[**] believe they have solved the mystery – at least in part – and have set about reconstructing the device, gearwheels and all, to test whether their proposal works. If they can build a replica with modern machinery, they aim to do the same with techniques from antiquity.
"We believe that our reconstruction fits all the evidence that scientists have gleaned from the extant remains to date," said Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at UCL. While other scholars have made reconstructions in the past, the fact that two-thirds of the mechanism are missing has made it hard to know for sure how it worked.
The mechanism, often described as the world's first analogue computer, was found by sponge divers in 1901 amid a haul of treasures salvaged from a merchant ship that met with disaster off the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship is believed to have foundered in a storm in the first century BC as it passed between Crete and the Peloponnese en route to Rome from Asia Minor.
[...] Michael Wright, a former curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, pieced together much of how the mechanism operated and built a working replica, but researchers have never had a complete understanding of how the device functioned. Their efforts have not been helped by the remnants surviving in 82 separate fragments, making the task of rebuilding it equivalent to solving a battered 3D puzzle that has most of its pieces missing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sudo rm -rf on Sunday October 12 2014, @01:04PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @01:59PM
So Telemachus was sitting there in Thessaloniki, eagerly waiting for his pre-ordered iSextant 6 (Designed by μήλο in Athens. Assembled in Crete.) to be delivered, and it ends up on the bottom of the Mediterranean instead? What a shame!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @07:36PM
I see what you did there. tee hee :)
(Score: 1) by quicksharp on Sunday October 12 2014, @05:23PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 12 2014, @06:48PM
Yes, we know the name of the ship.
Its been (re)named, and nobody contested that renaming. So it stands.
Ship names are not immutable. Take the case of The Oriental Nicety. [wikipedia.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by velex on Sunday October 12 2014, @05:33PM
Now this is the kind of thing that interests me.
Fuck those who are privileged enough to escape blame for this Gamer-gate whatever shit. The person sleeping on my couch is legally female. Why? She just asked to be a woman and the gods responded with a Cadillac health care policy. Fuck female privilege.
For that matter, fuck cis privilege while I'm at it. I am fucking sick and tired of being accused of denying women mammograms because I don't have breasts. I don't have breasts?! And you determined that by a fucking piece of paper?! Fuck it.
I am an individual. Don't tread on me. Give me liberty or give me death. I will find out soon which one the gods want for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @06:03PM
There's a transsexual on your couch? Did I understand that part of your comment correctly?
(Score: 1) by velex on Sunday October 12 2014, @06:13PM
Yes. To clarify, there's a trans woman typing this comment, a trans woman making ribs, and a 3rd person who benefited from a Cadillac health care plan and is legally female.
Somebody mod this shit off topic. I'm just angry this morning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 12 2014, @06:17PM
Ok, I see. I wasn't sure at first if you were talking about yourself or somebody else, but it's clear now.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Monday October 13 2014, @02:11AM
I think you posted this on the wrong thread.