Originally found amid an ancient sea wreck by pearl divers, and forgotten amid the collections of a museum until modern technology was powerful enough to peer its inner mysteries, the Antikythera mechanism has become one of the few academically accepted OOPARTs (out of place artifacts) and one of the best known historical enigmas in the world, since it challenges our assumptions regarding the material sophistication of ancient civilizations prior to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern society.
So popular has this ancient astronomical calculator said to have been used to predict eclipses and the date of Olympic games become, that it was chosen as the McGuffin in Indiana Jones’s latest celluloid adventure, to the delight of ancient mysteries nerds… and the utter contempt of archeologists and historians.
Perhaps it was due to this pop culture prominence that a team of scientists from the Mar de Plata Nacional University in Argentina decided to take the fabled mechanism down a few cogs, as it were. This group of researchers have run a new analysis of the device’s clockwork-like gear components using modern computer simulation techniques, and their conclusions put the actual functionality of the ancient machine into question, due to its ‘manufacturing inaccuracies’.
The Antikythera Mechanism is based on a complex system of interconnected gears. Recent analyses have highlighted the influence of triangular tooth profiles and manufacturing inaccuracies on its performance. This study combines Alan Thorndike’s analytical solution for the non-uniform motion caused by triangular teeth with Mike Edmunds’ error model accounting for manufacturing imprecisions. We developed a computational program to simulate the behavior of the mechanism’s pointers, integrating variables from both models. Since the impact of these variables is speculative, our results must be interpreted with caution. Our findings indicate that while the triangular shape of the teeth alone produces negligible errors, manufacturing inaccuracies significantly increase the likelihood of gear jamming or disengagement. Under our assumptions, the errors identified by Edmunds exceed the tolerable limits required to prevent failures. Consequently, either the mechanism never functioned or its actual errors were smaller than those reported by Edmunds. Although it seems unlikely that someone would build such a complex yet non-functional device, there are strong reasons to question whether Edmunds’ values accurately reflect the mechanism’s original errors.
The Impact of Triangular-Toothed Gears on the Functionality of the Antikythera Mechanism (April 1st, 2025)
Prof. Esteban Guillermo Szigety and Dr. Gustavo Francisco Arenas (the authors of the new paper) are proposing that the inaccurate position of the triangular teeth in the gears —pointed out previously by Mike Edmunds, as noted in the abstract—would cause the machine to jam and get stuck while trying to operate the mechanism. These metallic parts, after all, were created by human craftsmen using simple manual tools instead of modern machining techniques which control the precision of the parts via computer.
Human beings, however, didn’t need to wait until we invented computers before we could create pretty sophisticated mechanical devices. Consider the Orloj, an astronomical clock designed to not only strike the hour from 9 a.m to 11 p.m., but it also shows the relative positions of the Sun, Moon, Earth and Zodiac constellations. It was installed in 1410 in Prague, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world, and the oldest still working.
But of course, the Antikythera mechanism is at least 600 years older than the Pragueite clock…
Based on their computerized results, the paper authors are left with two possibilities: either the Antikythera mechanism never worked, or its manufacturing errors were smaller than those found by their predecessors. Given how much time and effort it would have taken to build such a device millennia ago, the possibility of being a shiny useless gizmo seems highly unlikely. The authors are well aware all the mechanism’s part were never fully recovered, and maybe our current tomography scanners are still not powerful enough to give us an accurate view of the gears hidden behind centuries of marine corrosion.
Perhaps the Antikythera mechanism was made by a Roman-era antecessor to the great Leonardo DaVinci, who created many brilliant machines with designs preceding modern inventions by many centuries—which were nevertheless doomed to fail, because they were limited by the materials and techniques of his era.
…Or maybe this now-priceless relic that managed to survive through the ages, is nothing but a cheap ‘knock-off’, a curious example of ‘industrial espionage’ in antiquity, put together by someone who lacked the sophistication of the original author(s).
Whatever the case, these new findings seem to deepen the mystery and leave us with more questions than answers.
