A 2000-year-old calendar
Aside from the obvious pleasure of exploring new parts of the world—and I’ll be writing more about my trip to New Mexico over the next couple of days—one of my favorite things about vacations is catching up on recreational reading. Last week’s New Yorker had a great story by John Seabrook about the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism, which scientists now believe is a very old and very sophisticated astronomical clock. It showed the months of the year in both the Metonic and the saros cycles (the former is a method discovered by the ancient Greeks of keeping the lunar and the solar calendars in synch; the latter is a way of predicting the likelihood of eclipses) and, according to researcher Michael Wright, it also indicated the phases of the moon.
May 17th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Yes, I read this article, too! It was fascinating. And to think they knew THAT MUCH about how the days, years and planets work!