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The Antikythera wreck was discovered off the
Greek island of Antikythera on the edge of the Aegean Sea, northwest of Crete in
1900. A modern day
research dive is planned to explore the wreck in detail..
The Antikythera wreck is a shipwreck from the 2nd quarter of the 1st century BC.
It was discovered by sponge divers off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of
Antikythera in 1900.
The wreck manifested numerous statues, coins and other artifacts dating back to
the 4th century BC, as well as the severely corroded remnants of a device that
is called the world's oldest known analog computer, the
Antikythera
mechanism. Coordinates: 35.8897°N 23.3078°E
In October 1900, a team of sponge divers led by Captain Dimitrios Kondos had
decided to wait out a severe storm hampering their return from Africa at the
Greek island of Antikythera, and while there they began diving for sponges off
the island's coastline. In 1900, divers usually wore standard diving dresses —
canvas suits and copper helmets – which allowed them to dive deeper and to stay
submerged longer.
The first to lay eyes on the shipwreck 60 meters down was Elias Stadiatis, who
quickly signaled to be pulled to the surface. He described the scene as a heap
of rotting corpses and horses lying on the sea bed. Thinking the diver was drunk
from the nitrogen in his breathing air at that depth, Kondos himself dived, soon
returning with a bronze arm of a statue. While waiting for the storm to abate,
the divers retrieved as many small artifacts as they could from the wreck.
Together with the Greek Education Ministry and the Royal Hellenic Navy, the
sponge divers salvaged numerous artifacts from the waters. By the middle of
1901, divers had recovered statues arbitrarily named "the philosopher", a discus
thrower, the Youth of Antikythera (Ephebe) of ca. 340 BC, a "Hercules", a marble
statue of a bull and a bronze lyre. Many other small and common artifacts were
also found and were brought to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
The death of one diver while some others were paralyzed from decompression
sickness put an end to work at the site during the summer of 1901. The French
naval officer and explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau would later dive there, in the
fall of 1976, to search and recover many more artefacts.[2]
On 17 May 1902, however, the former Minister of Education Spyridon Stais made
the most celebrated find at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. When
examining the artifacts that had been recovered, he noticed that a severely
corroded piece of bronze had inscriptions and a gear wheel embedded in it. The
object would come to be known as the Antikythera mechanism or astrolabe.
Originally thought to be one of the first forms of a mechanised clock or an
astrolabe, it is at times referred to as the world’s oldest known analog
computer,[3] although it is technically an advanced mechanical calculator.
Although the retrieval of artifacts from the shipwreck was highly successful and
accomplished within two years, dating the site proved difficult and took much
longer. Based on related works with known provenances, some of the bronze
statues could be dated back to the 4th century BC, while the marble statues were
found to be 1st century BC copies of earlier works.
Some scholars have speculated that the ship was carrying part of the loot of the
Roman General Sulla from Athens in 86 BC, and might have been on its way to
Italy. A reference by the Greek writer, Lucian, to one of Sulla's ships sinking
in the Antikythera region gave rise to this theory. Supporting an early
1st-century BC date were domestic utensils and objects from the ship, similar to
those known from other 1st-century BC contexts. The amphorai recovered from the
wreck indicated a date of 80–70 BC, the Hellenistic pottery a date of 75–50 BC,
and the Roman ceramics were similar to known mid-1st century types. The latest
coin discovered in the 1970s during work by Jacques Cousteau and associates is
datable between 76 and 67 BC.[1] It has been suggested that the sunken cargo
ship was en route to Rome with looted treasures, to support a triumphal parade
being planned for Julius Caesar.[4]
Remains of hull planks showed that the ship was made of elm, a wood often used
by the Romans in their ships. Eventually in 1964 a sample of the hull planking
was carbon dated, and delivered a calibrated calendar date of 220 BC ± 43 years.
The disparity in the calibrated radiocarbon date and the expected date based on
the ceramics and coins was explained by the sample plank originating from an old
tree cut much earlier than the ship's sinking event.
Further evidence for an early 1st-century BC sinking date came in 1974, when
Yale University Professor Derek de Solla Price published his interpretation of
the Antikythera mechanism. He argued convincingly that the object was a calendar
computer. From gear settings and inscriptions on the mechanism's faces, he
concluded that the mechanism was made about 87 BC and lost only a few years
later. (Article compliments of Wikipedia) |
