Antikythera wreck

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Antikythera wreck

The wreck was discovered northwest of the Greek island of Crete.

The Antikythera wreck is a shipwreck from the 2nd quarter of the 1st century BC.^[1] It was discovered by sponge divers off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island Antikythera in the early 1900s. The wreck produced numerous statues dating back to the 4th century BC, as well as the world's oldest known analog computer, the Antikythera mechanism.

Coordinates: 35°53′23″N 23°18′28″E / 35.8897°N 23.3078°E / 35.8897; 23.3078

Discovery and artifact recovery

In October 1900, a team of sponge divers led by Captain Dimitrios Kondos had decided to wait out a severe storm hampering their sail back from Africa on the island of Antikythera, and 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 Antikythera mechanism.

The first to lay eyes on the shipwreck 60 meters down was Elias Stadiatos, 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 had gone mad from too much carbon dioxide in his helmet, Kondos himself dove into the water, soon returning with a bronze arm of a statue. Until they could safely leave the island, the divers dislodged as many small artifacts as they could carry.

Together with the Greek Education Ministry and Hellenic Navy, the sponge divers salvaged numerous artifacts from the waters. By the end of 1902, divers had recovered statues of a philosopher's head, a discus thrower, the bronze Antikythera Ephebe of ca. 340 BC (now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), a Hercules, a marble bull and a bronze lyre. Many other small and common artifacts were also found. On 17 May 1902, however, archaeologist Valerios Stais made the most celebrated find. When examining the pieces that had been recovered in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, he noticed that one of the pieces of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. It would soon be identified as the Antikythera mechanism; originally thought to be one of the first forms of a mechanised clock, it is now considered to be the world’s oldest known analog computer.^[2] The death of several divers from decompression sickness put an end to work at the site.

Dating the ship

Although the retrieval of artifacts from the shipwreck was highly successful and accomplished in two years, dating the site proved difficult and took much longer. Based on related works with known provenances, some of the bronze statues dated back to the 4th century BC, while the marble statues were found to be 1st century BC copies of earlier works.

The philosopher's head.

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.^[3]

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 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.

Sources

• P. Kabbadias, The Recent Finds off Cythera The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 21. (1901), pp. 205–208.
• Gladys Davidson Weinberg; Virginia R. Grace; G. Roger Edwards; Henry S. Robinson; Peter Throckmorton; Elizabeth K. Ralph, "The Antikythera Shipwreck Reconsidered", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Ser., Vol. 55, No. 3. (1965), pp. 3–48.
• Derek de Solla Price, "Gears from the Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B. C." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Ser., Vol. 64, No. 7. (1974), pp. 1–70.
• Nigel Pickford, The Atlas of Ship Wrecks & Treasures, p 13–15, ISBN 0-86438-615-X.
• Willard Bascom, Deep water, ancient ships: The treasure vault of the Mediterranean, ISBN 0-7153-7305-6.

References