Serious question, why does everyone say the Antikythera mechanism was unsolvable? A grad student at a dig in Crete told me otherwise | Archaeology Discoveries - Babble Community
Serious question, why does everyone say the Antikythera mechanism was unsolvable? A grad student at a dig in Crete told me otherwise
I was at a field lecture near Heraklion two summers ago and a grad student named Dana pointed out the gear count was never the mystery, the missing pieces were. Half the room kept insisting the Greeks could not have cut those teeth by hand, and she calmly pulled up a 2019 replication study where the teeth came out fine with a simple bow drill. I still think the popular documentary version oversells the "impossible computer" angle, and it bugs me. Has anyone else run into a case where the replica work settled a debate the textbooks still call open?
The replication thing kind of bugs me too, because you see it everywhere... like people still argue about whether Vikings made it to Newfoundland even though they dug up an actual camp. We just love the mystery version more than the answer, I guess.