ATHENS (Reuters) - A 2,000-year old astronomical calculator used by the ancient Greeks to trace the movement of the sun, moon and planets may also have had another purpose - divination of the future, say the researchers.
Billed as the world's first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism is an intricate system of gears bronze dating from about 60 BC by the ancient Greeks used to keep track of solar and lunar eclipses.
He is recovering from a discovered shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.
While researchers had previously focused on their internal mechanisms, a decades-long study is now trying to decipher the inscriptions on the remaining minute fragments of their outer surfaces.
"This confirms that the mechanism is represented planets and showing the position of the sun and moon in the sky," said Mike Edmunds, professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Wales is part of the project team investigation.
But when creating the mirror of the sky, its former engineers also can be transferred to a less scientific impulse - perpetual curiosity of man by what the future holds.
Edmunds, who has worked on the project for about 12 years, said decoding inscriptions also threw up an interesting nugget - the color of the next eclipse.
"We're not quite sure how to interpret this, to be fair, but could go back to suggestions that the color of an eclipse was a kind of omen or sign. Certain colors may be better for what comes to other colors," he he said in a presentation in Athens.
"If this is so, and we're playing correctly, this is the first case we have in the mechanism of any real mention of astrology to astronomy," he said.
However, the main purpose of the mechanism was astronomical and astrological not said.
"The texts were I intended to help the viewer understand what was the meaning of all the different points and dials, which teach them about the cosmos living in ... and how, through the cycles of time is related to their lives, "said Alexander Jones, a history professor at the Institute for the Study of the ancient World in New York.
It is not unique
Researchers say the device was probably made on the island of Rhodes and not think it was unique. It is only unique in the sense that it is the only one that has been found.
Slight variations in the inscriptions point to at least two people are involved in that, and could not have been more people doing their gears.
"You get the idea that maybe this came from a small workshop rather than an individual," Edmunds said.
More than a dozen pieces of classical literature, stretched over a period of about 300 BC to 500 AD, make references to devices such as that found in Antikythera he said.
The calculator can add, multiply, divide and subtract. He was also able to align the number of lunar months with years and display where the sun and the moon were in the zodiac.
It did contain some imperfections, but produced a clear snapshot of astronomical knowledge at the time, Jones said.
"If you looked in the sky that you still see the body that the mechanism was showing more or less, in place of the mechanism, but would not be very accurate."
But it is not clear what happened to the technology that has been lost. Its mechanical complexity would be equal to at least another 1,000 years until the appearance of medieval clocks in European cathedrals.
