15. Challenging Established Assumptions
Scholars argued that the Antikythera mechanism’s complexity was beyond the capabilities of first century BC artisans. The fact that it had been found among wreckage undoubtedly from the first century BC was an anomaly, they concluded. As they saw it, the device must have been made centuries later, was lost at sea, and through the vagaries of happenstance and random chance, ended up among the debris of the ancient sunken ship. As a result, no further research was conducted into the device for decades.
In the 1950s, the device attracted the attention of Professor Derek John de Solla Price of Yale University, a specialist in science history. Professor Price conducted intensive research that included X-rays and gamma rays to examine that device’s innards. Finally, after two decades of investigation, he published a seventy-page paper in 1974. As seen below, it upended the scholarly consensus about ancient technology.
