More than 2,000 years ago, a Roman vessel brimming with innumerable artifacts and devices, including what’s been described as world’s oldest computer, drowned in the crystalline waters off of the Greek island of Antikythera. For the next two millennia, the ship was forgotten and lost to the seas — until a sponge, of all things, revived its legend. It was the spring of 1900 when a stern-faced captain named Dimitrios Kontos, who led a team of equally stern-looking sponge divers, dropped anchor off Antikythera’s coast to wait out a bad storm and troll the waters for sponge. But rather than re-emerge with sponge, a diver named Ilias Stadiatis came up with the arm of a bronze statue — and word there was plenty more where that came from. Now, more than a century and numerous pivotal discoveries later, researchers continue to plumb the wreckage off Antikythera for more secrets of the past. For years, however, it was too deep in the ocean and beyond technology’s reach. That’s now changed.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 23:44:34 +0000
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