The speech presents the Antikythera mechanism, the oldest computer, as well as its ancestors in prehistoric Thessaly, situated midway on the Greek mainland, such as in the archaeological site Sesklo. We will learn how and why astronomy was born in Thessaly, how it evolved into science and how prehistoric buildings functioned as observatories, how mathematics, geometry and arithmetic were born with them, and how they developed into the Antikythera mechanism capable to predict the positions of the sun, moon, their eclipses as well as the planets positions. The Antikythera mechanism is an automatic astronomical clock that works like cuckoo clocks, consisted of weights, counterweights, and a hydraulic system. In ancient times such clocks or planetariums were called tablets. It predicts all the astronomical phenomena that were known then. The date, most likely the time, the position of the Sun, the phases and the position of the Moon, the beginning of the lunar month, the year. So is the Antikythera mechanism an astronomical clock? The answer is given by Plato’s last successor, the philosopher Proclus, whose university/home is under the sidewalk of Dionysiou Areopagitou Street in Athens in front of the Dionysus Theater. Proclus in his book Hypotyposis Astronomicarum Positionum writes the Antikythera mechanism, show constantly the Sun’s motion, that is, the time.
But why do we have astronomy? Why do we have computers that automatically calculate the positions of the sun and the moon? Plato says that astronomy is an ancient utilitarian science that allows us to predict the weather, to regulate agricultural works based on man-made calendars. We also use astronomy to travel. Prehistoric man begins, as I prove, for the first time in Thessaly, and has been studying the sky with the stars since the beginning of the agricultural revolution. The first Greek astronomers try to predict the weather and determine the sowing period and the first buildings in Europe, in Thessaly, are astronomical instruments. In the site Sesklo shortly before 6000 BC. all the buildings first were aligned with the sunrise at the equinox and a few years later with the sunrise on the smallest day of the year, and of course they should have had a holiday like Christmas and New Year. In the site Dimini, shortly after, the Mycenaean palace is oriented towards the day of the sowing of grain, October 26, and a little later we have many models of celestial spheres which are believed to be offers from all over Europe in Itonia Athena. How far is mentally, scientifically, technologically and structurally a tablet, a laptop, or an Antikythera mechanism from the Greek buildings of 6000 BC. which are astronomically oriented and which are probably the oldest rectangular building in the world? They are only 6000 years old or 200 to 300 generations. During these six millennia, the Greek cities-states that were formed gave birth and shaped the Civilization that continues and which we have today with the space age.
Speaker: Xenophon Dion. Mousas, Professor of Space Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Connect via the link below: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85473708331
Meeting ID: 854 7370 8331
Passcode: 1
