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The oldest computer: From prehistoric Thessaly to the Antikythera Mechanism

Reservation Date: 
Monday, December 7, 2020 - 19:00 to 20:30
Reservation Area: 
All Levels
Reservation Category: 
Booked Areas
The speech presents the Antikythera Mechanism, the oldest computer, as well as its ancestors in prehistoric Thessaly. We will see how and why astronomy was born in Thessaly, how science became and how prehistoric buildings function as observatories, how mathematics, geometry and arithmetic were born with them and how they evolved into the Antikythera mechanism and we came to predict the positions of the sun, moon, their eclipses as well as the positions of the planets.
 
The Antikythera mechanism is an automatic astronomical clock that works like cuckoo clocks, with weights and counterweights and in addition a hydraulic system. In ancient times such clocks or planets were called Tablets or when they were small they 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 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 Dionysos Theater. Proclus in his book Hypothesis of Astronomical Positions writes of these that those who are not possessed can stand on the table and show a force that is uninterruptedly the motion of the Sun, that is, the tables, the Mechanisms of Antikythera, show the motion of time, 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 work 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 agrarian revolution. The first Greek astronomers try to predict the weather and determine the seeding and the first buildings in Europe, in Thessaly, are astronomical instruments. In Sesklo shortly before 6000 BC. all the buildings first see the sunrise at the equinox and a few years later the sunrise on the smallest day of the year and of course they should have had a holiday like Christmas and New Year. In Dimini, shortly after the Mycenaean palace, it 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 sign, a tablet, a laptop, 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:
 
 
 
Meeting ID: 854 7370 8331
Passcode: 1
Number of Participants: 
50
Reservation Ages: 
Adults
Primary Use: 
Teleconference
Hardware: 
Microphone
Sound System
WiFi connection
Software: 
Zoom
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