CELESTIAL MIRROR FROM THE DEEP

摘要

In 1900, when a crew of Mediterranean sponge divers took shelter from a storm by the tiny island of Antikythera (see inset map), they found an ancient wreck full of statues, jewellery, weapons, furniture and other treasure - including an odd-looking clockwork device: the Antikythera mechanism.rnScholars have been trying to reconstruct its story ever since. Studies of the wreck suggest that the vessel was Roman and had sailed from the eastern Mediterranean around 70-60 BC (see main map). The Romans were fighting King Mithridates IV of Pontus in Asia Minor at the time, so the sunkenrnship may well have been carrying spoils from that war.