Decoding the Heavens

By Jo Marchant

In autumn 1900, Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his crew of sponge divers were sailing home from their summer diving grounds off Tunisia. They were heading for the island of Symi in the eastern Mediterranean, but were blown off course by a storm and sheltered by a barren islet called Antikythera.

After the storm’s retreat, they discovered on the seabed a spectacular shipwreck . A Roman ship from the first century BC, it was carrying stolen Greek treasures, including statues, armour and jewellery.

The divers salvaged the wreck for the Greek government, and the artefacts were taken to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Among the haul was a lump of rock no one unnoticed at first. Then it cracked open, revealing gearwheels, inscriptions, and dials. This “Antikythera mechanism” turned out to be the most stunning scientific artefact we have from antiquity. Nothing close to its complexity appears again for more than a thousand years.

For much of the last century this mysterious machine was largely ignored by mainstream historians. But thanks to a succession of men who devoted their lives to decoding the device (see video), its secrets have finally been revealed. It was a clockwork computer for calculating the varying movements of the Sun, Moon and planets, and even predicting future eclipses.

I first heard about the Antikythera mechanism in summer 2006. A paper revealing its workings was due to appear in the science journal Nature, where I was on staff as an editor. The story grabbed me immediately, and I travelled to Athens to see the remains of the mechanism, and meet those who had studied it.

In my new book, Decoding the Heavens, I describe the 100-year quest to understand the device. But along the way I became intrigued by the bigger tale, of where this unexpected technology came from and where it went for a thousand years. I was stunned to discover that the expertise embodied in the device was not lost. Traces were passed to the Islamic world, and back to Medieval Europe, where this ancient knowledge triggered much of the technology that shapes our lives today.

Jo Marchant in the author of Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets, published by Da Capo Press

Ancient Marvels

Guest Post by Justin Marozzi

Herodotus, the roving fifth-century BC Greek historian, collected wonders and marvels with the sort of passion and dedication that obsessive-compulsive travelers show today in filling their passports with foreign stamps and visas.

Why did he do it? I think there were two reasons. First, he knew it would fascinate his readers--it still does, 2,500 years after he died, so he was evidently onto something. Second, and just as important, he simply couldn't resist it. This was a man whose insatiable curiosity for the weird and wonderful runs riot throughout the pages of the Histories, his masterpiece about the Persian Wars.

He announces his interest in the very first lines of the book. He is going to concentrate, he says, on "great and marvellous deeds," and these marvels range way beyond the battlefields of the Persian Wars, from the stupendous temples of Egypt and Greece and bizarre human adventures to curious sexual practices and the workings of the Nile. Herodotus is awarding himself a licence to thrill--and be thrilled.

Hence the proliferation of curiosities he introduces us to, such as dog-headed men that live in the mountains, the gold-digging ants of India, bigger than a fox, smaller than a dog, and the fabulous flying snakes of Arabia.

He writes with gusto about the sexual habits of the Babylonians, who fumigate their genitals after intercourse and won't touch any household utensils until they have performed this strange cleansing act. He details the free-ranging promiscuity of the Massagetae of the Caspian Sea region, where it's a very male world: "If a man wants a woman, all he does is to hang his quiver in front of her wagon and then enjoy her without misgiving."

He notes the Scythians' fondness for hashish and the intoxicated howls of laughter the drug produces. In Egypt, he notes that the corpses of very beautiful women are not given to the embalmers right away due to instances of necrophilia among the more shameless practitioners of the art.

It's all compelling reading, and that's without even touching on his monumental history of the Persian Wars!

Justin Marozzi is the author of The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History, published by Da Capo.

Click here to enter the drawing for copy of Justin Marozzi's new book!

Image: Eighteenth-century engraving of the pyramids of Giza.

Makeup Tips for Ancient Egyptian Gals

Guest Post by Michelle Moran

We tend to think of cosmetics as feminine perks of the modern life. Women treasure their favorite lipstick colors like gold, protect their skin with anti-aging creams, and spend countless hours in front of the mirror getting their eyeliner just right.

It surprises many people to know that ancient Egyptian women were just as fanatical about their cosmetics. Take a look at the portraits of ancient Egypt and you would be hard-pressed to find a woman (or a man) whose eyes aren't perfectly lined with kohl, whose lips aren't perfectly painted with ochre, or whose long tresses aren't protected from the harsh desert sun by wigs.

A wealthy woman's typical beauty regiment might begin with her waking in the morning and applying incense pellets to her underarms as a form of deodorant. Then, she might sit herself in front of a "mirror" (which was really polished bronze), and call for her servant to bring applets and grinders necessary for applying her daily makeup. Once the pallet was brought, she would watch her servant mix malachite with an oil derived from animal fat to create a eye-shadow. She would close her eyes as her servant applied the green power with sweeps of a small ivory stick carved on one end to look like the goddess Hathor. Then, when the eye-shadow was finished, the lady of the house would sit perfectly still while her servant lined her eyes with black kohl.

While these applications resulted in the beautification of the wearer, they had practical purposes as well. When applied above and beneath the eye, kohl served to protect the eyes from the intense glare of the sun. In fact, the Egyptian word for makeup palette appears to have been taken from their word to protect, which may reference kohl's usefulness outdoors, or may even refer to the belief that outlining the eyes protected the wearer from the dreaded Evil Eye.

Once the lady of the house had on her protective kohl, she might then decide to use red ochre on her lips or dab her wrists and breasts with perfume. Having completed all of this, the lady would then dress for the occasion.

Michelle Moran is author of The Heretic Queen (which is just out!), Nefertiti, and Cleopatra's Daughter (release, 2009).

Girls will be...boys?

Well, this one will certainly test the sensibilities of our gentle Wonders and Marvels readership! Remember: It's important to look history straight in the eye.

Or in this case, the private parts.

From Antiquity and well into the late eighteenth century, humoralist modes of anderstanding dominated medical practice and anatomical theory. Humoralism was associated with Galen, a second-century ACE Greek physician who lived in Rome. His work was substantially influenced by his predecessor Hippocrates.

Galen held that the body was governed by a system of fluids, of "humors": blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile. Each body had a "complexion" that was specific to the individual--and reflected a greater tendency toward one of the four humors. Men had a humoral complexion that tended toward "hot and dry." Women considered humorally "cold and wet." They were also seen as defective version of a more perfect male body.

Because a man’s body was hotter, his reproductive organs stayed more comfortably outside his body. Colder, female reproductive organs were instead tucked inside the body to maintain warmth. The vagina was therefore often represented an inverted penis and the ovaries as "female testicles" or "stones" in early medical illustrations.

For more on humoralism and the facts of life, be sure to head over to this post.

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Thomas Laqueur wrote the seminal work (I couldn't resist) on the One-Sex Model: Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud.

But academics love a good fight. And the reception of Laqueur's book started one of the best professorial boxing matches around about whether the one-sex model was as dominant as Laqueur claimed. So be sure to take a look at these:

Michael Stolberg, "A Woman Down to Her Bones: The Anatomy of Sexual Difference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries." Isis 94 (2003): 274-299.

Winfried Schleiner, "Early Modern Controversies about the One-Sex Model Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 180-191.

And Laqueur's response...

"Sex in the Flesh." Isis 94 (2003): 300-306.

Image: Andreas Vesalius, De Humani corporis fabrica, 1543 (courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London).