Finding What “Shouldn’t Be There”

With Woke Hollywood being what it is (and has been for several years now), gone are the days of me blindly stumbling into a movie theatre and being blown away with a movie like the first Indiana Jones movie, the Raiders of the Lost Ark, from way back in 1981.

From the opening scene when “Indy’s” whip cracked the pistol from his turncoat guide’s hand to the huge rolling ball of rock he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth moments later, I was riveted to my seat with my eyes wide and mouth agape for the full 115-minute run time.

So much so that when the movie was over, my friend Donald and I looked at one another then slowly slid down below the backs of our seats until we were out of sight of the theatre attendants. Then we slid our way back up when the second screening started so we could watch it again. (As a Christian now, I don’t recommend this—it’s just what we did.)

Of course, the latest (and likely the last ever) Indiana Jones movie (titled The Dial of Destiny) hasn’t even inspired me to watch the trailer, let alone slide my thumb onto the play button with some popcorn in tow. From what I’ve seen in any commentary on or advertising for it, it seems like the typical dumpster fire I’d expect from any Disney product these days.

There was, however, one particular thing that got my attention upon seeing a synopsis for it, and that was that the MacGuffin (because every “Indy” movie has some sort of supernatural object he’s running around looking for) in this episode was called Archimedes Dial, a fictionalized version of an actual mind-blowing computational device known as the Antikythera mechanism.

The Antikythera Mechanism

If you’re unfamiliar with it, the Antikythera mechanism is a device found by sponge divers off the coast of the Greek island with the same name in 1901, in an ancient Roman shipwreck filled with valuable cargo.

Like a fantastic adventure story where the heroes finally discover the treasure chamber, ornate furniture, jewelry, bronze and marble statues, weapons, gold, and jewelry were all found mixed together, including this mysterious mechanism.

And what might you ask is the big deal about this find? Well, there are several things.

The major point is the sheer level of sophistication this device obviously possessed when fully operational. One cannot miss the superlatives used by researchers when commenting on the apparent genius of its creators based on the description of what it could apparently do.

One article describes the device in glowing terms with comments like,

“This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop.”1

The reason for the flattery around mechanics and astronomy is that the Antikythera device has a differential gear (as do modern cars) and could track the sun, moon, and eclipses. It also may be able to follow planetary movement, has been described as a “pocket universe,” and is referenced as an analog computer.

A Smithsonian article describing it contains a quote from Jo Marchant, author of the 2008 book Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer, saying the following:

[the device] “is probably the most exciting artifact that we have from the ancient world.”2

And this is because more than a millennium before thirteenth-century Europeans invented the first mechanical clocks, the Antikythera mechanism employed similarly complex technology and intricacy of eighteenth-century clocks,3 including gear wheels, dials, and pointers, to chart the cosmos.

Discoverers believe it was used for all manner of things, from predicting eclipses to tracking sporting events like the Olympics that were scheduled to take place. And the following quote, raises an interesting point regarding this mechanical marvel.

The greater question puzzling scientists is how such a useful device could have disappeared entirely from the archeological record, so much so that no record of anything as complex appears for another 1,000 years.4

A question which London Science Museum’s curator Michael Wright concluded,

I find it as easy to believe that this technology survived unrecorded, as to believe that it was reinvented in so similar a form.5

Simple to Complex?

What comments like this reveal is that this discovery goes against the common wisdom of the day—which is, of course, the evolutionary worldview taught in most school systems. Generally speaking, it promotes the idea that mankind has grown more intelligent as we “evolved” over time.6

For example, I constantly see people making comments against the history described in Genesis 6 regarding Noah’s ark and the flood. They categorized it as an “obvious myth” because they think there’s no way some primitive man like Noah could have built an “ocean liner” and looked after all those animals.7

However, these quotes we read earlier undermine their objections. “Some of the technology we are taught originated in the 1700s may have been around thousands of years earlier, but just not recorded. So the intelligence to build such devices has been around a long time.”8

Discoveries of items like the Antikythera mechanism are, in fact, great support of the biblical view that “holds that man was created as very intelligent and has degenerated rather tahn evolved since that time due to the effects of sin and the Curse because of man’s rebellion against God.”9

But We’re So Smart Now

So, while “many people [who stare zombielike at their smart phones] cannot conceive of technologically advanced people existed thousands of years before us,”10 the Antikythera mechanism proves them wrong.

As much as we like to think of ourselves as advanced, modern, and highly intelligent, any random group of people that was somehow isolated (picture a small shipwreck on a desert island) would quickly revert to what would be described as a “primitive” state within a very short time.

Once everyone’s batteries ran out, everyone would be back to basics pretty quickly. Find a cave for shelter, pick up a stick to defend yourself, and go find some food.

Now, “technology has advanced quickly during the last 100 years primarily due to the recording and sharing of ideas.”11 Unlike in the past when whole libraries of information were sometimes destroyed by conquering kingdoms, one can quickly research past discoveries and build upon the achievements of others.

However, because of the incredible number of technological advances that have taken place during this timeframe (the development of electricity, automobiles, nuclear power, and computers etc.), many of us get trapped into thinking we are somehow “smarter” today than our forefathers.

Continued Bias

For example, one can continue to see this bias even in the writings of the very same researchers who profess to be “blown away” by the incredible sophistication of the Antikythera mechanism (because they had no idea the Greeks had this level of technology). And yet, they still question the ability of its creators in the next breath, all because of what they think they “know” what the Greeks supposedly lacked.

Commenting on whether the device would be able to perform certain functions based on the micromechanics that would have been needed to be incorporated within the device, one of the researchers (UCL mechanical engineer Adam Wojcik) said,

“The concentric tubes at the core of the planetarium are where my faith in Greek tech falters, and where the model might also falter.” . . . A modern manufacturer would use lathes to carve the metal in precise, small shapes, but ancient Greek designers did not have that luxury.12

Of course, prior to the Antikythera mechanism being discovered, if asked whether he thought the ancient Greeks were capable of pulling of the feats of technology that he acknowledges it clearly demonstrates, he likely would have responded “no” to that as well. Why? Because we hadn’t found it yet.

However, what they did know prior to it being discovered is that writers such as Cicero (who lived around the first century BC) wrote descriptions of devices that sound quite similar to the Antikythera.

However, because they lacked hands-on evidence or any real technological detail about how the machines would have worked, historians never took the descriptions seriously and ignored these eyewitness accounts. As one of the Smithsonian articles says,

One of the things it tells us is we don’t know the half of it in terms of what people were capable of in the ancient world, because so little survives. We’ve just got this one device. If this mechanism hadn’t survived on a shipwreck, and we hadn’t been lucky enough to find it, there would have been this whole branch of technology, the heights of what the ancient Greeks were able to do, that we would have had absolutely no idea about. And it just makes you wonder what else we have no idea about. Relying solely on archaeology means there’s always going to be a huge underestimate of what these ancient people were capable of.13

The Ultimate Eyewitness Account

Of course, God’s Word is the ultimate eyewitness account, and it records that, around 6,000 years ago, “Adam was created perfect, capable of speech (naming the animals in a very short period of time for example).”14

And “Genesis 4:21–22 records metal-working, and musical instruments, within a short time after the creation date. Such tasks require a high level of intelligence and ingenuity, as does Noah’s making of the Ark.”15

When you think about what mankind has accomplished just over the last 300 years, it is not hard to imagine that “mankind could have accomplished a great deal [technologically] in the first [approximately] 1,656 years before the Flood of Noah’s day.”16

“Of course, without an organized [governmental] structure where ideas can be recorded and shared, [history shows that] technology cannot get very far. The absence of government and a police force that would punish lawbreakers would be a major limiting factor to advancement of technological before the Flood.”17

After all, God specifically said he was going to destroy that world. Because mankind had become so evil and wicked, he decided to wipe it out and start all over again (Genesis 6).

So, “while there may not have been laptops computers on the Ark, this new find, for those without the veil of evolutionary thinking and ‘millions of years’ clouding their thoughts, highlights that the ancients were in no way more ‘primitive’ or less intelligent than we are today.”18

Mounds of Evidence

Indeed, there are many other examples of technological brilliance from what would be considered “ancient” cultures today besides the Antikythera mechanism. These include the use of optical lenses,19 utilizing electric batteries,20 steel making,21 and some architectural feats unmatched by modern builders22 among many, many others.

Colossal and sophisticated edifices like Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the monuments at Göbekli Tepe, the architectural genius of the structures in Chichén Itzá in Mexico, and the ruins found in Cusco in Pero were all built without modern machinery, and modern researchers stand in awe at the intricacy of these structures.

While the evolutionary worldview presents ancient people as unintelligent brutes, the Bible explains that man was created by God and was highly intelligent from the start. However, looking around our planet, we find mounds of evidence that ancient man was as fully capable and at least as highly intelligent (if not more) as we are.

The Bible Reveals the Real History of Mankind

Apparently, Archimedes Dial in the latest Indiana Jones movie was supposed to enable time travel for the once great hero, a favorite theme in many fictional tales.

However, as authoritative as some sources may sound as they make claims about human history, our understanding of the past is limited and fallible as it depends on interpretation based on what you believe about our origins. And everything we experience makes far more sense when you interpret them through a biblical worldview.

Evolutionary interpretations can’t compare to the eyewitness accounts given to us by God. And once again, artifacts like the Antikythera mechanism demonstrate that the facts observed in the world around us match what we read in God’s Word.