New Antikythera Shipwreck Excavation Reveals What Divers Missed for 124 Years

For more than a century, archaeologists believed the Antikythera shipwreck had already surrendered its greatest secret: the bronze astronomical machine often described as the first computer of the ancient world. But that understanding is now beginning to collapse. Researchers have discovered a second debris field, separated from the main wreck, in a place no one had excavated for 124 years. From that site, they brought up corroded bronze pieces that do not match statues, coins, amphorae, or any familiar category of ancient artifact. Experts have only said that these objects require further analysis. And if a second machine is hidden beneath that crust of marine corrosion, the history of ancient technology may have to be written again from the beginning.