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The Importance of the Antikythera Mechanism

A reflection on time and knowledge.

Ezra James
4 min readDec 2, 2021
Photo by Louisa Gouliamako | Getty Images

Picking a topic to discuss has always been a hard thing for me to do due to the number of interests I have. The closest oversimplification I can make to encompass all of them in one short phrase is history and its moods across time. The very concept of being confined to the limitations of time and space (and everything that happens in between) fascinates me to no avail. I feel as if humanity has always been haunted and influenced by the past; always looking further while constantly peeking back. There’s something powerful and poignantly important about the synthesis of both the past and present.

I guess this is why my mind generally likes to go back to the foundations of civilization and wonder about the people who built them. I’m not referring to the emperors or warriors, but the farmers and builders, the craftsmen and sculptors, the ones that truly saw the beauty of what the whole system was and is. This is the story of humanity that’s worth exploring, this is where the truth is revealed. I have a dwindling amount of respect for the ones who were in charge, although there are exceptions. Most of them are the actual ones standing on the shoulders of giants, not the other way around.

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