On Wednesday, the results of a thorough investigation of an ancient piece of Greek technology (called the Antikythera Mechanism) were announced; as it turned out, the device, besides predicting solar eclipses, also systematized the calendar in intervals of four years, because of the Olympiad, which was the predecessor of modern day Olympic Games.

The newly found information, published in the journal Nature, points to a possible origin of the device: the colonies of Corinth, perhaps Syracuse, Sicily. The scientists went even further with their suppositions and talked about a very viable link between the mechanism and Archimedes.

Archimedes, who died in 212 B.C., was the inventor of a planetarium that calculated the Moon’s motion and those for the known planets of that time. 

This surprising Antikythera Mechanism was found more than one hundred years ago on the wreckage of a ship which sank near Antikythera, north of Crete. According to the results brought in by the first tests that had been performed on it, it was estimated that the device was built sometime between 140 and 100 B.C.

Now however, with the researchers’ significantly improved technology, a lot more interesting things have been determined. One of the most notable discoveries was a series of details found on the mechanism’s back side, where the names of the 12 months of an ancient calendar are mentioned.

The research team was lead by Tony Freeth, mathematician and filmmaker working within the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales.