Q 01/05

The Antikythera mechanism is generally described as the oldest known example of what?

A) A mechanical clock

B) An analogue computer

C) A magnetic compass

D) A sextant

Answer · why

B) An analogue computer

An analogue computer. Its gear trains are more complex than any other device known for at least a thousand years afterwards, yet nobody noticed them u...

Q 02/05

Why had the divers who found the Antikythera wreck stopped at the island?

A) Water

B) Weather

C) Repairs

D) Trade

Answer · why

B) Weather

Weather. They had put in to wait for it to turn, and a diver who went down off the island came upon the cargo of a ship sunk some 2,000 years earlier,...

Q 03/05

The divers who found the Antikythera wreck in 1900 came from which Greek island?

A) Symi

B) Kos

C) Naxos

D) Paros

Answer · why

A) Symi

Symi. Its divers, who lived by gathering sponges, went on to salvage the wreck themselves in 1900 and 1901, under the supervision of archaeologists se...

Q 04/05

Salvage of the Antikythera wreck stopped in 1901 after what killed one diver and paralysed two?

A) Oxygen poisoning

B) The bends

C) Carbon monoxide

D) Lead poisoning

Answer · why

B) The bends

The bends. The divers were working more than 40 metres down, and after the casualties the wreck was left untouched for half a century.

Q 05/05

What did the divers bring up in 1900 as proof that they had found the Antikythera wreck?

A) A marble horse's head

B) A bronze statue's arm

C) A bag of silver coins

D) A bronze gearwheel

Answer · why

B) A bronze statue's arm

A bronze statue's arm. In one telling the first diver surfaced babbling about corpses and horses on the seabed, and his captain, suspecting nitrogen h...