DeepMind’s New AI Helps Decipher Ancient Inscriptions

Ancient texts offer rare, direct insight into the past but the meaning of each often remains elusive. As they are typically found in fragments and engraved on inorganic materials (like stone or metal) that evade carbon dating, they present challenges to archeologists who have struggled to decipher them, or even note when they were written. This is why DeepMind—an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google’s parent …

A 2000-Year-Old Brass Computer

In a 2000-year-old shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera, scientists discovered the oldest known example of a computer—a complex, computational device that predicted astrological events along a calendar year. This ancient hybrid clock/calculator, known as the Antikythera mechanism, featured brass gears and dials built from mathematical ratios. While discovered 115 years ago, it wasn’t until 1959 that Princeton science historian Derek J. …