Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers (Reading) — practice #rmcma-004

The Antikythera mechanism is among the most astonishing objects to survive from the ancient world. Recovered in 1901 from a Roman-era shipwreck off a Greek island, the corroded bronze device dates to roughly the second century BCE. Inside its remains, researchers using X-ray imaging have found dozens of finely cut gears, arranged to model the movements of the Sun, Moon and known planets. By turning a handle, an ancient user could predict the positions of celestial bodies and even forecast eclipses. Nothing of comparable mechanical complexity is known again for well over a thousand years. Historians debate who built it and how the knowledge was lost, but the mechanism overturns the old assumption that such sophisticated gearing was beyond the reach of the ancient Greeks.