History

Recovered from a shipwreck off Antikythera, this corroded Greek mechanism joined calendars and astronomical cycles in a hand-operated system of bronze gears.

Yale’s Beinecke Library holds an illustrated manuscript written in an unidentified script. Its author and meaning remain debated.

During the First World War, ships crossed the sea in bold geometric paint schemes designed to disrupt an attacker’s judgment of their course, speed, and shape.

On Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, shafts of seasonal sunlight moved across carved spirals behind three upright slabs. The alignment is believed to have marked solstices and equinoxes.