This object, now in a musuem in Harare, Zumabwe, dates from 1300. Purely indigenous drum? Replica of the Ark of the Covenant? The ways we attach meaning to ancient objects tells us far more about the present than about the past.
The Antikythera Mechanism from Ancient Greece had over 30 gears, and could predict when eclipses would happen, track the irregular orbit of the stars, and…