[Windflier]

The Antikythera mechanism appears to predict with certainty the date for holding future Olympics in Classical Greece.

Why would the ancient Greeks need a complicated computing device to tell them when they were due to hold the Olympic games again?

Surely, the calendars of the day were sufficient for that purpose.

[muawiyah]

The Greeks were highly religious and very progressive. They hadn't invented printing yet, so the calendars of the day were very prone to error.

This device solved the problem of inadequate calendars and scribal error in transcribing them.

No doubt if the Greeks had been able to pursue their technological development they'd made the leap from writing on primitive wax boards and sheep skin to the modern CRT/keyboard system without ever having discovered moveable type.

Remember, paper and printing is NOT OBVIOUS.