recently discovered in an ancient shipwreck http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/06/09/world/europe/ap-eu-greece-ancient-computer.html?_r=0
The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered over 100 years ago, yes that's recent when you consider how old it is but I doubt I'd use the term "recent" so casually. The article says that only in the last 10 years has the investigation into it really ramped up.
I'm pretty sure the Abacus long predates this Antikythera Mechanism. Interesting how they keep trying to attribute everything to the Greeks and Romans when earlier scholarly works consistently show the origins of most of these things in Africa.
Right on both counts. "6000 - 4000 BCE: the Isonghee of Zaire ( Republic of Congo ) introduce mathematical abacus" Now that's at least 1,300 years before the Sumerian abacus. Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Chinese versions followed, in that order. There is also an Aztec variant, in the New World - the nepohualtzintzin. Some very old examples, from Olmec times (1500-400 BCE) have also been noted. Info from here: African History at McMaster And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus J.