anthoer thing is that this machine clearly wasn’t the first draft. not only do we have those mentions of “spheres”, but there aren’t that many mistakes we see in the construction of the mechanism (apart from the dovetail joint). clearly the layout of the gears was planned beforehand, or they did trial-and-error with the gears on another version of the mechanism.
that is true. the mechanism shows us that they definitely had some mechanism making culture going on. my point is that, despite how bizzare and sophisticated it sounds, this sort of thing was 100% doable for their level of tech, and that it is us who have misunderstood history. the hype surrounding it, making it sound like a supernatural creation and way more intelligent than it actually is, is bs.