It seems that this is not the original method Archimedes used to derive this result, but the best formal argument available to him in the Greek mathematical tradition. His original method likely involved a clever use of levers.[6] A palimpsest stolen from the Greek Orthodox Church in the early 20th century, which reappeared at auction in 1998, contained many of Archimedes works, including The Method of Mechanical Theorems, in which he describes a method to determine volumes which involves balances, centers of mass and infinitesimal slices.[7]