Interesting story, but there’s a head-scratcher with the map they show talking about the colossal 17th century wreck. They map the article shows says the ship sailed from Jengdezhan in China to the Levantine Sea (Easter Med.), where it foundered, via...the Suez (Canal)?
The canal wasn’t built until the late 1800’s. Common knowledge!
I can see the route going to the Suez and then ships from China off-loaded so goods could travel overland to a port on the Mediterranean and then picked up again to sail to other ports on another ship—perhaps even the one they found. Otherwise, a ship would have sail all the way around Africa—which could happen but not if it would make goods prohibitively expensive.
” They map the article shows says the ship sailed from Jengdezhan in China to the Levantine Sea (Easter Med.), where it foundered, via...the Suez (Canal)?”
It’s the Daily Mail so I would expect mistakes like that.
This article https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/18/mediterranean-shipwrecks-reveal-birth-of-globalisation-in-trade mentions
“The ship, which is thought to have sunk around 1630, while sailing between Egypt and Istanbul”
I have read, many years ago, that there was either an early version of the Suez Canal or a port which allowed ships to access the Nile in Egypt.