Replies

Myth multiplies
by Matt Neal
September 26, 2005
THE team of Mahogany Ship hunters that found 3600-year-old non-native wood last year told the weekend's symposium they were aware of the locations of a number of "Mahogany Ships".

Group spokesman Mark Rawson said that as well as the site near Levys Point where they found about 60 ancient olive samples, they had discovered a number of new sites where they believed shipwrecks were buried.

He said he believed one of the sites was related to claims made recently by Canberra mathematician Dr Frank Coningham that the British government ordered the burial of a Portuguese wreck in Kelly's Swamp near Levys Point.

"We think Coningham was right (and) we've located the position of where the boat was dumped," Mr Rawson said.

"There's at least more than one ship (but) they're not all ancient. They're from different times."

Mr Rawson and his team used divining rods on Saturday to search an area and said they believed they had found at least one buried ship that was about 20 metres long.

He said he did not know what origin the ships were but suggested Phoenician, Egyptian, Chinese and Portuguese.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

Extracting secrets from ancient wood
They sent samples of the wood to CSIRO for species identification. The wood was found to be from the olive family, which is not local to the area, though the species is found elsewhere in Australia as well as overseas. Encouraged, they decided to have it dated and samples were sent to Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) for radiocarbon dating. "We treated the samples to extract cellulose, then converted the carbon to graphite, for measurement in our accelerator," says ANSTO's Geraldine Jacobsen. "In isolating the cellulose, the assumption is that the carbon being tested comes solely from the tree and not from other sources... "The carbon in the cellulose turned out to be very old - more than 3000 years old, in fact," said Geraldine. "This was surprising. Usually an older date can be a result of contamination from carbonates (a source of old carbon), so we decided to treat the cellulose again, to remove possible carbonate contamination. We ended up with the same result."