3,600-yr-old Shipwreck Uncovered Could be Oldest Ever Found in the Mediterranean [Antalya, Turkey]

The Vintage News ^ | April 20, 2019 | Helen Flatley

[SunkenCiv]

A team of marine archaeologists has uncovered a 3,600-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. The ship, believed to have been a merchant vessel sailing from Cyprus, may be the oldest ever discovered, according to Haaretz...

Based on its position and the large cargo of copper ingots found inside and around the wreck, it is likely to have been a trading ship, ferrying goods from Cyprus to the Aegean region.

Although the ship is in very poor condition, and the hull has been almost completely destroyed, the bulk of the ship, together with its precious cargo, has survived, making this a remarkable and extremely rare find...

...the team discovered 73 copper ingots inside the wreck. Weighing around 1.5 tons, this immense supply of copper was shaped into "pillow-like" ingots, characteristic of the late Bronze Age. The shape of the ingots allowed Öniz to date the wreckage to before 1400 BC, as from this point onwards, copper was transported as "ox-hide" ingots with a peculiar and distinctive shape...

Copper was an extremely important and valuable commodity in the Late Bronze Age, and Öniz speculates that the ship could have been travelling to one of a number of destinations in the eastern Mediterranean, including Mycenae, Troy, or other important settlements where copper was in high demand for use in weapons manufacture...

Other shipwrecks discovered off the coast of Turkey dating to the Late Bronze Age have also been found carrying large amounts of copper, and isotope analysis has shown that it was usually mined on the island of Cyprus...

The analysis showed that more cargo and part of the ship are buried beneath the seabed, which lies around 50 meters (165 feet) below sea level.

[mad_as_he$$]

Oh I forgot one other thing. Lake Lahontan the author is talking about disappeared about 9,000 years ago. So the timeline doesn’t fit.

[SunkenCiv]

• Caphtor
• "The Scandal of Enkomi"
• Ugarit
• Tarshish

[Robert DeLong]

Appears to be in rather shallow water too, form the short video I saw.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

It's surprising no one had noticed it prior to this -- there are various modern wrecks, including at least one aircraft, that divers regularly visit. LOTS of bad weather and turbulent seas right around there -- although, contrary to the common nuttery that gets regurg'ed, including by the discoverer of this ancient wreck, the ancient mariners didn't hug the ****in' coast. The explanation for why they didn't lies some fathoms down. There are bound to be ancient wrecks, in better condition than this one, on the largely unexplored abyssal plains of the oceans and seas, but most wrecks appear near coasts, where the jagged rocks are at or near the surface, and at night, before electric spotlights, and with no lighthouses to go by, probably most ships which sank went down near coasts.

[blam]

"Ancient American has unwittingly published hoaxes before."

I do trust anything from Ancient American Magazine.

Look at this hoax: Burrows Cave

Ancient American Magazine writer Frank Joseph is really Nazi, Frank Colin

[SunkenCiv]

Gavin Menzies has a book out about supposed Minoan copper mining and shipping out of Lake Superior, others had pioneered the topic of transoceanic bronze age copper trade somewhat in excess of 50 years ago (I first encountered it over 40 years ago, and it had been around for a while).

Menzies' view is that the Chicago River was still flowing west and into the Mississippi because isostatic rebound hadn't yet created the elevation that separates the Chicago River (which flows into Lake Michigan, unless the whole town flushes at the same time) from the Illinois River (tributary of the Mighty Mississip) making navigation at least theoretically possible from the Gulf of Mexico all the way into the Great Lakes.

I don't think he's correct about the era in which A) the isostatic rebound hadn't yet resulted in the geography seen today, or B) the era in which the Minoans were operating, in any case.

There's a marked difference in elevation (21 feet) between the surface of Lakes Superior and Huron -- but that's today of course, and the modern Soo Locks (at Sault Ste Marie, pron. "Sue Saint Marie") transfer traffic to the tune of 86 million tons a year. Portaging or even just transporting cargo obviously went on, because *someone* (either PreColumbian tribes, or someone else) obviously did mine copper in the Upper Peniinsula and on Isle Royale, and the copper has shown up elsewhere in archaeological contexts in North America, and I believe also in Central America. Commerce has been one of those universal human activities for a long, long time.

The more likely route -- the St Lawrence River, which would be found by Atlantic-transiting navigators -- is, uh, interrupted by Niagara Falls. Again, portaging is an option, but obviously heading upriver into the interior of Ontario still works today, and the divide between the watersheds isn't particularly broad. The Varangians managed a riverine trade route requiring a couple of portages, but nevertheless running between the Baltic and Black Seas.

BTW, I think I got the link to the Haaretz article about this shipwreck off the Gavin Menzies group on Facebook. I'm not a giant fan or fanboy of Menzies -- I like his data set which is always huge (occasionally some of the data is a bit sketchy, IMHO), but his conclusions remind me of that old saying, that when your own tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

[SunkenCiv]

Ship sinking in Antalya Bay - Part 1 | mesut azmi göksoy

Ship sinking in Antalya Bay - Part 2 | mesut azmi göksoy

Ship sinking in Antalya Bay - Part 3 | mesut azmi göksoy

Ship sinking in Antalya Bay - Part 4 | mesut azmi göksoy

[SunkenCiv]

R Jewell h264 (Minoans in America and the Copper Trade) | Amber Fisher | Uploaded on May 2, 2011

Minoans in America and the Copper Trade

Google

[SunkenCiv]

What blam said!

[SunkenCiv]

---

Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America {Paperback} by Roger L Jewell, editor Mary E Jewell Kindle version

---

[Grimmy]

The “First Peoples” mafia gonna hunt you down, Sunken.

[trisham]

Amazing.

[SunkenCiv]

Cape Gelidonya and Uluburun | by James P. Delgado | Archaeology Magazine

The two oldest wrecks ever excavated, these two Bronze Age ships and their cargoes, were discovered off the coast of Turkey. Excavated in 1960 (the site was resurveyed and small additional finds uncovered in 2010), Cape Gelidonya was the first ancient shipwreck to be dug in its entirety from the seabed by archaeologists. Dating to around 1200 B.C., the vessel was most likely the possession of an itinerant metalsmith of Cypriot or Syrian origin, and the wreckage has yielded more than a ton of ingots, scrap bronze tools, weapons, and other objects, as well as metal-working tools. The artifacts convinced original excavator George Bass -- known as the father of underwater archaeology -- that ancient Mediterranean maritime trade had not been dominated by Mycenaean Greeks. Finds of Greek artifacts at a number of land sites had fostered that view, but Bass believed instead that Near Eastern seafarers, or "proto-Phoenicians," were more likely to have controlled those ancient trades and seas. This hypothesis was borne out by the discovery and 1984–94 excavation of the Uluburun wreck, which dates to around 1330 B.C. Either Canaanite or Cypriot, the Uluburun ship carried a diverse cargo of raw and manufactured luxury items and commodities from at least 11 far-spread ancient cultures, ranging from the Baltic to Equatorial Africa, the Mediterranean world, and the Near East. The meticulous recovery also produced fragments from this oldest wreck’s hull. Ongoing analysis by excavator Cemal Pulak now proves Bass’ hypothesis and demonstrates a complex, sophisticated maritime trade network dominated by the proto-Phoenicians more than three millennia ago. Thanks to these two ships, we now know that the ancients were savvy seafarers who built what was for them a "global economy." The Cape Gelidonya excavation led to the founding of both the world-class Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Turkey and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, the world’s leading scientific organization dedicated to the excavation and study of significant shipwrecks.

[M Kehoe]

Bttt.

5.56mm

[SunkenCiv]

• Cape Gelidonya Late Bronze Age Shipwreck Excavation | Institute of Nautical Archaeology

[PIF]

It would be interesting to find out is anyone has run a metallurgical analysis of the origin of copper artifacts found in various European and Egyptian digs

[SunkenCiv]

A gold scarab of Nefertiti (conventional date c. 1370 to c. 1330 BC) was found on Uluburun II, which was also saddled on right away, but it showed a lot of wear from handling, probably centuries' worth.

BTW, there is some wear on the artifact, but there's no way to say "centuries of wear" -- most people are familiar with the appearance of coins (gold or not) that have been in circulation for decades and show signs of wear. I should have made clear that the wear on the artifact was estimated -- but if you've seen a photo, judge for yourself how much wear can be estimated. Since the conventional pseudochronology *requires* that very little wear appear on the coin, due to the age the CP requires this ship to be, having a very worn artifact of Nefertiti in the cargo is, at best, problematical. If anything, the Uluburun II wreck has been a nightmare for those who cling to the CP like a dingleberry to an ass hair.

©2012 Pearson Inc. Egyptian. Mutual Influence through Trade: Scarab of Queen Nefertiti,wreck of the Uluburun. ca...

I don't think I'd seen this one before. Same page has a photo of the museum display of the above Nefertiti scarab, along with other artifact displays presumably from the museum. Amulet of Astarte:

Gold pendant from the Uluburun shipwreck (nisudapi)

[morphing libertarian]

xlnt

[morphing libertarian]

this thread is another keeper thanx