Ballard Chases History Again In The Black Sea

The Day ^ | 8-14-2007 | Katie Warchut

[blam]

Ballard Chases History Again In The Black Sea

Excavation of shipwreck part of 3-leg research trip

By Katie Warchut
Published on 8/14/2007

It's a painfully slow process, watching a robotic arm brush, inch-by-inch, the sediment off a 900-year-old shipwreck 400 feet underwater in the Black Sea.

But when the dust settles, Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium, and his team hope to have a better look into a time capsule of early human history.

About 6 miles off the coast of Ukraine, Ballard watched from a NATO research vessel Monday on a high-definition plasma television screen. The paintbrush uncovered what looked like a pewter cup at the bow of the ship.

“What the heck is that, Mr. Expert?” Ballard asked a colleague while speaking with The Day by phone. “We're all scratching our heads.”

The ship, called Chersonesos A, is one of several already found in the Black Sea, but marks Ballard's first deep-sea excavation effort there. Its name refers to the ancient Greek colony off the coast of Crimea.

Once the Jell-O-like sediment is removed, the team of 47 scientists and engineers can start recovering objects from the ship. As a cargo ship, those objects could be containers that held wine, olive oil, or fish, Ballard said.

“It's like stopping a random trailer truck and opening up the back,” he said.

The items will be given to the Ukraine for conservation. The team could also find remains of the ship's crew members, Ballard said.

Two factors make the Black Sea a treasure trove for the underwater explorers. One, it is largely unexplored because access was cut off during the Cold War. Two, its ships and other organic artifacts are well-preserved.

Thousands of years ago, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake that was later filled in by the Mediterranean Sea. The dense salt water sank to the bottom and created an oxygen-free layer. In that part of the water, there are no shipworms to destroy the wood, Ballard explained.

The excavation is part of a three-leg trip led by the institute at the Mystic Aquarium and the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. The first leg returned to the Sea of Crete in the southern Aegean Sea, where researchers found evidence of landslides that could have been triggered by volcanic events, earthquakes or tsunamis.

The second part is the excavation of the Byzantine Era ship and mapping of the seafloor around it. The third leg will compare the Chersonesos to another ship in the southern part of the Black Sea, called Sinop D, the fourth ship found off the coast of a province of Turkey.

Though they expected the Chersonesos to be more poorly preserved than the Sinop because of its depth, Ballard said researchers are learning there may be internal waves or disturbances that move the zone of oxygen-free water.

“It tells us the Black Sea is even more promising than we thought,” Ballard said.

Ballard hopes the ships will lead to the discovery of even older ones.

“We're finding the I-95 highway of the ancient world,” he said.

It's an area that dates back to the early origins of human beings. Some people believe it's the location of the Biblical flood; others the story of Jason and the Argo, he said.

“We just find out what the truth is,” Ballard said. “Humans have been coming here for a long, long time.”

The expedition, which ends Aug. 27, will update the Black Sea exhibit at the aquarium with new features.

Immersion Presents, a science-education program founded by Ballard, will produce a series of 15-minute updates daily at noon on the Web from Aug. 18 to 26. They will feature an introduction by Ballard, live updates from Bridget Buxton, assistant professor of history at URI and the expedition's archaeology director, and Katherine Croff, a doctoral student at URI and chief scientist on the cruise, and an e-mail question-and-answer session.

To see a live feed from the expedition, visit www.immersionpresents.org.

[blam]

I wish he'd stop messing around with these 'modern' ship wrecks and work on some that sank when the Black Sea was still fresh water, 7,600+ years ago.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Pistolshot]

They might get a surprise. Who knows?

[rabscuttle385]

What about buildings and settlements at the bottom of the Black Sea?

[Red Badger]

Like Noah’s?...................

[johnny7]

I wish he'd stop messing around with these 'modern' ship wrecks and work on some that sank when the Black Sea was still fresh water, 7,600+ years ago.

Ditto... the 'dead-water' would mean that these oldest ships, ruins, artifacts... whatever... would be perfectly preserved.

[Redbob]

"...hope to have a better look into a time capsule of early human history."

A mere 900 years ago is hardly "early human history."

[blam]

It’s more like ‘current events’ to me.

[colorado tanker]

LOL! I’m with you, blam. I’d like to see them test the flood theory and look for artifacts around the ancient shoreline.

[SunkenCiv]

Ballard was sent to look for traces of Ryan and Pitman's Black Sea flood, and found this ship instead.

Ancient Wooden Ship Emerges Intact From Geographic's Black Sea Expedition
by Mary Jeanne Jacobsen and Barbara Moffet
Ballard's website

The discovery in September of the well-preserved ship confirms scientists' belief that the oxygen-deprived waters of the Black Sea below 656 feet (200 meters) provide an ideal environment for preserving ancient wooden vessels, making that sea a treasure-house for archaeologists. Shipwrecks in most other bodies of water usually are robbed of their wooden parts quickly by wood-boring organisms.

• 1,500-Year-Old Wooden Ship Is Found Off Coast of Turkey by John Noble Wilford
• Ancient Ship Found Off Turkey by Randolph E. Schmid
• Search for Ancient Habitations and Shipwrecks in the Black Sea

The late Willard Bascom was a mentor / idol of Robert Ballard. I saw this book at the library one day a few years ago, and as I read the prologue I realized who this guy was -- the prologue was quoted in a story about Ballard's finding of a Byzantine vessel in the anoxic (?) depths of the Black Sea. "It sits upright on the bottom, lightly covered by the sea dust of 2,500 years," he wrote. "The wave-smashed deckhouse and splintered bulwarks tell of the violence of its last struggle with the sea. A stub of a mast still remains."

Deep Water, Ancient Ships: The Treasure Vault of the Mediterranean by Willard Bascom

[SunkenCiv]

This is not that great a piece, but may be of interest to those who know less about Robert Ballard.

Robert Ballard
by Christopher Kemp

Since the 1970s, undersea explorer Robert Ballard has participated in more than 110 expeditions, searching for everything from sunken ships and buried treasures to the Loch Ness monster. He's found the wrecks of the RMS Titanic, the German battleship Bismarck and the American aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and explored sunken luxury liners including the Lusitania, the Andrea Doria and the Brittanic. And Ballard has been poking around for decades, racking up one successful expedition after another, in almost every ocean on Earth. A few he's crossed off his list are the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Black Sea, Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Sea of Cortez, Lake Ontario, Loch Ness, Amazon River and Kuban River (in Russia). After almost 40 years of exploration, he's running out of bodies of water to explore.

To the writer Kemp "almost every ocean on Earth" includes the Black Sea. : )

[SunkenCiv]

some earlier Ballard work:

Ancient Shipwrecks Discovered Off Coast of Israel
by The Associated Press

The pair of Phoenician cargo ships were found using an underwater robot and deep-water tracking equipment. The ships are almost perfectly preserved -- a result of the cold deep-sea waters and the relative absence of sediment at such depths. The contents of the ships indicate that they set sail from the Phoenician port of Tyre -- now a city in Lebanon -- about 750 B.C. Both vessels were transporting hundreds of amphorae, large ceramic containers filled with wine. Although the amphorae were found intact, the wine had seeped out and sand had filled them. The ships were headed either for Carthage -- in modern-day Tunisia -- or Egypt. The vessels are positioned upright about 1,500 feet deep on the ocean floor, about 30 miles off the shores of Israel. The route was not previously known as one used by Phoenician sailors.

Similar article.

Search for Phoenician Shipwrecks
from Biblical Archaeology Review

Two Phoenician shipwrecks were discovered this summer in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, about 30 miles from the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. The two ships are the world's oldest known deep-sea wrecks. The longer craft, measuring about 60 feet, is the largest pre-classical vessel ever found. The ships, which were found sitting upright in about 1,500 feet of water, are believed to have capsized in a storm in about 750 B.C., after setting sail from the Phoenician port of Tyre. Their cargo of wine, housed in hundreds of large ceramic jugs called amphorae, was likely bound for Egypt or the Phoenician colony of Carthage. The artifacts that the team recovered -- 12 amphorae, crockery for food preparation, an incense stand for offerings to the weather gods and a wine decanter -- have allowed Stager to estimate not only the ships' point of origin, age and likely destination, but also the size of the crews (a half dozen sailors each) and their likely diet (fish stew).

Before the PLO destabilized Lebanon in the 1970s, National Geographic did a cover story on the Phoenicians and visited the site of ancient Tyre. There were still traditional fishermen then, and as they pulled their nets, they chanted "ell -- lee -- sah". The author was told, "If you ask them why they do it, they do not know." His source then attributed it to an ancient tradition, going back to the time when Elissa, princess of Tyre, left to found Carthage. I love that story, and don't care if it's true. How it could be disproved is beyond me. : )

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

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)

[ken21]

maybe they were greeks looking for

chinese takeout.

[SunkenCiv]

Rice to sea you. ;’)

[blam]

"Ballard was sent to look for traces of Ryan and Pitman's Black Sea flood, and found this ship instead. "

Yup. I saw the video. The ship is sitting there perfectly up-right with the tall mast still standing. It didn't look very old.

[Fred Nerks]

...both sides of the entrance to the narrow, 20-mile long Bosporus Strait connecting the Mediterranean and Sea of Marmara (south) to the Black Sea (north)...

how nicely both sides would fit together if...;)

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·