500-Year-Old Shipwreck Found By Diamond Firm

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 5-1-2008

[blam]

500-year-old shipwreck found by diamond firm

Last Updated: 1:47AM BST 01/05/2008

A shipwreck, believed to be 500 years old, containing a treasure trove of coins and ivory has been discovered off the southern African coast.

The site yielded a wealth of objects including thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins

A Namibian diamond company, Namdeb, said on Wednesday that it found the wreck during mining operations in the Atlantic.

"The site yielded a wealth of objects including six bronze cannon, several tons of copper, more than 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins, minted in the late 1400s and early 1500s," said Hilifa Mbako, a company spokesman.

Dieter Noli, an archaeologist, identified the cannon as Spanish, dating from about 1500.

Company sources said that human remains and ornaments linked to royalty suggested it could be the caravel of Bartolomeu Dias, the Portuguese explorer, which went down off the Cape of Good Hope in 1500.

Dias, a nobleman from the Portuguese royal family, was the first European to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, in 1488, opening the lucrative trading route with the Far East.

[Sawdring]

Apparently they used the copper to make cannons with?

[RDTF]

now that’s cool

[RDTF]

now that’s cool

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

And, thanks Red Badger.

http://www.physorg.com/news128877074.html

[Sawdring]

I was thinking....... Can they test the chemical composition of the copper ingots to determine where they were mined at? That might be interesting, unless the smelting removed the impurities that would determine where it was found. I have backpacked on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and there was found a large chunk of copper in the ground that prehistoric Native Americans had "mined" by chipping parts of it off over the centuries.

[blam]

"I was thinking....... Can they test the chemical composition of the copper ingots to determine where they were mined at?"

I believe this is possible. I would love for it to be from the Great Lakes region, lol.