Free Republic

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...

Underwater excavations led by Ankara UniversityÂ’s Research Center for Maritime Archaeology (ANKÃœSAM) have uncovered sunken ships ranging from the second century B.C. to the Ottoman period in Ä°zmirÂ’s Urla district. A recent excavation uncovered a ship estimated to date back 4,000 years, which experts say would make it the oldest sunken ship to have been discovered in the Mediterranean. Urla Port is one of TurkeyÂ’s rare underwater excavation sites. Professor Hayat Erkanal, the head of Limantepe excavations for the underwater ancient city of Klozemenai and director of ANKÃœSAM, said the port dates back to the seventh century B.C. Klozemenai, he...

A set of ancient copper ingots shaped as discs have been found in a shipwreck near a Black Sea cape in Southeast Bulgaria shedding light on the maritime trade of the Ancient Thracians during the Late Bronze Age (second half of the 2nd millennium BC) as they are analogous to copper ingots found in two famous ancient shipwrecks on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, at Gelidonya and Uluburun. The disc-like Late Bronze Age copper ingots in question have been discovered inside a Late Bronze Age shipwreck near Bulgaria's Maslen Nos, i.e. "Oily Cape", alongside other artifacts. Their discovery has been...