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...for over two millennia, the great civilizations of the Mediterranean... possessed copper in abundance. They had gold, timber, and grain... What they did not have was tin... in the early centuries, tin came from... Central and South Asia, from the Zeravshan Valley in what is now Tajikistan and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan... By the Late Bronze Age, the kingdoms had turned to the sea... In 1982, a sponge diver off the coast of Grand Cape in Turke... found what came to be known as the Uluburun shipwreck... mostly, it carried metal. There were ten tons of copper, in the...

New Study Of The 3,000-year-old Uluburun Shipwreck Has Revealed A Complex Ancient Trading Network During The Late Bronze Age.The Uluburun shipwreck was discovered by a local sponge diver in 1982, close to the east shore of Uluburun (Grand Cape), Turkey.The distribution of the wreckage and scattered cargo, indicates that the ship was between 15 and 16 metres in length. It was constructed by the shell-first method, with mortise-and-tenon joints similar to those of the Graeco-Roman ships of later centuries.The study by researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis have compared tin from the wreck site with samples of tin...

Yahalom-Mack adds that her team was surprised to trace the ingots to Sardinia, which is “beyond the western Mediterranean, beyond the [Cypriots’] regular route of trade, which is Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and the Aegean.” Though Cyprus was once considered a passive player in the Bronze Age metal trade, simply producing copper for other countries, more recent research has painted a portrait of a “small but agile nation with both formal and informal trade ties that may well have helped fill the power vacuum that occurred with the collapse of entranced empires around 1200 B.C.E.,” per the Times of Israel.Divers...

The discovery of one of the world's oldest shipwrecks shows that European trade was thriving even in the Bronze Age, according to experts. The vessel, carrying copper and tin ingots used to make weapons and jewellery, sank off the coast near Salcombe in Devon and is thought to date from 900BC. But it was only last year that the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, a team of amateur archaeologists, brought its cargo to the surface. The discovery was not announced until this month's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon. It is thought that the goods - 259 copper ingots and...

Remains of a long dead house mouse have been found in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship. That makes it the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of how house mice spread around the world. Archaeologist Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from a ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey. The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold - including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti - indicates it was a royal vessel. Because the cargo...

The approach that was adopted for Anatolia, however, was to rely largely on what is called a "D-score". The D-score does not exist in statistics. It has been used solely with tree rings. D-scores do not have a mathematical derivation -- unlike t-scores, g-scores, and times series. In fact, D-scores were more or less just made up (in an unpublished 1987 thesis), and using them to evaluate a tree-ring match turns out to be little better than rolling dice... The most important of those dates was perhaps for wood from a shipwreck, which was claimed to resolve some of the...

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...

The Shipping of Michigan Copper across the Atlantic in the Bronze Age (Isle Royale and Keweenaw Peninsula, c. 2400BC-1200 BC) Summary Recent scientific literature has come to the conclusion that the major source of the copper that swept through the European Bronze Age after 2500 BC is unknown. However, these studies claim that the 10 tons of copper oxhide ingots recovered from the late Bronze Age (1300 BC) Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey was “extraordinarily pure” (more than 99.5% pure), and that it was not the product of smelting from ore. The oxhides are all brittle “blister copper”,...

Underwater excavations off the western province of Mugla's Marmaris district have unearthed a shipwreck in the Hisaronu Gulf dating back up to 4,000 years, one of the oldest shipwrecks ever found in Turkish waters... unique Bronze Age wreck 40 meters deep in the Hisaronu Gulf, crowning this season's work... "We have been carrying out the only underwater archaeological research project in the area nonstop since 2007. We have so far discovered more than 100 wrecks and their potential fields. Also, more than 20 underwater harbors and more than 400 anchors from between the Bronze Age and the Ottoman era have...

In 1983 a sponge diver found funny metal biscuits with ears at the ocean floor. That is how the excavation got started, Hirschfeld said. The ship carried ten tons of copper ingots, which after being analyzed, were determined to be from Cyprus. Each ingot weighs approximately 60 pounds, she said. She and her team also excavated glass ingots, tons of tin, and three Italian swords that were not part of the cargo of the ship. Among the 130 Canaanite jars they found, there were traces of wine in the jars and one was full of glass beads. The team also...

World's oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey - 14/Oct/2026 | 3:47 Mark 1333 | 62.8K subscribers | 2,989 views | October 14, 2026

Any doubt to her identity was washed away when her name appeared emblazoned across her stern in raised letters: JUNEAU. Several thousand yards ahead of the cruiser, the sky was awash with searchlights, tracers and muzzle flashes exploding on the inky-black night sky like brilliant, violent lightning strikes. In the lead of the second column of American vessels, Seaman Allen Heyn sat in his 1.1 anti-aircraft mount and watched as the ships ahead shot each other to pieces. Through all the muzzle flashes Heyn could see that the Japanese ships were getting closer, yet his ship, the USS Juneau (CL-52)...

Strong crashing waves from the violent nor’easter uncovered a 19th-century shipwreck buried under Nantucket sand as the storm battered the East Coast with heavy rain, gale-force winds and coastal flooding. A pallet of waterlogged timber held together by rusted nails and strands of seaweed was discovered on a beach on the south shore of the famed Massachusetts Island Saturday, according to video shared by the Nantucket Current on Saturday. The wooden segment is believed to be from the Warren Sawyer, a New Orleans-bound schooner that crashed on nearby Miacomet Beach in 1884. The ship, carrying cargo consisting of cotton and...

The discovery of the gold cross is an interesting story in itself, but the story becomes even stranger. 'Tucker's Cross' had been on display at the museum for years. One day, as they were preparing for Queen Elizabeth II's royal visit to the island, it was discovered that at some point, the highly valuable cross had been stolen -- and swapped out for a cheap plastic replica! The loss of the golden cross was a huge blow to Bermuda, especially as it has never been recovered. Its location is still an unsolved mystery to this day.

Ancient Greek Bronze Fished from Sea Dazzles Italy By Estelle Shirbon ROME (Reuters) - Italy unveiled an ancient Greek bronze statue of a dancing satyr on Tuesday, five years after Sicilian fishermen dragged it from the Mediterranean seabed in one of the most important marine archaeological finds ever. The 2,500-year-old satyr went on public display inside Italy's parliament in Rome, where it will spend two months before being moved to a permanent home in Mazara del Vallo, the fishing village in western Sicily nearest to where it was found. "The sea has given us back an extraordinary heirloom of our...

A Roman-era shipwreck has been found off Mazara del Vallo, along with hundreds of amphorae on the seabed. Culture Minister Giuli has hailed the discovery as "extraordinary"... A Roman-era shipwreck, probably dating from between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, has been located around three miles off the coast of Mazara del Vallo, at a depth of 46 metres. On the seabed, the Italian Ministry of Culture reports, there are hundreds of amphorae, mostly of the Dressel 1A type, two lead anchor stocks and another structure made of the same material. The discovery was made during a joint inspection carried...

In 1995, remarkable contents of a 17th-century shipwreck began to be discovered by divers of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group off Salcombe Bay. The finds consist of over 400 gold coins of the Sa'dian Sharifs of Morocco in addition to ingots, jewellery as well as other items including Dutch pewter and pottery subsequently acquired by the British Museum. Although the ship has not survived, the divers discovered remnants of wood, rope and lead that were parts of its infrastructure. The finds from this shipwreck are significant for several reasons: the gold is clearly a bullion hoard and the number...

A British diving team located the wreck of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tampa, which was sunk by a German submarine in 1918 with 131 people aboard, officials said. The British diving team Gasperados discovered the wreck about 50 miles from Newquay, a town on the north coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom, the Coast Guard said in a press release. The ship participated in Allied Powers operations during World War I before she was lost over a century ago. Diving team leader Steve Mortimer said the discovery is “the result of three years of research and exploration” in...

Archaeologists from the University of Warsaw have discovered a concentration of shipwrecks near the ancient port of Ptolemais in northern Libya... one of the five cities that formed the Pentapolis of Cyrenaica, established by the Ptolemaic dynasty between the late 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The city emerged as a major hub for maritime trade until the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD.Covering a stretch of over 100 metres, the large concentration of submerged material suggests that multiple shipwrecks accumulated over time as a navigational danger for ships approaching the harbour.After a 13-year hiatus due to the Libyan civil...

Spanish archaeologists have documented over 30 shipwrecks in the waters between the Rock of Gibraltar and the port of Algeciras.This discovery follows a three-year study titled Project Herakles. Led by the University of Cádiz, the team identified 151 archaeological sites and 134 total wrecks, according to The Guardian...The researchers worked with colleagues from the University of Granada to document 34 specific wrecks.These vessels represent a diverse array of eras and cultures:Punic era: One ship dating back to the fifth century B.C.Roman period: 23 Roman ships and two late Roman ships.Medieval period: Four vessels, including three that may clarify seafaring practices...