Polish scientists assumed they had found traces of the oldest sunken merchant ship in the Eastern Mediterranean. But without any parts. In our country, shipwreck traces are generally associated with sunken ship remains. But lately, signs of a maritime tragedy have been appearing more and more often, but there are no details about the ship. Scientists from the Center for Underwater Archeology at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland) investigated just such a shipwreck.
Some time ago, Turkish authorities reported that local fishermen had found strange copper nuggets in the Gulf of Antalya. It immediately attracted the attention of many divers from different countries. Since the Uluburun ship surveys, copper ingots have been considered a sure sign of an ancient shipwreck.
The Phoenician ship that sank near Cape Uluburun in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 14th century BC is called Uluburunsky. It was found by divers in 1982 and the wreck site was studied by underwater archaeologists for 11 seasons. They collected the cargo carried by Phoenician merchants. Its main part consisted of copper ingots: there were about 10 tons.
Polish researchers suggest that the shipwreck in the Gulf of Antalya occurred several centuries before the tragedy at Cape Uluburun. The problem is that they haven’t found a single piece of the ship so far, making their dating a bit uncertain.
The reality of the shipwreck was revealed by a map of the location of the copper nuggets at the bottom of the bay: they clearly lay together and had been minimally blown around by currents and storms over the past centuries. The weight of one nugget is about 20 kilograms. Archaeologists have unearthed 30 items to date; most are still underground.
Underwater archaeologists (and not only) are constantly faced with such problems as the degradation of organic materials. If the tree is not quickly swept away by bottom sediments, marine organisms still manage to eat it to this day. The warm salt waters of the Mediterranean are much better for them than the cold Baltic, where wooden pieces are more common but not as old.
According to researchers, the ship crashed into the rocks at the entrance of the bay and died. This is considered a dangerous navigation area. The cargo distribution pattern likely indicates rapid flooding.
The work of Polish archaeologists is part of a project to document and analyze ancient sea routes and shipwrecks. All this allows you to obtain valuable information about the commercial and cultural exchanges of the Bronze Age. Preliminary analysis of the copper showed that it was highly contaminated. It contains at least ten percent iron, which contrasts with the purer material found in other ancient shipwrecks, including Uluburunsky. Scientists see this as an indirect sign that the find is older.
Archaeologists have emphasized that there should be more shipwrecks from the Late Bronze Age because the scale of the copper trade was so large at that time. Copper ores were mined in only a few places in the Mediterranean, and the demand for them was huge. Metallurgical production in Central Europe was based on contacts with the Anatolian, Balkan, Caucasian and Carpathian mining regions, and the main source of these raw materials for the Eastern Mediterranean was Cyprus. In addition to Egypt, the developing Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations also needed large amounts of copper. Therefore, the scale of contacts was huge, and the more ships sailed, the more they sank.
Note that prior dating raises questions. At the site of the shipwreck, ships were found that researchers themselves call artifacts of the Mycenaean civilization. However, 3,600 years ago, this civilization had not reached a level that could make its products an object of trade. The dominant position in this region was occupied by the Minoan civilization, whose representatives later fought with the Mycenaeans.
It is also doubtful that this shipwreck is called the “oldest” in the press release of the Nicolaus Copernicus University: we have previously mentioned a similar tragedy that occurred in the Neolithic era near the island of Capri. Not everything is clear about dating there either, but the nature of the cargo (obsidian) indicates the Stone Age period.
Source: Port Altele
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