Rich Ancient Shipwreck Off Greece Yields More Bronze Statues

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's Culture Ministry says archaeologists revisiting one of the most famous shipwrecks of ancient times off southern Greece have found fragments of bronze statues and a section of the wooden hull.

A ministry statement says divers raised a complete arm and a section of pleated clothing from statues, and compacted metal objects that have yet to be cleaned and separated.

Last month's expedition off Antikythera island also located broken bronze and marble statues under large boulders that covered them, probably following an earthquake. Wednesday's statement said these would be investigated during a future excavation.

The 1st-century B.C. wreck of a large freighter discovered more than a century ago has already yielded an ancient astronomical computer — known as the Antikythera Mechanism — as well as statues and thousands of other artifacts.

8 Legendary Shipwrecks Still Waiting to Be Discovered

When the remains of the RMS Titanic were discovered in 1985, it marked a milestone in underwater archaeology that ended years of the famous hunt for the sunken ship.
However, in the history of seafaring and oceanic travels, there are hundreds if not thousands of ships that have been lost or claimed by the sometimes treacherous waters of the ocean. From the expeditions of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan to the ships that sailed to defend freedom during World War II, these giant vessels may have been built to outlast long journeys or heavy bombardment. Yet, as many of them have been witness to, none of them have ever won a fight against crashing waves and, well, sinking.

While we do mark the Titanic as one of history’s greatest underwater finds since its sinking, in today’s list, we are counting down to other notable ships that have also gone the way of the Titanic. Whether by bad luck or by enemy fire, here are 8 Legendary Shipwrecks that are still waiting to be discovered!

#8 — The Flor De la Mar

Translated as “Flower of the Sea,” this 400-ton Portuguese carrack was built in 1502. It was one of the ships that were instrumental in aiding Portugal to capture the island of Malacca in the Battle of Diu. 

What makes the Flor De la Mar one of the most sought-after shipwrecks in history is its rumored cargo of precious gems and gold, rare artifacts, metals, and much more treasure than a normal ship could carry. The treasure was intended for Queen Dona Maria and King Manuel I of Portugal. 

The story was that after the successful invasion and capture of Malacca, the ship’s crew loaded the Flor with whatever precious treasure they can get their hands on and fit on the ship as gifts to the King and Queen. 

In 1511, on its way back to Lisbon from Malacca, a violent storm smashed into the Flor head on and shipwrecked it somewhere off the coast of Sumatra. The storm was said to have been so strong that the ship was split in two, spilling its priceless cargo into the sea before it completely sank. To this very day, the exact whereabouts of the Flor de la Mar remains a mystery. Even renowned American diver, Robert Marx, reportedly shelled out millions of dollars to find the Flor and its sunken treasure calling it, “The Richest Vessel ever Lost at Sea!”

#7 — Las Cinque Chagas

Sailing from Goa, India to Lisbon, Portugal with a cargo of 3.5 million Portuguese Cruzados and 22 chests filled with diamonds, rubies, and pearls (worth over $1 billion in today’s standards) the 1,200-ton Las Cinque Chagas sank into the sea while it was nearing its final stretch home.

Measuring about 150 feet long and 45 feet wide, the Chagas, along with its rich cargo, carried with it more than 1,000 people, 400 of whom were reported to be slaves. The long voyage of the ship was almost completed, according to accounts, when, near the coastlines of Portugal, the Chagas was intercepted and attacked by three British privateer ships: The Mayflower, The Royal Exchange, and The Sampson. These privateer ships were captained by pirate entrepreneurs who modified and old warships or merchant ships to suit their needs.

The skirmish that followed their meeting lasted two days of nonstop bombardment from both sides. Unfortunately for the Chagas, despite its monolithic size, the battle fell in favor of the privateers. The Chagas caught fire after trying to defend itself, and on July 13, 1594, it sank off the coast of Portugal’s Azores, never making it to safety.

Just like the Flor de la Mar, the Chagas is sought-after by divers and modern-day treasure hunters for its promising haul. However, expert salvage operators believe that the remains of the ship, as well as its treasure, could be in waters as deep as 2500 feet.

#6 — Shackleton’s Endurance

Ernest Shackleton was an Irish-born explorer who hoped to successfully make an overland crossing of Antarctica, making it his first Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole.

However, the expedition met an abrupt end when his ship, the Endurance, was trapped in the Weddell Sea because of heavily packed ice, preventing the ship from even making it to the continent.

Like a defiant behemoth, the Endurance managed to survive 10 whole months in the ice before heavy amounts of pressure pressing down on its hull finally cracked it and sent the ship tumbling down the ice and into the cold waters below.

Shackleton and his crew managed to survive and made a perilous, yet almost legendary, 800-mile voyage back to England in a lifeboat.

Today, the Endurance remains lost deep in icy waters. Experts believe that the ship is now sitting at a depth of 10,000 feet, but before anyone could get to it, there is still the matter of breaking through a 5-foot layer of solid ice. One salvage expert named David Mearns and the man who discovered the Titanic, Robert Ballard, have expressed their interest in diving for the remains of the Endurance. Unfortunately, though, a team is yet to be assembled as well as raising enough money to fund the expedition.

#5 — SS Baychimo

Like a page out of a ghost story, the fate of the SS Baychimo is of particular interest. Constructed in Sweden in 1914 and owned by a German shipping company until the beginning of the First World War, the SS Baychimo is a 1322 ton steam-powered sea vessel.

After it was purchased by The Hudson’s Bay Company, the Baychimo went full-steam ahead as it made voyages across the North Atlantic from Scotland. It also made frequent visits in and around the areas of Alaska and British Columbia.

Unfortunately, the gigantic Baychimo went on its last voyage in 1931. While on its way to Vancouver, it fought against the harsh waters of the North Pacific, battling the wind and giant waves that knocked it from side to side. Fearing for their lives, the crew of the Baychimo chose to abandon ship and evacuated on lifeboats.

According to stories and legends surrounding the ship, the Baychimo did not exactly sink, and there were no eyewitnesses to confirm that the North Pacific devoured it. Thus, over 38 years since its mysterious disappearance, alleged sightings of the ship were reported by various captains, fishers, and Inuits; many of whom say that the ship was plodding along fine even without a crew. Other stories also include sailors failing in their attempts to board the ship. Later on, the sightings stopped and, after more than 20 years without even a whisper of the Baychimo, people have concluded that the abandoned ship had finally sunk. The last known sighting was in 1969 and efforts are being revived to find the so-called ghost ship as of 2006.

#4 — USS Indianapolis

After successfully delivering components of the first atomic bomb to an American base in Tinian on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis met its demise a few days later after being torn apart by torpedoes from a patrolling Japanese submarine called I-58.

The cruiser seemingly disappeared instantaneously after the attack. It plummeted in the waters of the Philippine Sea, taking with it about 300 of its crew.

The survivors, some 900 of them, were left helpless in the shark infested waters of the region and by the time they were spotted and rescued by a Navy plane days after the attack, only 317 of them were left after the rest died from exposure and attacks from prowling sharks.

It was called the worst American Naval Disaster of World War II, and despite efforts to salvage what’s left of the Indianapolis, the wreckage cannot yet be found by sonar or underwater vehicles. The problem is that the cruiser may be resting in a depth of over 12,000 underwater.

#3 — Bonhomme Richard

Donated by France to the Patriot Cause, the Bonhomme Richard was one of the few Continental Navy ships that had a distinguished and remarkable combat record in the late 18th Century.

Captained by John Paul Jones, the Bonhomme was able to capture 16 British vessels in a matter of weeks when it was first acquired.

However, it was on September 23rd when the Bonhomme and its captain bit off a little more than they could chew. Locked in a battle with the HMS Serapis and another ship from the Royal Navy, Jones brushed off calls to surrender and relentlessly bombarded the two Royal Navy ships with as much firepower as the Bonhomme can. Several hours later, Jones was able to capture the Serapis, but unfortunately for the Bonhomme, the ship sustained a considerable amount of damage in the skirmish and suffered several shots below its waterline. Unable to keep the now burning ship afloat, the captain and his crew had no choice but to abandon ship and let it sink in the merciless waters of the North Sea.

Centuries later, salvage expeditions were launched to find the wreckage of the Bonhomme. A few salvage teams have identified wrecks matching the Bonhomme’s description, but none of these discovered wrecks are yet to be confirmed as the fabled ship itself.

#2 — HMS Endeavour

It is a ship that is as famous as the captain who commanded it. The HMS Endeavour was the first European vessel in history to sail to the east coast of Australia and circumnavigate New Zealand successfully under the captainship of James Cook.

Sadly for the Endeavour, it was sold years later to a private buyer and was tragically renamed The Lord Sandwich. Later on, the British Royal Navy chartered the ship to ferry troops to New England at the height of the American Revolution. One night, while it was moored in Rhode Island’s Newport Harbor in 1778, it was intentionally sunk along with 13 other sea vessels as part of a blockade against an incoming French fleet.

Today, the Endeavour is one of the many ships that are part of ongoing research by the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project and the Australian National Maritime Museum. Taking several years to map and explore the silt-heavy waters of Newport, the combined team has discovered the remains of the sunken ships but, sadly, the Endeavour remains to be elusive even after its demise.

#1 — The Santa Maria

No ship is more legendary than those that sailed with Christopher Columbus into the New World. Sailing from Spain, Columbus took with him three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The three successfully arrived in the Americas, but during the journey back, only two were able to return to Spain.

The story goes that on Christmas Eve 1492, the sailor that was charged to steer the Santa Maria ordered an inexperienced cabin boy to do the job for him. Almost immediately, the cabin boy ran onto a coral reef in what is now modern-day Haiti and gave the ship some serious damage.

Fortunately for the crew, they were able to empty the ship of its cargo with the help of the natives. However, the ship sank into the sea the next day and, over the years, may have been buried deep in sediment.

In 2014, underwater explorer, Barry Clifford made the news when he claimed that he had found the wreckage of the Santa Maria with the help of Columbus’ journals. It may have cause to celebrate, but after a closer examination of the alleged wreckage by UNESCO, it was found out that the remains discovered belonged to a ship from the 17th or 18th centuries. To this very day, the precise location of the flagship Santa Maria remains lost to history.

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Sources: 
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/6-famous-shipwrecks-still-waiting-to-be-discovered
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/06/29/top-six-ships-searched-today/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-greatest-shipwrecks-still-out-there
http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/lost-sea-four-famous-shipwrecks-waiting-be-discovered

5 Ancient Technologies Way Ahead of Their Time

The ancient world is full of wonders that the modern age cannot compete with. The great civilizations, the larger than life monuments, and the fascinating stories told about an age gone by has been the subject of many movies, documentaries, and studies. Who could argue against the revolutionary system of the aqueducts that the Romans introduced that was the precursor to modern-day irrigation? Who could introduce something much better than the discoveries and theories posed by Aristotle that became the cornerstone of what we know today as the study of Physics?

While the modern age does have technology that brings information to us faster than lightning, we should not fail to remember that it was the ancient world that opened the doors to the advancements we have today.

Doors that, in some ways, are considered too advanced for a civilization that we believed to be quite Paleolithic compared to our century. Who would think that people in the ancient world would be able to invent an early concept of an aircraft thousands of years before the first Wright Brothers prototype left land?

#5 — The Baghdad Battery

Let’s start off with one of the most famous archeological finds on the subject. Discovered in the 1930s in a region called Khujut Rubu’a just outside Baghdad, the so-called “Baghdad Battery” was a wonder to behold considering that electricity and its uses would not have been discovered 2000 years after these batteries came into existence.

The batteries discovered consisted of a clay jar with an asphalt stopper. Through the center of the stopper ran an iron rod that was surrounded by a copper cylinder inside the jar. It is believed that if the jar was filled with an electrolytic solution like vinegar or lemon juice, the battery would be able to produce at least 1.1 volts of electricity.

A volt may not be enough to power a home or a machine that relied on electricity, but archeologists and historians believe that it may have been used for purposes of electroplating since artifacts with very thin layers of gold and silver have also been unearthed in digs; artifacts that may reinforce the notion that the batteries were ancient power tools.

On the other side of the spectrum, some experts disagree that the Baghdad Batteries are, in fact, “batteries” since they found no conclusive evidence as to where they might be used or what they might be used for.

Some scholars claim that the jars were more likely to be a sophisticated means of keeping scrolls and papyri and that the acidic residue found at the bottom of the clay jars were nothing more than decomposed scrolls and papyri. Whatever the claim, the Baghdad Batteries still confound and astound historians and archeologists to this very day.

#4 — Central Heating

The Greeks were pioneers on almost anything you can conceive of that helped build Western Civilization and among those was the technology for central heating. It may sound trivial and inconsequential when compared to the Grecian contributions in mathematics, science, and philosophy but the idea of such a technology is quite remarkable given that even the concept of it is something unheard of at that time.

Called by the ancient Greeks as hypocaust or “under burnt,” the technology was first employed in the Temple of Ephesus in 350 BC. Later on, the trend caught on, and it was the Romans who managed to apply it on a larger scale from their temples to the homes of the wealthy, to the public baths, and to government buildings.

The hypocaust was created by making a structure just beneath the floor of a building. This structure would consist of pillars that would raise the structure's floor. On top of these pillars would be tiles that are covered in a layer of concrete; above it is the floor of the building itself. A furnace would then be lit, and the combination of hot air and smoke would rise and be trapped in the space between the floors. To heat multiple levels of a building, the smoke would find its way through a series of clay flues that act as pipes. What’s even more ingenious about how the Romans used the hypocaust is they built bronze ventilators that could be used to regulate temperatures.

If this system sounds too labor intensive and expensive, it’s because it is. Slave laborers would have to constantly maintain the fire at just the right temperature and the right level of comfort for people in the building or home.

#3 — Antikythera Mechanism

Recovered in a shipwreck in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism was among several other, heavily crusted artifacts salvaged from the sea. The Mechanism is of particular interest because of its more than complicated construction. 

Taking years of research by experts and studies about Babylonian records on eclipses, it was later confirmed that the Antikythera Mechanism was the world’s first computer.

The Mechanism features a fixed ring dial on its front face that is called the ecliptic or the twelve zodiac signs that are equally marked off on 30-degree sectors. This construction closely resembles the Babylonian method of assigning 1/12 of the elliptic to each sign despite the fact that constellation boundaries were quite variable.

Outside of the ring dial, the device uniquely features a rotating ring that marks the days and months of the Egyptian calendar.

The Antikythera Mechanism closely resembles a modern-day clock with a large circular front face and a knob on its side which manipulates winding parts. When the knob is turned, at least seven different clock hands – one for the moon, one for the sun, and five for the five planets that the Greeks were able to see - would move and display the celestial time. Not only did the device show which stars rose and set on a given date but also the phases of the moon.

It was an extremely complicated device, and even though its pieces have given clues and ideas of how it worked, experts can only guess how it was put together with its highly intricate system of gears inside.

#2 — Ancient Seismoscope

Earthquakes are one of nature’s most unpredictable forces, and scientists have been trying to crack the mystery of foreseeing an oncoming tremor with little results for nearly 2000 years. However, the answer to their quandary may well be in a device used by a man named Zhang Heng in 132 AD.

This ancient seismoscope was able to detect earthquakes from long distances, and it was also able to predict, with an almost pinpoint accuracy, which direction the tremors are. Even more remarkable is the fact that the device was able to detect earthquakes in areas even when no tremors are felt.

The construction of the device looked fairly simple and can be mistaken for a large vase or urn. It was made of bronze and was six feet in diameter. Around the body of the device were eight dragon heads, each marking the main directions of a compass; each dragon had a small ball clamped in its mouth. Sitting directly beneath the dragons were eight toads with their mouths open towards the dragons.

When a tremor happened, one dragon would drop its ball into the gaping toad indicating where the earthquake was. In one story in 138 AD, the seismoscope detected tremors west of Luoyang, but no one sensed the slightest movement there. A few days later, a messenger from the region brought news of an earthquake which proved the device’s accuracy to the people of the time.

To this day, there is no clear understanding of how Zhang Heng’s device worked. In 2005, a group of scientists recreated the device with supporting theories and discovered that it worked as well as modern seismometers; something that, no doubt, surprised them.

#1 — Ancient Flying Machines of Egypt and South America

There are two separate stories that suggest a mind-blowing conclusion: the ancient Egyptians and the early civilization of South America had flight technology that predates the machines of Leonardo Da Vinci and the Wright Brothers.

If we are going to talk about technology that is way ahead of its time, then planes and flying machines take the top spot on this list. For thousands of years, mankind has pondered on the idea of flying and how he may be able to do it one day. From Greek philosophers to stories like the tale of Daedalus and Icarus, the flight has been one of the things man has been obsessed with before the invention of the first aircraft. 

In South America, the idea that they may have had an early concept of a flying machine came in the form of the jewelry produced by the Chimu culture, now Colombia, 2000 years ago. In one design, a pendant was crafted in the shape of, what looks like, a modern-day aircraft with a cockpit, delta wings, and tail fins. However, considering that the Chimu took their design inspiration from birds, it is highly unlikely that they have created a machine but having such a design that echoes a modern-day aircraft does command a little bit of merit.

In Egypt, there is also a similar case. A wooden falcon was discovered after it was unearthed in Saqqara by an Egyptian doctor name Khalil Messiha. He claimed that the device had exceptional flight properties and characteristics. Unfortunately, Messiah's claims were exaggerated and over-inflated until the wooden toy was held as an example. As experts dug a little deeper, the wooden carving was discovered to resemble wind vanes used on masts of Egyptian riverboats. 

Though there still needs more light to be shed on this and whether or not these so-called machines are real or just the product of creativity, what is fascinating is that given some ancient technologies that have been unearthed over the years from ancient batteries to seismoscopes, a flying machine is not that far-fetched.

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Sources:
http://historycollection.co/ancient-technology-centuries-time/
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/10-remarkable-advanced-ancient-technologies-ahead-of-their-times/
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5554053/five-ancient-technologies-that-were-ahead-of-their-times