Over a mile underneath the surface of the Black Sea, an ancient Greek merchant ship is sitting in sheer darkness for almost a millennium. The ship was never known to seen by any human beings and no human eyes ever laid sight on it, well, up until the Maritime Archaeology Project of the Black Sea which got their hand on the watery grave last year.
The team of Maritime Archaeology Project has announced the find on Tuesday by saying that the discovery is confirmed to be the oldest intact shipwreck that is ever known to humanity. The Radiocarbon dated the ship roughly to the 400 B.C. The trading vessel had piled the waves in the days of great Greek philosophers like Sophocles and Plato when the city-states of the old Greece scattered the colonies all around the black sea.
Ever since that day, the ship has been sitting idle at a depth of the water which is more than the double of the highest of the tallest skyscraper in the entire world. Oxygen is extremely hard to come by in the deep sea and just because of that the organic processes that help to decompose something is also tough to take place. Due to this, the ship stayed undisturbed until the team of researchers discovered it alongside many other shipwrecks. These ships were discovered during the survey that ranged to 800 square miles.
Jon Adams, University of Southampton’s’ archaeological professor, said that “he never believed that a ship dating to the classical world which is lying over 2 kilometers of water is still intact.” According to him, everything people know about the ancient ships ship-building is going to change after this.
The team has pointed out a scarce and different kind of pottery which is presumed to be found in the artwork of Siren Vase. The Siren Vase is an artifact that dates several decades before the ship came into existence.
