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Stunned Archaeologists Find 22 Ancient Greek Shipwrecks

posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:52AM   
from the anyone-for-treasure? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

A spate of shipwrecks recently found near a group of Greek islands has given researchers new insights into how trade routes and sailing technology evolved in the Eastern Mediterranean. And with more exploration planned, additional discoveries are still likely.

Over a stretch of two weeks in September, tips from local fishermen and sponge divers led a team of Greek and American archaeologists to the precise locations of 22 shipwrecks in a 17-square-mile area around the Fourni archipelago in the eastern Aegean.
...
The earliest wreck dates to the Archaic Period (700-480 B.C.), while the most recent is from the Late Medieval Period (16th century A.D.). Ships from the Classical Period (480-323 B.C.) and the Hellenistic Period (323-31 B.C.) were also found, though a majority—12 of the 22—sailed and sank at some point during the Late Roman Period (300-600 A.D.)

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Original Submission

• Looting vs Archeology Looting vs Archeology (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Username on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:23AM

  by Username (4557) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:23AM (#261074)

  There doesn’t seem to be much difference. Some guy digs up old stuff and sells it off. Archeology is just sanctioned looting.

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• Re:Looting vs Archeology (Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:53AM

  by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:53AM (#261083)

  No, archeology is a human endeavor to understand where we came from. Corrupt archeologists are sanctioned looters.

  --
  ~Tilting at windmills~

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• Re:Looting vs Archeology (Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:55AM

  by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:55AM (#261188) Journal

  No, archaeology is actually more like this: Some guy digs up old stuff, studies it, obtains further knowledge of the past, and makes a contribution to humanity's understanding of its history. Most archaeology doesn't involve golden artefacts or anything so spectacular that could be sold off. A lot of the time the day to day work of serious archaeologists involves unglamorous but ultimately fascinating work like carefully sifting through a small patch of ground in an ancient site, sometimes for years, to pick up stuff left behind by ancient people such as broken pottery, rubbish, and even fossilised human faeces and analyse them to understand what they ate, how they did things, in general how they lived. I wonder how you could sell off a pile of fossilised human faeces to anyone. They'd be worth it only to an archaeologist who knew how to analyse them and perhaps reach the conclusion that those turds laid by people who lived thousands of years ago show that they, say, practised cannibalism at that point in their history for some reason.

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  Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.

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• Re:Looting vs Archeology (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday November 19 2015, @10:17PM

  by Yog-Yogguth (1862) on Thursday November 19 2015, @10:17PM (#265532) Journal

  Blasphemer! :D

  Go watch a season of Time Team [wikipedia.org] to show your repentance (YouTube has a lot [youtube.com]).

  Although what you say used to be true before archeology became a real science (and that mostly happened during the last century).

  --
  Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))

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