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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday September 26 2017, @03:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the archaeological-treasure dept.

After three field seasons, the Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project is drawing to a close, but the things the team has discovered on the sea floor will keep researchers busy for a generation. Over the course of the expedition, researchers found 60 incredibly well-preserved ships from the medieval, Roman, Byzantine and ancient Greek eras, which are rewriting what historians know about ancient trade and shipbuilding reports Damien Sharkov at Newsweek.

The project, begun in 2015, wasn't originally about finding ancient ships. According to a press release, the team set out to use remote operated vehicles laser scanners to map the floor of the Black Sea off Bulgaria to learn more about the changing environment of the region and fluctuations in sea level since the last glacier cycle. But they couldn't help but locate ships too. Last year, they found 44 ancient vessels during their survey representing 2,500 years of history. "The wrecks are a complete bonus, but a fascinating discovery, found during the course of our extensive geophysical surveys," Jon Adams, principle investigator and director of the University of Southampton's Centre for Maritime Archaeology, said at the time.

During the latest field season, which just ended, the expedition discovered another batch of ancient ships. "Black Sea MAP now draws towards the end of its third season, acquiring more than 1300km of survey so far, recovering another 100m of sediment core samples and discovering over 20 new wreck sites, some dating to the Byzantine, Roman and Hellenistic periods," Adams tells Aristos Georgiou at The International Business Times. "This assemblage must comprise one of the finest underwater museums of ships and seafaring in the world."

St. Julien Perlmutter is all over this. The finds are even more exciting than the nautical knowledge to be gained, because many of the ships' cargos are intact.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:27PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:27PM (#573222)

    You do know that you can't get to north america via the black sea right?

    Any way this is interesting but unfortunately the project page is FUBAR since they apparently don't have the budget for bandwith

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:35PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:35PM (#573232)

    Can somebody please mod down the fucking retarded parent comment?

    A ship in the Black Sea can pass through the Bosphorus [wikipedia.org] to get to the Mediterranean, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean, which obviously allows North America to be reached.

    The modern name "Bosphorus" comes from the Ancient Greek name for it, Βόσπορος. The Ancient Greeks knew about it and used it frequently while traveling.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:49PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @04:49PM (#573243)

      Bahhahaaa! oh wait your serious let me laugh even harder

      The Greeks that originate in the Mediterranean sail TO the black sea and sink, you cannot get to north America via the black sea, none of the ships found are aberrant in naval technology from what is known of greek and roman ship building and trying to sail one across the Atlantic via the trade winds, or across the Iceland. Greenland, Newfoundland route would be near suicide they can't carry enough provisions to make the Atlantic crossing and they are basically open boats, the most likely reason for the intact nature of the black sea ships is they where swamped in a storm and went down all in one wave, the black sea and the Mediterranean are kiddy pools compared to Atlantic storms. Ships definitely not headed for North America tell us nothing about Pre-Colombian European visits to North America

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:02PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:02PM (#573254)

        In all seriousness, are you mentally challenged?

        The only one suggesting this retarded idea of sailing from Ancient Greece through the Black Sea through to North America is you.

        The Ancient Greeks sailed from Ancient Greece to the Black Sea through the Bosphorus.

        The Ancient Greeks also sailed from Ancient Greece through the Mediterranean Sea, through the Strait of Gibraltar, on to the Caribbean and the Americas.

        Only some of their ships ended up at the bottom of the Black Sea.

        I hope that Slashdot comes back online soon, so fucking retards like you can go back to shitting up that site instead of this one!

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:58PM (#573451)

          OK, is it theoretically possible that, in the best of seasons, with the help of friendly currents and mild weather, a well-equipped and well-supplied greek vessel might have been able to cross the Atlantic?

          Uh, sure. But it would have been a complete fluke. Standard practice, as near as it can be reconstructed from ancient writings on the topic, was to either stay coastal, and run for the beach in the event of bad conditions, or to take brief runs across the sea where they knew land was on the other end. How good was their oceanic navigation? Not that great. They achieved some astonishing things, but they were not as good in the classical era as even mediaeval arabic navigators. They couldn't hold a candle, as far as we know, to the polynesian migrants.

          How about their ship construction? Their vessels were more fragile and less seaworthy than the longships of the vikings, and so were their rigs. For example, the lateen rig is a relatively low stress rig, but the long narrow spar that shapes the head of the sail is notorious for breaking, near-crippling the vessel.

          If they had had the wherewithal to go, and return, with any frequency greater than sheer insane chance, they would have opened the americas millenia before Columbus, or the romans would have (because the romans were good engineers and cheerfully used, adapted and improved everything they could get from the greeks).

          But they didn't.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @01:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @01:43PM (#573789)

          I think this discovery supports the Ancient-Greeks-in-the-Americas hypothesis only insofar it supports the hypothesis that ancient greeks ever sailed the seas and seemed to arrive at places that were a respectable distance away. I don't recall any concrete evidence for the latter but I always thought this was already known/accepted. There are all sorts of myths but you can hardly call those concrete evidence I guess.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:02PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:02PM (#573253)

      You know the Mediterranean is where the Greeks live, right? So if they wanted to go the Americas, the Black Sea is the wrong way. GP is correct in essence -- sure, your pedantry is justified in that one could sail from Greece to the Black Sea to America, but it would make no bloody sense to.

      What doesn't make sense is GP's assumption that the only way a shipwreck can support such a theory is by being located along a relevant shipping route, but that's no more retarded than OP's neglecting to mention how these discoveries do support it; was cargo resembling American artifacts found? Were these ships found to be suitable for crossing the Atlantic, or with different construction techniques than previously known which would scale better for transatlantic vessels? So far the whole thread looks like a complete waste of space. (Yes, including both your pedantry and my wasting time to call you on it.)

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:19PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:19PM (#573265)

        The only one suggesting anything about the Greeks traveling to the Americas through the Black Sea is the retarded AC who posted the equally retarded "You do know that you can't get to north america via the black sea right?".

        If you had read the article, you'd know that these preserved ships show that the Ancient Greeks had ship technology far beyond what it was thought that they had.

        It was initially thought that their ships would only have been good enough for local trade within the nearby Mediterranean region. But these preserved specimens suggest that their ships were far more advanced, and could likely have handled trans-oceanic voyages.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:02PM (#573389)

          If you had read the article, you'd know...

          YMBNH

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @07:58AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 28 2017, @07:58AM (#574276)

          The articles didn't say anything supporting your claims e.g. that the articles said that the "Ancient Greeks had ship technology far beyond what it was thought that they had" and "these preserved specimens suggest that their ships were far more advanced, and could likely have handled trans-oceanic voyages."

          They just mentioned well preserved stuff with masts and rudders. And we already knew the Ancient Greeks had ships with masts and rudders.