Free Republic

University of Rhode Island professor Robert Ballard... was slated to... meet up with the crew of the... 185-foot-long research vessel Endeavor... Ballard, notably known for his 1985 discovery of the Titanic, will be heading up a team of scientists from URI's Graduate School of Oceanography, the Institute for Exploration, and the Institute of Oceanography of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Athens. Scientific operations for the expedition began on Apr. 26 and will continue through June 18... The first leg of the expedition will be to the Greek island of Thera, also known as Santorini, to study the sea...

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- The United States has signed a treaty that designates the Titanic as an international maritime memorial. The pact with Great Britain still needs approval by the Senate. The treaty limits visits to the Titanic, now resting on the ocean floor 225 miles from Newfoundland, and regulates the taking of artifacts from the ship. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912, killing hundreds of people. Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the ship in 1978, hopes France, Canada and Russia will also sign the treaty. With the United State and Great Britain, they are...

The discovery of two large pieces of the Titanic's hull is changing the story of how the luxury ocean liner sank 93 years ago. Undersea explorers said Monday that the Titanic broke into three pieces, not two pieces as commonly believed and portrayed in James Cameron's 1997 film version of the catastrophe. That means the ship likely sank faster than believed. The hull pieces were found this summer by an expedition sponsored by the History Channel. Its leaders called it the most significant find at the site since undersea explorer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck 20 years ago and declared...

They were found 1,000 feet down in June by a team made up of Harvard archaeologists led by Lawrence Stager, Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, and a crew from the Connecticut-based Institute for Exploration, headed by oceanographer Robert Ballard. The ships are the oldest ever found in the deep sea and may change the understanding of ancient Mediterranean commerce. Because many shallow-water wrecks have been found, historians and archaeologists believed that ancient sailors preferred routes that hugged the coastline. Modern technology, however, is opening a new field of deep-water archaeology, which is showing that ancient sailors did indeed...

Believers in the lost Ark Treating myth as fact misunderstands the meaning of religion Karen Armstrong Saturday August 9, 2003 The Guardian (UK) The explorer who discovered the Titanic beneath the Atlantic in 1985 is setting out on another underwater expedition to document Noah's flood. The Black Sea was originally a freshwater lake that in ancient times became inundated by the salty Mediterranean. Robert Ballard believes that this was a cataclysmic event that occurred about 7,500 years ago, and was possibly the deluge described in the Bible. Ballard's critics are sceptical: they argue that the infiltration of the Black Sea...

Expedition seeks clues to lost Bronze Age culture By Richard C. Lewis Thu Jun 1, 4:11 PM ETReuters Photo: Deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard speaks at the National Geographic Society in an undated file photo.... PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - An underwater explorer who found the Titanic and a team of international scientists will soon survey waters off the Greek island of Crete for clues to a once-powerful Bronze Age-era civilization. The expedition about 75 miles northwest of Crete aims to learn more about the Minoans, who flourished during the Bronze Age, and seeks to better understand seafaring four millennia ago,...

The very controversial Law of the Sea Treaty, LOST, which is still in committee, is a done deal, according to a senior White House official. Of the 145 countries that have ratified this United Nations treaty, the U.S. is the only major power not to have ratified it. Various groups of countries that have signed it include all of the G8 countries with the exception of the U.S., almost two-thirds of the countries in our hemisphere that are members of the Free Trade Areas of the Americas, as well as both NAFTA partners. The Law of the Sea was placed...

News of the Grunion.Someone please ping the steely-eyed killers. Thanx.

There was no distress call, no indication of enemy depth charges exploding or bulkheads breached, just a dead silence that stretched from a few days into 60 years. The USS Grunion disappeared in July 1942, leaving 70 American families grieving and the three sons of skipper Mannert L. "Jim" Abele without a father. Abele's boys -- who were 5, 9 and 12 and lived in Newton, Mass., when their father disappeared -- grew up and built their own lives. But they dwelt on the fate of their father. At 2 a.m. Wednesday, a grainy sonar picture e-mailed via satellite appeared...

Think of it as the Mars Rover but at the bottom of the ocean, remotely exploring our own planet's most alien landscape for scientists back at mission control. "This is how the science is going to be done," said Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer. In 2000, Kelley led an expedition using a manned submersible to explore the deep Atlantic Ocean. Her team stumbled upon something never seen before. The researchers discovered a startlingly massive collection of limestone towers located miles away from the tectonic "spreading" cracks in the seafloor that typically produce such structures. Some of these hydrothermal...

Scientists discover lost world A prehistoric lost world under the North Sea has been mapped by scientists from the University of Birmingham. The team used earthquake data to devise a 3D reconstruction of the 10,000-year-old plain. The area, part of a land mass that once joined Britain to northern Europe, disappeared about 8,000 years ago. The virtual features they have developed include a river the length of the Thames which disappeared when its valley flooded due to glaciers melting. This is the most exciting and challenging virtual reality project since Virtual Stonehenge. Professor Bob Stone Professor Bob Stone, head of...

Expert Says Iraq Could Rewrite Archaeology Books Thu Mar 4,10:15 AM ET By Luke Baker BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq, torn apart by years of war and sanctions, remains so rich in hidden ancient wonders that a leading expert believes the world's archaeology books will have to be rewritten over the next decade. Reuters Photo As security improves to allow excavation, evidence may emerge that advanced societies existed in the area much earlier than previously thought, said Dr John Russell, professor of archaeology at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. "A decade of research in Iraq could rewrite the books...

Since no wreck of a Minoan ship has ever been found, Apostolos Kourtis has had to start from scratch, relying on ancient drawings and using the same methods as the Minoans... With no wreck to provide a model, his four-strong team had to turn to historical sources for help. Frescos unearthed in excavations on the nearby volcanic island of Santorini proved valuable... The 17-metre long and 3.80-metre wide ship with its round-shaped trunk looks like a traditional fishing boat as it emerges in a dockyard in the Cretean city of Chania. It is due to be launched for the...

The Uluburun II, which is on display in Bodrum and sponsored by the Bodrum Peninsula Promotion Foundation started to be built in 2004 using late Bronze Age techniques and was launched in 2005... The [original] Uluburun sank in the 14th century 8.5 kilometers southeast of Kafl in Uluburun Bay while carrying copper and tin from Alexandria to Crete. It was discovered in 1982 by a diver. The remains of the shipwreck were unearthed by an excavation team consisting of archaeologists and divers and the process has lasted over 20 years. Considered to be one of the most significant archaeological finds...

A ship from the 8th century discovered off Dor Beach in the Mediterranean is thought to be the only vessel from that era ever found in the region. "We do not have any other historical or archaeological evidence of the economic activity and commerce of this period at Dor," said Ya'acov Kahanov from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies and the Department Of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. "The shipwreck will serve as a source of information about the social and economic activities in this area." The wreck [image] was found almost a decade ago but only...

In "Quest for the Phoenicians," three renowned scientists, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and oceanographer Robert Ballard, geneticist Spencer Wells and archaeologist Paco Giles, search for clues about the Phoenicians in the sea, in the earth and in the blood of their modern-day descendents... Ballard looks at ancient shipwrecks along Skerki Bank off the island of Sicily... Paco Giles excavates a cave at the bottom of the rock of Gibraltar... Spencer Wells collects DNA from a 2,500-year-old Phoenician mummy's tooth, to extract its unique genetic code and compare it with DNA samples collected from men and women from Lebanon to Tunisia.

The traditional circular sea route by which merchants are thought to have sailed around the ancient Mediterranean runs counter-clockwise: from the Greek Mainland to Crete, south to Egypt, up to Syro-Palestine and Cyprus, west to the Aegean via the southern coast of Anatolia, then to Rhodes and the Cycladic Islands, and ending up again at Crete and Mainland Greece. Longer routes incorporated the Central and Western Mediterranean as well. Merchants may, of course, have started in on this route at any point, for instance in Italy or Syro-Palestine rather than Crete. Recent evidence has demonstrated that a clockwise route...

Farming origins gain 10,000 years Wild types of emmer wheat like those found at Ohalo were forerunners of today's varieties Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say. These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which were forerunners of the varieties grown today. A US-Israeli team report their findings in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The evidence comes from a collection of 90,000 prehistoric plant remains dug...

Mashantuckets, Ballard To Explore Ancient Coastline They are questions that have intrigued scientists, archaeologists and historians for centuries: When did Native Americans first arrive on the North American continent, and where did they settle? Now, Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium, and Kevin McBride, research director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, and other researchers hope to answer that question. On Wednesday, Ballard, McBride and Dwight Coleman, the IFE's research director, outlined plans for a multiyear expedition to chart the location of ancient coastlines now underwater, identify sites of Native American settlements and find artifacts to...

The explorer who discovered the Titanic's resting place is to undertake a search for ancient shipwrecks off the southern Greek island of Crete, the Greek foreign ministry said Thursday. The search, by American oceanographer Robert Ballard, will be conducted in international waters, with the Greek culture ministry hoping to send a representative to observe operations, a ministry official said. "Deep-sea research will be conducted in the area between Santorini and Crete, for the purpose of locating (ancient) Mediterranean sea trade routes, recording ancient shipwrecks etc," culture ministry general secretary Christos Zahopoulos told a news conference this week. "The necessary steps...