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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...

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years. The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said. “A ship surviving intact from the classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said Professor Jon Adams, the...

Some 3,500 years ago, there was already a brisk trade in fish on the shores of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea. This conclusion follows from the analysis of 100 fish teeth that were found at various archeological sites in what is now Israel. The saltwater fish from which these teeth originated is the gilthead sea bream, which is also known as the dorade. It was caught in the Bardawil lagoon on the northern Sinai coast and then transported from Egypt to sites in the southern Levant. This fish transport persisted for about 2,000 years, beginning in the Late Bronze Age and...

Greek and Roman writers record the use of a substance called miltos as a decoration, a medicine - and a handy way to repair a boat. Now scientists have worked out why. Andrew Masterson reports. From ancient Greek and Roman source texts it is possible to conclude that in the classical world a mineral, a powder known as miltos, was something of a wonder substance. Miltos - referred to in the works of writers such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny - was red, fine-grained, and made up mostly of iron-oxide. By the time Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and proto-botanist, wrote...

The Greek Culture Ministry announced that five additional vessels have been discovered in the ship graveyard off the coast of the Fourni Islands, bringing the total number of ships found there to 58, according to an Associated Press report. The area in the Aegean Sea, at the junction of two main shipping routes, is known for its treacherous waters, and contains wrecks dating from the fourth century B.C. through the nineteenth century A.D. The newly discovered ships rest in shallow waters and show signs of damage from fishing nets and plunderers, but the archaeological team, assisted by local fishermen, found...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The latest scientific analysis of a disputed map of the medieval New World supports the theory that it was made 50 years before Christopher Columbus set sail. The study examined the ink used to draw the Vinland Map, which belongs to Yale University. The map is valued at $20 million — if it is real and not a clever, modern-day forgery. A study last summer said the ink on the parchment map was made in the 20th century. But chemist Jacqueline Olin, a retired researcher with the Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) in Washington, said...

In AD 1499 England launched its very first English-led expedition to "Terra Nova" (New World) and now researchers studying a 16th century scroll have found King Henry VII awarded William Weston, one the explorers, with... the payment of 30 British pounds sterling... equivalent of a laborers salary for six years... The information was discovered on a huge parchment dating back more than 500 years and ultraviolet light was required to reveal the hidden text said study co-researcher Evan Jones, a senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Bristol in a report in Live Science. In 2009,...

Published: April 2014Roman Boat Romans in France An ancient wreck tells the tale of Romans in France. By Robert Kunzig Photograph by Rémi Bénali The Romans had a serious trash problem, though by our standards it was good-looking trash. Their problem was amphorae. They needed millions of the curvy clay jars to ship wine, olive oil, and fish sauce around the empire, and often they didn’t recycle their empties. Sometimes they didn’t even bother to pop the cork—it was quicker to saber the neck or the pointy base, drain the thing, then chuck it. In Rome there’s a five-acre,...

In the middle of Rome's trendiest neighborhood, surrounded by sushi restaurants and nightclubs with names like Rodeo Steakhouse and Love Story, sits the ancient world's biggest garbage dump--a 150-foot-tall mountain of discarded Roman amphorae, the shipping drums of the ancient world. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around Monte Testaccio, from the Latin testa and Italian cocci, both meaning "potsherd." But despite its size--almost a mile in circumference--it's easy to walk by and not really notice unless you are headed for some excellent pizza at Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally stuck into the mountain's side. Most local residents don't know...

Archaeologists using radar scans have detected a Viking ship buried beneath a cemetery in Norway. The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) said that the archaeologists discovered the anomaly using radar scans of an area in Østfold County. The ship seems to be about 66 feet (20 meters) long and buried about 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) beneath the ground, they said in a statement.

The third chapter of Donald Yates’ history of the Cherokee (Old World Roots of the Cherokee, McFarland 2012) contains the genetic story of the Cherokee Indians based on DNA Consultants’ 2009 study “Anomalous Mitochondrial DNA in the Cherokee,” but it is no easy read, being written for an academic audience. Earlier this year Yates published a condensation of his work in the series Cherokee Chapbooks, called Old Souls in a New World: The Secret History of the Cherokee Indians (Panther’s Lodge). This publication has no footnotes, bibliography or pictures; those must be sought in Old World Roots and scholarly articles...

The process of coastal groundwater discharge makes it possible for humans to collect drinkable freshwater directly where it emerges at the coast of the island... "The porous volcanic soils quickly absorb rain, resulting in a lack of streams and rivers," Lipo said. "Fortunately, water beneath the ground flows downhill and ultimately exits the ground directly at the point at which the porous subterranean rock meets the ocean. When tides are low, this results in the flow of freshwater directly into the sea. Humans can thus take advantage of these sources of freshwater by capturing the water at these points." ...He...

Divers have discovered the wreck a Chinese warship a century after it was lost to the depths of the Yellow sea. Researchers had been hunting for several years before they found the incredible 'time capsule' of a wreck. It was identified thanks to a gold-gilded wooden plaque with Jingyuan written on it. It went down in the Yellow sea during the first Sino-Japanese war in September 1894, with only seven out of 270 crewmen surviving. Experts managed to pinpoint the site by looking through historical documents and photographs taken by a a Japanese sailor before it sank.

The team believe the ship was returning from India when it sank sometime between 1575 and 1625. This was at the height of Portugal's spice trade with Asia. Chinese porcelain from the late 16th and early 17th centuries was also among the wreck, as were bronze artillery pieces and cowry shells - a currency used in the slave trade. Cascais municipal council said the ship was found at the start of September while dredging the mouth of the Tagus river, which runs past the resort town through Lisbon.

As American scientists prepare to announce the location of the remains of Endeavour, a battle is expected over whether Britain, the United States or Australia gets the wreck of James Cook's famed ship. A team of marine archaeologists from Australia and the US said they believe they may have found the resting place of the ship – used by the British explorer on a voyage of discovery to Australia in 1768 - 25 years after beginning their search. They are expected to announce on Friday 'one or two' sites in Newport Harbour in Rhode Island, where the Endeavour was scuttled...

Gulliver’s Travels is a political and social satire by Jonathan Swift, published in 1726.Part IV of this fictional work is an account of Lemuel Gulliver’s voyage to the country of the Houyhnhms, in which he discovers two animal populations.One comprises horses, the articulate Houyhnhms, and the other is a subservient humanoid group called Yahoos.“Swift gave quite a detailed description of what the Yahoos looked like, how they acted and what they ate,” said Dr. Argue, a visiting fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University.“As I read about the Native American descriptions of the sasquatch...

One day in a spring, an elderly man walked alone on a stone road lined by young willows in Xuzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province. At the end of the road was a museum that few people have heard of. A Chinese theology professor says the first Christmas is depicted in the stone relief from the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). In the picture above a woman and a man are sitting around what looks like a manger, with allegedly "the three wise men" approaching from the left side, holding gifts, "the shepherd" following them, and "the assassins" queued...

Catalogue of planetary maps, past and present, highlights our evolving view of our Solar System September 21, 2018 Catalogue of planetary maps, past and present, highlights our evolving view of our Solar System A catalogue that provides an overview of over 2,200 planetary maps produced worldwide between 1600 and 2018 was presented today at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2018 in Berlin. The catalogue has been produced by Henrik Hargitai, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (Hungary), and Mateusz Pitura, from the University of Wroclaw (Poland).“Production of planetary maps started in Europe in the 1600s. It expanded to the...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE Part XI: War in Ancient India   Accounts of Foreign Travelers to IndiaComing to later times we have the account of Hiuen Tsang who notices a fleet of 3,000 sail belonging to the King os Assam. There is inscriptional evidence of the possession of a fleet under the Kakatiyas and the Cholas in South india. Marco Polo testifies to the huge size...

In 2nd century AD Egypt, the legendary Greco-Roman scientist Claudius Ptolemy put the extent of the known world onto paper. From his home in Alexandria, he gathered reports from sailors who had made perilous journeys to India and possibly beyond. Though details were sparse, a voyager named Alexander described a distant port called Kattigara on the Sinus Magna (Great Gulf) to the east of the Golden Chersonese peninsula - widely considered to be mainland Malaysia. Halfway across the world around the same time, the bustling seaport Oc Eo was part of the flourishing Funan Kingdom, the earliest known pre-Angkorian civilisation...