Free Republic

Underwater archaeologists from the Soprintendenza del Mare Regione Siciliana, RPM Nautical Foundation, and the Society for the Documentation of Submerged Sites (SDSS), has recovered two more bronze warship rams at the site of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, a pivotal naval engagement during the First Punic War, that led to the victory of Rome over Carthage.The Battle of the Egadi Islands, also called the Battle of the Aegates, was a naval battle fought on the 10 March 241 BC off the western coast of the island of Sicily.Ancient authors recount the size and scale of the battle, which saw...

The remains of a sunken warship recently found in the Mediterranean Sea may confirm the site of a major ancient battle in which Rome trounced Carthage. The year was 241 B.C. and the players were the ascending Roman republic and the declining Carthaginian Empire, which was centered on the northernmost tip of Africa. The two powers were fighting for dominance in the Mediterranean in a series of conflicts called the Punic Wars. Archaeologists think the newly discovered remnants of the warship date from the final battle of the first Punic War, which allowed Rome to expand farther into the Western...

Naval archaeologists think they’ve found the only example of armor from Carthage to survive the destruction of the city-state by Rome in 146BC. The helmet, recovered from the site of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, northwest of Sicily, is dramatically different from the Celtic style worn across Europe, popularly known as a Roman helmet. It appears to have a nose guard, a broad brim protecting the back of the neck from ear to ear, and a high, narrow crest, said Dr Jeff Royal, director of archaeology at the RPM Nautical Foundation in Florida. Roman helmets, called montefortinos, are easily...

Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals...