ISTANBUL, Turkey (3 Nov 2000) -- Famed explorer Robert Ballard says he's still numb after discovering an almost perfectly preserved wreck of a ship that sank 1,500 years ago in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. The ship is about 1000 feet (300 meters) down in water where there's no oxygen, a situation that's fatal to the wood boring organisms that would normally devour a wooden shipwreck. "Basically wood borers are opportunistic organisms," said Ballard at a Thursday news conference at the National Geographic Society. "When the food is supplied they multiply very rapidly and they eat the wood supply and then they literally die at the dinner table." Dealing with such a well-preserved ship presents a problem, Ballard said. In the past, shipwrecks of that age had all the wood eaten away and only the contents remained. "We don't know what to do" to study it, he said. "I think we're still numb." He said a meeting is scheduled for next month to consider how best to deal with the ship. The ship is about 45 feet long, with a 35-foot tall standing mast. Three other nearby wrecks found nearby are less well preserved. They were trading vessels believed to date from the Roman or Byzantine period, probably built between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. All three contained large quantities of terracotta jars that carried wine, oil or other liquids. The carrot-shaped design of the jars was used by artisans in ancient Sinop, Ward said. Deep-diving robots view wreck Scientists from the National Geographic Society discovered the four wrecks last month with the aid of three tethered, deep-diving robots. "What we saw was absolutely astounding," said nautical archaeologist Cheryl Ward. The ship's mast is still standing and stanchions rest nearby, held together with wooden pegs. "No archaeologist has even been able to study anything like this," she said. "We have never been able to look at the deck of an ancient ship." | | Carbon dating of the ship's wood indicated it was 1,500 years old, dating from between 410 and 520 A.D. "We're already starting to ask new questions about ancient seafaring practices and shipbuilding, such as, How did they fasten the frames to the planking?" said Ward. Ships in those times were built "skin first," with the outside structure crafted before the inside was filled in. "It's the complete opposite of how we do it today," Ward said. No cargo was visible in the wreck, so the ship's purpose is not yet known. Pre-flood site found "Thanks to the excellent collaborative assistance from Turkish authorities, we have had a tantalizing peek at the wealth of historical information the Black Sea holds," Ballard said. The expedition was supported by the National Geographic Society, the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Expedition participants came from the Institute for Exploration, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole Marine Systems Inc., the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in College Station, Texas, and Marr Vessel Management Ltd. Earlier, the same team of scientists found what they said appear to be remnants of an ancient site where humans might have lived, along the submerged coastline west of Sinop, Turkey. The find included an apparent man-made building foundation built when the area was dry land, nearly 8,000 years ago, before a cataclysmic flood. Items found included wooden logs and stones that appeared to have been carved into blocks by human hands. |
