bogeyman
1st April 2022, 06:56
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-shipwreck-changes-what-we-know-about-the-early-islamic-period-1.10708784
In 2005, two amateur divers from Ma’agan Michael, a kibbutz on Israel’s northern coast, spotted old timber, pottery fragments and ballast stones at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. They did alert the authorities, but the sea quickly covered the remains with sand again, and the shipwreck was lost.
Happily, it was rediscovered a decade later by researchers from the University of Haifa, who realized that it’s a 1,400-year-old wreck of a merchantman from the early Islamic period. Labeled the “Ma’agan Michael B ship,” this large, well-preserved vessel is one of the major discoveries in maritime archaeology in years, and may change the perception of a period thought of as a dark age, marked only by war and international isolation.
“We have very few shipwrecks from this period and they are mostly smaller, coastal vessels,” says Deborah Cvikel, a professor of nautical archaeology at the University of Haifa who leads the underwater excavation. “Here we have a large, nicely built merchantman that could brave the open seas, and that’s one of the things that make it unique.”
History is constantly being re written, sometimes falsely, other times based upon discoveries such has these.
In 2005, two amateur divers from Ma’agan Michael, a kibbutz on Israel’s northern coast, spotted old timber, pottery fragments and ballast stones at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. They did alert the authorities, but the sea quickly covered the remains with sand again, and the shipwreck was lost.
Happily, it was rediscovered a decade later by researchers from the University of Haifa, who realized that it’s a 1,400-year-old wreck of a merchantman from the early Islamic period. Labeled the “Ma’agan Michael B ship,” this large, well-preserved vessel is one of the major discoveries in maritime archaeology in years, and may change the perception of a period thought of as a dark age, marked only by war and international isolation.
“We have very few shipwrecks from this period and they are mostly smaller, coastal vessels,” says Deborah Cvikel, a professor of nautical archaeology at the University of Haifa who leads the underwater excavation. “Here we have a large, nicely built merchantman that could brave the open seas, and that’s one of the things that make it unique.”
History is constantly being re written, sometimes falsely, other times based upon discoveries such has these.