Thread by @Fall_of_Civ_Pod

In 1982, a Turkish sponge diver Mehmed Mehmed Çakir was diving for sponges off the coast of Uluburun in southwestern Turkey.

He was about 44m deep when he came across a strange clutter of objects, half-buried in the silt & sand.

He knew that he had discovered something ancient, and he quickly alerted archaeologists.

But he couldn't have guessed just how ancient these artefacts were, or how important they would prove to be.

Further investigation revealed that Çakir had discovered an ancient shipwreck, dating back to the Bronze Age.

Archaeologists put the date of its construction around the year 1,300 BC, making it over 3,300 years old.

The ship was built of Lebanese cedarwood, between 15 and 16 meters long, with 24 stone anchors.

It apparently sunk due to a collision with the rocky coast, perhaps driven onto the rocks in a storm.

What followed was one of archaeology's most ambitious salvage operations. Eleven consecutive campaigns, each 3-4 months long, took place from 1984 to 1994. These totalled 22,413 dives.

And the steep typography of the wreck's resting place posed a great challenge to divers.

As the wreck sunk, it shattered and spilled fragments and cargo down the steep slope of the sea bottom.

Artefacts have been found ranging from 44m to 61m deep.

But it's the range and variety of these goods that really astonished the divers.

The origins of the objects onboard range from northern Europe to Africa, as far west as Sicily and Sardinia, & as far east as Mesopotamia.

The ship contained 10 tons of copper and 1 ton of tin in so-called oxhide ingots (enough to smelt 11 tons of Bronze).

One jar was filled with glass beads, while many of them were full of terebinth resin (used as a wine preservative and medicine).

Also among the cargo were 175 glass ingots of cobalt blue turquoise & lavender, as well as logs of ivory, ostrich eggs, tortoise shells, beads of amber, quartz and gold, arrows and spears, oil lamps, the tusks of elephants and a dozen hippopotamus teeth.

One artefact was crucial to dating the craft: an amulet from Egypt inscribed with the name of the famous Queen Nefertiti.

From this, alongside analysis of the ship's brands, archaeologists knew that the ship must have set sail at least after the reign of this queen.

There was also a large variety of organic material found in the many jars found onboard, which scientists were able to identify using modern methods. These included:

- Almonds and pine nuts
- Figs
- Olives
- Grapes
- Safflower
- Black cumin
- Coriander
- Pomegranates

From all of this, archaeologists have been able to paint a picture of how trade tied together the kingdoms of the late Bronze Age.

We see from this wreck that a lively exchange of goods took place, and that these societies were in many ways as interconnected as ours today.

The 3,300 year old Uluburun wreck shows how long humans have crossed vast distances, just to meet people in faraway lands & exchange goods.

It reminds us how this human instinct has driven so much of our progress, & also what was lost in the violent collapse of the Bronze Age.

Thanks for listening! You can see more of the above photos, and read more about the Uluburun wreck and the effort to salvage it, on the website of the Institute for Nautical Archaeology (INA) here: nauticalarch.org/projects/ulubu…

The Uluburun shipwreck is discussed further in episode 2 of the Fall of Civilizations podcast: The Bronze Age Collapse.

Check it out here if you're interested:

YouTube:

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2fp6O8…

iTunes: itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/fal…

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