LEVITHA, GREECE—According to a Proto Thema report, five ancient Greek shipwrecks containing amphoras have been discovered at the bottom of the eastern Aegean Sea, near the small island of Levitha. These are the first ships documented by a team from the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, which plans to explore the area's isolated islands over the next three years to identify and record wrecked vessels. One of the ships, dating to just before the mid-third century B.C., was laden with amphoras from Carthage, Phoenicia, and the Aegean islands of Knidos, Kos, and Rhodes. The other wrecks contained cargoes dating from the second century B.C. through the second century A.D. Archaeologists also recovered an 881-pound granite anchor pole--the largest ever found in the Aegean--that likely belonged to a massive ship from the sixth century B.C. To read about a Greek merchant ship recently found in the Black Sea, go to “Ancient Shipwreck,” one of ARCHAEOLOGY’S Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.
Ancient Shipwrecks Discovered in the Aegean
News August 8, 2019
Recommended Articles
Digs & Discoveries January/February 2018
Bronze Beauty
Artifacts March 1, 2011
Lego Antikythera Mechanism
It took Andrew Carol 30 days to build a working model of the Antikythera Mechanism—the ancient Greek world's most sophisticated astrological instrument. The original device, dating to the second century B.C., consists of bronze gears. Carol used Legos.
Digs & Discoveries September/October 2024
Cosmic Ray Calendar
-
Features July/August 2019
Place of the Loyal Samurai
On the beaches and in the caves of a small Micronesian island, archaeologists have identified evocative evidence of one of WWII’s most brutal battles
-
Letter from England July/August 2019
Building a Road Through History
6,000 years of life on the Cambridgeshire landscape has been revealed by a massive infrastructure project
(Highways England, courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure) -
Artifacts July/August 2019
Bronze Age Beads
(Courtesy Carlos Odriozola) -
Digs & Discoveries July/August 2019
You Say What You Eat
(Courtesy David Frayer, University of Kansas; Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien)