The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins -- and cannons to fend off pirates. But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago. Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia. "If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.NamdebDiamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week. The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work.
Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia. The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I stillam."
Noli's
original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb's offshore
explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck,
even learning to dive.
After the discovery, he
brought in Bruno Werz, an expert in the field, to help research the
wreck. Noli has studied maritime artifacts with Werz, who was one of
his instructors at the University of Cape Town.
Judging from the notables
depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins, and the type of
cannons and navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late
1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco de Gama and Columbus were
plying the waters of the New World.
"Based on the goods they
were carrying, it's almost certain that it dates from that time," said
John Broadwater, chief archaeologist at theU.S. National......
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Ancient tombs found near obelisk
Early humans 'followed coast'
Stone age mass graves reveal green Sahara
The African foundations of New York
Witchcraft legalised in Zimbabwe
The Mysteries of the Dogan People
Humans, Reptilians and The Origins of the Gods
The Memories of a Distant Star (Sirius)
Comparison of Four African Creation Myths
Secrets of Great Zimbabwe
