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Wreck shows Odyssey may not be myth
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THE chance discovery of an ancient shipwreck in the middle of the Mediterranean appears to confirm that Hellenic mariners were capable of undertaking the epic journeys of Odysseus and other heroes.
Found 200 miles (320 km) from Cyprus between Rhodes and Alexandria and nearly two miles (3.2 km) beneath the surface, the Greek wreck destroys a view once held by some academics that ancient mariners shunned the open sea and stayed close to the coastline.
It's the deepest known ancient shipwreck ever located and shows that we tend to underestimate ancient peoples, said Brett A Phaneuf, of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology of Texas A&M University, who is helping to analyze the find.
As with so many spectacular archaeological finds, the wreck was found by accident. In early 1999, Nauticos Corporation, a deep-ocean exploration company based in Maryland in the US, was using a robot linked to a surface ship by a long cable to search for an Israeli submarine that had disappeared on her maiden voyage about 30 years earlier. Suddenly it illuminated an extensive cluster of amphorae, most of them intact.
The site was videotaped, but the discovery was kept secret until the submarine was found and the wreck had been analyzed by experts in the US, who believe that the ship was a Hellenic trader carrying wine and other items from the ancient trading centre of Rhodes and the nearby island of Kos to Alexandria, Egypt. (SD-Agencies)
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