By Yasmin Pascual Khalil
A sunken, wrecked ship for over 2,000 years is set to be excavated by a team of experts in the coming days up to May to investigate a possible link between Asia and Rome during primeval times. Led by Deborah Carlson, president of the institute of nautical archaeology at Texas A&M University, the team of archaeologists is expected to scuba-dive 110 feet down into the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka’s southeast coast.
The sunken ship was first discovered back in 2003 by a local fisherman, when he recovered ancient cargo like a small bench, footed table, glass ingots, and pottery. The shipwreck is anything but typical; it is made out of concrete with corroded metal bars. Team Leader Carlson explained, “I was quite skeptical when I first saw this wreck in 2010. I thought there’s no way this thing is ancient. But we took these wood samples and I was kind of floored when we got the results back.”
The ship is located at a strategic place that used to be an important port along the maritime ‘Silk Route’, which opened up in the Chinese-controlled territory (modern day, Vietnam, near Hanoi) and extended, through ports along the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Egypt and Nabataean lands on the north-eastern coast of the Red Sea.
Archaeologists hope that this discovery could lead them to understand the trade relations between Rome and Asia during olden times.”Everything is pretty broken but the wreck could fill a gap in the existing evidence for the trade that brought metals and exotic commodities like silk from Asia to the Roman world,” Carlson said.
For three years, Carlson has documented the wreck to some extent towards finding out details needed to legitimize the excavation. The team obtained three wood samples from the mound and got them tested. Impressed by the results, the team decided to go ahead with the mission. The mound had an area of approximately 20 by 20 feet.
Through this exploration, the team hopes to confirm the hypothesis that Sri Lanka was a key stop on the course from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean, a path that might have been used in the first century AD. The team also hopes to discover a good number of artifacts that may reveal trade items and maybe even closed ceramic jars with ancient botanical materials.
