This ancient Greek ship is the oldest intact shipwreck ever discovered

(credit: Black Sea MAP 2018)
An archaeological survey expedition called the Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project discovered a shipwreck about 80km (49.7 miles) from the Bulgarian city of Burgas. A pair of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) made a 3D map of the site and took a sample of wood for radiocarbon dating, which suggest that the ship was built around 2,400 years ago.
It looks surprisingly good for its age; its hull is still intact, its cargo is still piled in the hold, and the rowing benches on its deck look like they’re ready for the crew to pick up an oar and get to work. Truly ancient wrecks like this one usually leave behind only a scattering of amphorae, ballast stones, or broken pottery on the seafloor to tell the tale. But the depths of the Black Sea have turned out to be like a time capsule for ancient shipwrecks.
In the Black
The Black Sea’s depth averages 1,253m (4,111ft), but the deepest places on the seafloor lie 2,212m (7,257ft) beneath the waves. There are plenty of much deeper places in the world’s oceans, but the Black Sea is unique because its deeper layers, which flow in from the bottom of the Mediterranean, don’t mix with the oxygenated waters of the surface, which pour in from rivers. Most of the deep sea floor in the Black Sea is completely anoxic, making it a bad environment for most of the microbial species that would normally break down the wood of a shipwreck. So not much has happened to the ancient Greek trading ship as it has rested on its side in the anoxic darkness 2,000m (1.2 miles) below the surface, even as two and a half millennia of history passed in the world above.
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