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Marine archaeologists have found the partial remains of a
2,000-year-old skeleton while conducting an excavation at the
Antikythera shipwreck, the famous site that yielded the
freakishly-advanced Antikythera Mechanism. Incredibly, the ancient
remains could still contain traces of DNA.
The remains, found just three weeks ago, were discovered by
researchers from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Working at a depth of 165
feet (50 meters), the archaeologists found the partial human skeleton
buried under two feet (0.5 meters) of sand and busted bits of ancient
pottery. The excavation yielded a human skull (including a jaw and
teeth) legs, ribs, and the long arm bones.
The researchers will now see if they can extract DNA from the
2,000-year-old remains. Should they succeed, it will be the first time
that scientists have pulled DNA from such an old underwater sample. The
remains are surprisingly well preserved, and experts are encouraged that
genetic material still exists within the bones.
The Antikythera
shipwreck is a fascinating site, and archaeologists are eager to learn
more about the ship, its cargo, and ill-fated crew. Prior to sinking
sometime around 65 B.C., this impressive ship transported luxury
items—including the oddly computer-like Antikythera Mechanism— from the
eastern Mediterranean to other parts of Europe, likely Rome. The ship
was large, consisting of multiple levels, and with many people on board.
Evidence suggests the ship broke apart after a storm sent it careening
into rocks, causing it to sink quickly.
Preliminary analysis of the skeleton suggests the individual was a
young man. Should DNA analysis be successful, scientists could learn
details such as his hair and eye color, and even his ancestral and
geographic origin. Other portions of the skeleton are still embedded in
the seafloor, and the archaeologists plan a return visit to collect the
rest.
“Archaeologists study the human past through the objects our
ancestors created,” noted Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with
WHOI, in a statement “With the Antikythera Shipwreck, we can now connect
directly with this person who sailed and died aboard the Antikythera
ship.”
It’s exceptionally rare to find such ancient physical remains
underwater. The Antikythera wreck was discovered in 1900 by sponge
divers, and all visible artifacts were soon collected. Archaeologists
suspect that much of the ship’s cargo still remains buried under the
sediment. Recent excavations at the site have produced various
artifacts, including large anchors, and a “war dolphin”—a
teardrop-shaped lead weight that was used by the ancient Greeks as a
defensive weapon to smash hostile ships. By George Dvorsky With many thanks to Gizmondo
The long-lost ship of British polar explorer Sir John Franklin, HMS
Terror, has been found in pristine condition at the bottom of an Arctic
bay, researchers have said, in a discovery that challenges the accepted
history behind one of polar exploration’s deepest mysteries. HMS Terror and Franklin’s flagship, HMS Erebus, were abandoned in
heavy sea ice far to the north of the eventual wreck site in 1848,
during the Royal Navy explorer’s doomed attempt to complete the Northwest Passage.
All 129 men on the Franklin expedition died, in the worst disaster to
hit Britain’s Royal Navy in its long history of polar exploration.
Search parties continued to look for the ships for 11 years after they
disappeared, but found no trace, and the fate of the missing men
remained an enigma that tantalised generations of historians,
archaeologists and adventurers. Now that mystery seems to have been solved by a combination of
intrepid exploration – and an improbable tip from an Inuk crewmember.
On Sunday, a team from the charitable Arctic Research Foundation
manoeuvred a small, remotely operated vehicle through an open hatch and
into the ship to capture stunning images that give insight into life
aboard the vessel close to 170 years ago. “We have successfully entered the mess hall, worked our way into a
few cabins and found the food storage room with plates and one can on
the shelves,” Adrian Schimnowski, the foundation’s operations director,
told the Guardian by email from the research vessel Martin Bergmann.
“We spotted two wine bottles, tables and empty shelving. Found a desk
with open drawers with something in the back corner of the drawer.”
The well-preserved wreck matches the Terror in several key aspects,
but it lies 60 miles (96km) south of where experts have long believed
the ship was crushed by ice, and the discovery may force historians to
rewrite a chapter in the history of exploration. The 10-member Bergmann crew found the massive shipwreck, with her
three masts broken but still standing, almost all hatches closed and
everything stowed, in the middle of King William Island’s uncharted
Terror Bay on 3 September.
After finding nothing in an early morning search, the research vessel
was leaving the bay when a grainy digital silhouette emerged from the
depths on the sounder display on the bridge of the Bergmann.
“Everyone was up in the wheelhouse by that point in awe, really,”
said Daniel McIsaac, 23, who was at the helm when the research vessel
steamed straight over the sunken wreck. Since, then, the discovery team has spent more than a week quietly
gathering images of the vessel and comparing them with the Terror’s 19th
century builders’ plans, which match key elements of the sunken vessel.
At first, the Terror seemed to be listing at about 45 degrees to
starboard on the seabed. But on the third dive with a remotely operated
vehicle, “we noticed the wreck is sitting level on the sea bed floor not
at a list - which means the boat sank gently to the bottom,”
Schimnowski said Monday.
About 24 metres (80ft) down, the wreck is in perfect condition, with
metal sheeting that reinforced the hull against sea ice clearly visible
amid swaying kelp. A long, heavy rope line running through a hole in the ship’s deck
suggests an anchor line may have been deployed before the Terror went
down.
If true, that sets up the tantalising possibility that British
sailors re-manned the vessel after she was abandoned at the top of
Victoria Strait in a desperate attempt to escape south. One crucial detail in the identification of the ship is a wide exhaust pipe rising above the outer deck.
It is in the precise location where a smokestack rose from the
locomotive engine which was installed in the Terror’s belly to power the
ship’s propeller through closing sea ice, said Schimnowski in a phone
interview.
The ship’s bell lies on its side on the deck, close to where the sailor on watch would have have swung the clapper to mark time.
And the majestic bowsprit, six metres (20ft) long, still points
straight out from the bow as it did when the crew tried to navigate
through treacherous ice that eventually trapped Erebus and Terror on 12
September 1846. The wreck is in such good condition that glass panes are still in
three of four tall windows in the stern cabin where the ship’s
commander, Captain Francis Crozier, slept and worked, Schimnowski added. “This vessel looks like it was buttoned down tight for winter and it
sank,” he said. “Everything was shut. Even the windows are still intact.
If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out,
it would probably float.”
The Arctic Research Foundation was set up by Jim Balsillie, a
Canadian tech tycoon and philanthropist, who co-founded Research in
Motion, creator of the Blackberry. Balsillie, who also played a key role in planning the expedition,
proposed a theory to explain why it seems both Terror and Erebus sank
far south of where they were first abandoned. “This discovery changes history,” he told the Guardian. “Given the
location of the find [in Terror Bay] and the state of the wreck, it’s
almost certain that HMS Terror was operationally closed down by the
remaining crew who then re-boarded HMS Erebus and sailed south where
they met their ultimate tragic fate.”
The 21st-century search for Franklin’s expedition was launched by
Canadian former prime minister Stephen Harper as part of a broader plan
to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and promote development of
its resources – including vast reserves of oil and natural gas, which
will be easier to exploit as the Arctic warms and sea ice disappears.
Parks Canada
underwater archeologists have led the mission since it began in 2008.
Now they must confirm the wreck is Terror, either by examining the
foundation’s images or visiting the site themselves. With the first
winter snow already falling in the High Arctic, Terror Bay will soon be
encased in thick sea ice. The latest discovery was made two years and a day after Canadian marine archeologists found the wreck of Erebus in the same area of eastern Queen Maud gulf where Inuit oral history had long said a large wooden ship sank.
The same stories described startled Inuit stumbling upon a large dead
man in a dark room on the vessel, with a big smile. Experts have
suggested that may have been a rictus smile, or evidence that the man
had suffered from scurvy.
Parks Canada archeologists found Erebus standing in just 11 meters of
ocean. Sea ice had taken a large bite out her stern, and more than a
century of storm-driven waves had scattered a trove of artifacts around
the site.
So far, archaeologists have brought up the bell from Franklin’s flagship, a cannon, ceramic plate and other objects.
Inuit knowledge was also central to finding the Terror Bay wreck, but
in a more mysterious way. Crewman Sammy Kogvik, 49, of Gjoa Haven, had
been on the Bergmann for only a day when, chatting with Schimnowski on
the bridge, he told a bizarre story.
About six years ago, Kogvik said, he and a hunting buddy were headed
on snowmobiles to fish in a lake when they spotted a large piece of
wood, which looked like a mast, sticking out of the sea ice covering
Terror Bay. In a phone interview, Kogvik said he stopped that day to get a few
snapshots of himself hugging the wooden object, only to discover when he
got home that the camera had fallen out his pocket.
Kogvik resolved to keep the encounter secret, fearing the missing
camera was an omen of bad spirits, which generations of Inuit have
believed began to wander King William Island after Franklin and his men
perished.
When Schimnowski heard Kogvik’s story, he didn’t dismiss it, as Inuit
testimony has been so often during the long search for Franklin’s
ships.
Instead, the Bergmann’s crew agreed to make a detour for Terror Bay
on their way to join the main search group aboard the Canadian Coast
Guard icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Royal Canadian Navy’s
HMCS Shawinigan, at the north end of Victoria Strait.
That is where the only known record of the Franklin expedition
provided coordinates for what experts now call the point of abandonment.
A scrawled note dated 25 April 1848, and concealed in a stone cairn
at Victory Point on northern King William Island, said Erebus and Terror
had been abandoned three days earlier, stuck in sea ice.
Crozier was in command of “the officers and crews, consisting of 105
souls”, because Franklin had died on 11 June 1847, the note continued,
“and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9
officers and 15 men”.
Crozier and Captain James Fitzjames signed the note, which had what
seemed a hurried postscript, scrawled upside down in the top right
corner: “and start on to-morrow 26th for Back’s Fish River”.
Survivors apparently hoped to follow the river – now known as Back
river – south to safety at a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading outpost.
None made it, and for generations, the accepted historical narrative
has described a brutal death march as the Royal Navy mariners tried to
walk out of the Arctic, dying along the way. Now Franklin experts will have to debate whether at least some of the
dying sailors instead mustered incredible strength, fighting off
hunger, disease and frostbite, in a desperate attempt to sail home.
Most people have heard of this famous mutiny. It has been made into movies at least four times, and for television as well. The picture of The Bounty, above, is a reconstruction.
They do not look up to much — just some
scraps of hair stored in a dirty old tobacco tin. But the historic
pigtails are about to spark a piece of detective work to unlock one of
the last mysteries of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Seven of the 10 pigtails are said to have belonged to the mutineers who rose up with Fletcher Christian against William Bligh.
The
others supposedly belonged to three of the Polynesian women who sailed
with the mutineers from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island in September 1789.
Their
identity has never been proven, however. Britain’s leading experts in
forensic genetics have joined the effort to prove that the scraps of
hair really are a link with one of the most infamous episodes in British
naval history.
Using the latest DNA testing techniques, the team
at King’s College London hopes to establish whether the DNA in the hairs
can be directly linked with those of the mutineers’ families.
Disaffected
crewmen led by Christian seized control of HMS Bounty in the South
Pacific and set Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen adrift in the ship’s launch.
Some
of the mutineers settled on Tahiti, where they were captured in 1791,
and the others on Pitcairn Island, where the last was found alive 1808.
Their descendants still live on the island today.
The pigtails,
given to the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre in California in 2013 were
part of a collection which included a handkerchief said to have belonged
to Sarah, daughter of the mutineer William McCoy.
“We need to know the truth — as much as humanly possible — about these locks of hair,” said centre director Herbert Ford.
“If
the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticates that it
is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on
Pitcairn Island in 1790, it will be the only tangible physical evidence
of their having existed.”
There is only one known mutineer grave on Pitcairn, that of John Adams.
One
of the problems facing the King’s College team is that hair does not
contain nuclear DNA, which is only to be found in hair roots. It does,
however, contain mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down the female
line.
The team will use next generation sequencing to analyse DNA.
King’s College’s Denise Syndercombe-Court said: “First, we will have to
determine whether we can recover mitochondrial DNA of appropriate
quality to be analysed. ”
Finding a DNA sample to compare it
against will be even more difficult. That will involve finding a
maternal ancestor of the mutineers and then tracing down through the
female line to a living descendant.
