Ancient 2,600-year-old shipwreck is salvaged from seabed in historic find opening up world of long-lost civilisation

A SHIPWRECK from the Iron Age has been recovered from the seabed decades after it was first discovered, offering experts a gateway into an ancient civilisation.

The Mazarrón II is 2,600 years old and has been successfully salvaged from its watery grave off the southeastern coast of Spain by archaeologists.

Officials say that it will help them explore more about the long-lost civilisation of Phoenicia which was established on the eastern Mediterranean coast between 1500 and 300 BCE.

This is what we now know to be Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.

The Phoenician shipwreck was first found in 1994 in the waters of Murcia, Spain’s Ministry of Culture revealed.

It was one of two wrecks found near the town of Mazarrón, which they have both been named after.

Mazarrón I was located in 1993 and salvaged in June 1995 to go on display at Spain’s National Museum of Underwater Aracheology in 2005.

But, Carlos de Juan, the director of the excavation project of the second shipwreck revealed in a video shared by the Univeristy of Valencia why this latest excavation is so key.

He explained that Mazarrón II has long excited experts due to how well it has been preserved.

The ship measures 8.10 meters in length and 2.25 meters at its widest point.

It is one of only a few from that era that is still intact and the Phoenicians have long been considered a lost civilisation until the 20th Century.

This is despite having succeeded with trade and developing one of the first forms of the alphabet inspiring ancient Greece and Rome.

In the video, de Juan explained how so much more can be learned about the Phoenicians and their culture with very little known about naval construction at the time.

“Therefore, this wreck is a very important contribution to this area of study,” he said adding that parts of the shipwreck are similar to designs seen in other parts of the Levant while other elements are entirely unique and different.

“We are facing a wreck of the Phoenician era that practically preserves its naval architecture with all the carpentry,” he said.

“From the point of view of the investigation, although there is good knowledge of the construction of Greek naval ships in archaic times, that more southern side of the Western Mediterranean we have no data for.

“Therefore this wreck is a very important contribution to this type of study.

He added that the Phoenicians will have left “their own mark, a little fingerprint, in shipbuilding” which his team is going to explore.

‘DELICATE WORK’

The University of Valencia and Spain’s Culture Ministry in Murcia collaborated on the project with a team of 14 experts working to salvage the wreck.

The excavation took almost two months after it began on September 13 and ended on November 7 with divers carrying parts of the wreck to the surface piece by piece.

It had to be disassembled underwater into 22 pieces to be recovered safely in supports that were made to match the shape of each fragment to carefully transport it to the surface.

“It has been delicate work, but mechanical. Slow, but equivalent to what the team had already done before in other scenarios of extracting archaeological remains,” de Juan told El Cronista.

“The ship has now the consistency of a cake: it can stand if lying down but crumbles if we tilt it a little,” de Juan said.

This was phase one of the project – Now the team is working to restore the materials and preserve them in the National Museum of Underwater Archeology.

The University of Valencia said: “This specialized centre will continue the work of restoration and study, ensuring the preservation and analysis of this priceless historical achievement.”

This process is thought to take a number of years.