I was checking some news at yahoo.com and I have found out that there was a golden coin recently discovered on a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck off Namibia's rough southern coast.Archaeologists are racing against the little time left to salvage the fortune in coins and items discovered.
The 16th-century "Portuguese trade vessel was found by chance this April as mine workers created an artificial sand wall with bulldozers to push back the sea for diamond dredging," Namibian archaeologist Dieter Noli told reporters invited to view the site.
The abundance of objects unearthed where the ship ran aground along Namibia's notorious Skeleton coast, where hundreds of vessels were wrecked over the centuries, has amazed even hardened experts.
Six bronze cannons, several tonnes of copper, huge elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, and a variety of weapons including swords, sabres and knives have all been tugged out of the beach sand.Over 2,300 gold coins weighing some 21 kilograms (46 pounds) and 1.5 kilograms of silver coins were found -- worth over 100 million dollars.About 70 per cent of the gold coins are Spanish, the rest Portuguese,some of them were minted in October 1525 in Portugal.
Under international maritime laws, a wreck and its treasures belong to the country where they were found, and all the coins are now locked in the vaults of the Bank of Namibia in Windhoek.
0 comments:
Post a Comment