Archaeologica.org

A wooden boat in saltwater, below crustacean attack, will survive Min as salt water preserves timber, unlike fresh water.

I don't koow about that, Dig. It seems to me that every Roman or Greek shipwreck they find is nothing but a pile of amphorae left on the bottom.
For some reason the only exceptions seem to be the Black Sea and the Baltic.

It depends on marine borers as much as anything else Min, they can destroy timber under water like do termites above. Several ships have been recovered in UK waters in recent years in very good states of preservation, usually where silt deposits have protected the remains from the marine life.

Minimalist wrote:I don't koow about that, Dig. It seems to me that every Roman or Greek shipwreck they find is nothing but a pile of amphorae left on the bottom.
For some reason the only exceptions seem to be the Black Sea and the Baltic.

Min those seas - at the bottom - have almost no oxygen. That's why wooden artifacts are so well preserved.

Beagle wrote:

Minimalist wrote:I don't koow about that, Dig. It seems to me that every Roman or Greek shipwreck they find is nothing but a pile of amphorae left on the bottom.
For some reason the only exceptions seem to be the Black Sea and the Baltic.

Min those seas - at the bottom - have almost no oxygen. That's why wooden artifacts are so well preserved.

That and good old fashioned mud-deep mud thick mud cold mud.

Beagle wrote:
Min those seas - at the bottom - have almost no oxygen. That's why wooden artifacts are so well preserved.

There are many such 'pockets' in the seabed. Worldwide. They'll yield some remarkable finds eventually.

Only if someone goes looking.

Minimalist wrote:
Only if someone goes looking.

Only WHEN someone goes looking.
It's just a matter of time, imo.

Dives of more than 200 feet would be highly complex expeditions...not to mention costly.

Minimalist wrote:Dives of more than 200 feet would be highly complex expeditions...not to mention costly.

So was the moonshot.

So we need the likes of Bob Ballard to develop and refine those technologies.

The technology is available and has been for some years, what is needed now is the sites and the money.

Digit wrote:The technology is available and has been for some years,

That is debatable, imo. What is available is still very crude. With a lot of room for improvement.
If I'd compare the state of submarine archaeology technology with the history of photographic technology development Bob Ballard now works with a Box Brownie...

what is needed now is the sites and the money.

Absolutely. A matter of time. Big bucks are needed. Meaning: (supra-)governmental financing. Ergo: submarine archaeology needs to be put on the map. In the headlines.

Stoke up the fires, guys 'n gals!

It may be crude RS but if it's not used it will not improve, man didn't wait for a 747, he worked towards it, the Apollos were crude, but by and large they did the job.

Brownies were the best thing that could happen to photography: it popularized photography, which, to this day, drives it's development, so Brownies are in no small part responsible for the state of the art today.

So let's push the development of build-it-yourself submarines. Combining adventure with science, technology, and archaeology.

If you look at maps of global population distribution you see that 90% of the people live within 50 miles of the sea. That was no different back in the pleistocene. But sea levels have risen. Driving coastlines back, on average, some 50 to 150 miles. It follows that if there are any significant remnants of human cultural activity predating the holocene, they will be offshore of today's coastlines.
The chances that that's where they are, are 10 to 1, imo.

Rokcet Scientist wrote:Brownies were the best thing that could happen to photography: it popularized photography, which, to this day, drives it's development, so Brownies are in no small part responsible for the state of the art today.

So let's push the development of build-it-yourself submarines. Combining adventure with science, technology, and archaeology.

If you look at maps of global population distribution you see that 90% of the people live within 50 miles of the sea. That was no different back in the pleistocene. But sea levels have risen. Driving coastlines back, on average, some 50 to 150 miles. It follows that if there are any significant remnants of human cultural activity predating the holocene, they will be offshore of today's coastlines.
The chances that that's where they are, are 10 to 1, imo.

You guys are right. Much truth of pre LGM cultures lays underwater, near the past coastline.

Texas has a version of this:

http://www.staa.org/event-mcfadden-1991/beach.html