Ancient ships are rewriting history. From Pharaoh Khufu’s 4,500-year-old vessel to a fleet hidden beneath Istanbul, these eight discoveries reveal daring voyages, lost trade routes, and mysteries the sea kept for centuries. Dive in and uncover the past!
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#History #Archaeology #Ships #Ocean #AncientHistory
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0:00 - Ancient Ships Rewrite Maritime History
4:10 - The Dokos Wreck Reveals Early Trade
6:28 - Uluburun and Bronze Age Trade
10:00 - The Kyrenia Ship and Its Lost Crew
12:53 - An Ancient Ship Preserved in the Black Sea
15:44 - Caligula’s Lost Ships of Lake Nemi
18:51 - The Belitung Ship and the Maritime Silk Road
21:08 - Istanbul’s Buried Fleet and Ancient Networks
Subscribe for more fascinating history.
Comment what you liked most from the video!
#History #Archaeology #Ships #Ocean #AncientHistory
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Ancient Ships Rewrite Maritime History
4:10 - The Dokos Wreck Reveals Early Trade
6:28 - Uluburun and Bronze Age Trade
10:00 - The Kyrenia Ship and Its Lost Crew
12:53 - An Ancient Ship Preserved in the Black Sea
15:44 - Caligula’s Lost Ships of Lake Nemi
18:51 - The Belitung Ship and the Maritime Silk Road
21:08 - Istanbul’s Buried Fleet and Ancient Networks
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LearningTranscript
00:00The sea holds more of humanity's secrets than any museum on land and it keeps them far more
00:06securely than any safe. It swept away ships along with the people, cargo, and all the secrets the
00:14sailors carried. Almost no wooden chests have survived to this day because the planks rot and
00:20get completely devoured by shipworms. From a majestic vessel, usually only a grain-shaped
00:27mound of debris remains swept by currents across the entire seafloor. But sometimes, after thousands
00:35upon thousands of years, the sea unexpectedly gives back a ship almost intact as if it had decided to
00:42reveal one of its secrets. And each time, a discovery like this shatters the conventional
00:48picture of what our distant ancestors were capable of. Textbooks have long portrayed ancient mariners
00:55as timid people who were afraid to venture far from the shore where land was still in sight.
01:02Eight ships from these discoveries say the exact opposite and their evidence is so compelling that
01:08it has become hard to dispute. And as we delve deeper into these stories, more of the typical image of
01:15a
01:15primitive past fades away. Some of them were even found beneath a pyramid. Others were found beneath a
01:23planned metro station and a third where no living person would ever be able to descend. But before we
01:30get into that, if you're new to our channel, hit that subscribe button and turn on the notification bell
01:36so you'll always stay updated on videos like this. The first story begins at the foot of the most famous
01:42structure on the planet where no one would ever think to look for a ship. In 1954, an Egyptian archaeologist
01:49cleared the sand away from the southern wall of the pyramid of Cheops. Beneath the sand, he discovered a row
01:59of
01:59massive limestone slabs tightly sealing a narrow pit carved directly into the rock. When one of the stone slabs
02:07was drilled into a thick cloud smelling of cedar trapped for 4,500 years burst forth from the darkness, inside
02:15lay a
02:16complete, dismantled ship of ferrohufu, known to the ancient Greeks as Cheops. The 1,224 parts were laid out in
02:24neat layers,
02:25and many of them bore markings that looked like assembly instructions. It took the restorer, Ahmed Yusef Mustafa, more than
02:3310 years
02:34to piece together this giant puzzle without a single drawing or blueprint. The assembled ship turned out to be over
02:4043 meters long,
02:41and throughout its entire structure, there wasn't a trace of a single iron nail. The planks made of Lebanon cedar
02:48were joined using
02:49mortise and tenon joints
02:51and lashed together from the inside with strong ropes, almost as if its hull were stitched together.
02:57The hull of the ship worked like a living organism because the wood expands when wet with water,
03:03and the ropes in turn become even tighter. According to the official version, it was a ritual boat in which
03:10the Pharaoh's soul was believed to sail across the heavens following the sun. Yet there are traces left on
03:16the wood that look like river water stains and marks left by taut ropes, which means the ship was still
03:22launched into the Nile. Perhaps it was an actual funerary boat that carried the king's body to the tomb,
03:29and only then was it hidden beneath the rock. What is even stranger is why there are oars on the
03:35ship but
03:36no masts, even though the Egyptians were highly skilled at sailing. That is why the ceremony involving
03:42this ship was brief and majestic, and it was likely performed only once in its lifetime. In the 1980s,
03:49they lowered a camera down there and saw planks that were severely damaged by beetles. In 2021,
03:56Pupu's entire ship was moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum using a special remote-controlled vehicle.
04:02The people who built the pyramids possessed shipbuilding skills at a level you wouldn't expect so far back in history.
04:10The next mystery looks like a crime without a body because there's a wreck site but the ship itself is
04:17gone.
04:18In 1975, the American explorer Peter Trocmorton was diving around the small island of Dokos in Greece.
04:25At that time, he was already famous for discovering the famous shipwreck at Cape Gilidonia on the
04:32southern coast of Turkey. At a depth of 15 to 30 meters, he found scattered clay jars but not a
04:40single
04:41plank from the ship's hull. The wood had completely vanished over the past millennia and the cargo remained
04:47lying on the seabed as if marking the scene of this ancient catastrophe. The age of these ceramics turned
04:53out to be over 4,000 years and scientists definitively linked them to the early bronze king. This is one
05:00of
05:00the oldest known shipwrecks to science, dating back to the time of the late pharaohs of the old kingdom.
05:08The actual excavations here were carried out by the Greek Institute of Marine Archaeology in the late 80s and early
05:1590s.
05:18Thousands of pieces of tableware, stone millstones, and heavy stone anchors with large holes were raised
05:24from the bottom during those years. Based on the weight of the anchors, scientists realized that the
05:31ship was relatively small. It looked more like a fishing or passenger boat rather than a grand ship.
05:38Also, among the discoveries were tools made of obsidian, a type of volcanic glass mined only on the
05:44distant island of Milos. Which means that, 4,000 years ago, people were already regularly transporting goods
05:53between the islands and coastal communities. Often, this era is depicted as a time of isolated
06:01scattered villages. But a small boat from Dokos shows a completely different picture.
06:07If an ordinary boat could carry such cargo, it means that maritime trade in the Aegean Sea
06:14was already an everyday occurrence back then. And if such a thing was merely part of everyday life,
06:21how much bolder were the voyages across vast distances that have left no trace behind today?
06:27The true scale of this trade was revealed at Cape Uluvurun in Turkey and it all began with the story
06:34of a simple sponge hunter. In 1982,
06:39Diver Mea Echaker described strange metal objects on the seabed to his captain that looked like flatbreads with ears.
06:47The captain had already seen drawings of such objects from archaeologists, so he immediately
06:53understood that they were talking about copper ingots from the Bronze Age. That was how a merchant ship
07:00was discovered, which sank around the late 14th century BC during the reign of Tutankhamun.
07:06The excavations were led by George Bass and Samal Pulak from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.
07:13The work lasted for 11 seasons, during which the divers made more than 22,000 dives.
07:19And at such depths, each person could only work for a few minutes.
07:25And there were about 10 tons of copper from Cyprus and 10 in the exact proportions needed to make bronze.
07:34This metal was enough for thousands of swords, spearheads, and tools for an entire kingdom back then.
07:42But what is most astonishing is the list of lands where the rest of the cargo of this small vessel
07:48came from.
07:49Baltic amber fossilized resin from the Baltic region.
07:53African ebony were precious dark wood, ivory tusks, gold from Egypt, and rare blue glass.
08:01Also lying there were resin for incense, ostrich eggshells, weapons of various origins, and even a wooden tablet.
08:10This folding writing tablet is centuries older than Homer's poems,
08:14where a similar object bearing a secret message first appeared in that era.
08:20Amid the treasures, they also discovered a golden scarab,
08:24a beetle-shaped amulet bearing the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
08:29This is one of the rarest finds of its kind.
08:32Goods from more than seven different cultures were brought together on a single ship,
08:38almost like a display shelf, for the entire ancient world.
08:42Who this cargo was intended for remains unknown to this day,
08:46but its composition resembles the lists of royal gifts from the diplomatic correspondence of that era.
08:54According to one theory, it wasn't merely an ordinary merchant ship,
08:58but a vessel carrying gifts from one ruler to another.
09:03If this is true, what we have before us is diplomatic mail from the Bronze Age that never reached its
09:09destination.
09:10That makes it clear why swords and jewelry from different cultures were found together on the ship.
09:17Because after all, nobles traveled with their chosen companions and guards.
09:24Just a century and a half after this, this entire seafaring civilization would collapse almost simultaneously.
09:34Cities would burn, trade routes would empty, and the Mediterranean would sink into a period of deep silence for centuries.
09:42The ship from Uluburun became a quick snapshot of a world that didn't yet realize it was already living in
09:49its final decades.
09:51Do you think our own global trade could also collapse as quickly as it did 3,000 years ago?
10:00While you ponder your answer, let's head over to the shores of Cyprus, where a ship managed to sail the
10:07seas twice.
10:09In 1965, the Cypriot diver Andreas Cariolo discovered the mound of Amporas underwater near the city of Kairiña.
10:19He lost its exact location and only found it again after countless patient diving attempts.
10:26Them though excavations were led by Michael Katseff from the University of Pennsylvania.
10:32And at the end of the 60s, the ship was raised to the surface.
10:36The ship sank in 1910, approximately 300 years before Christ,
10:42during a turbulent era of wars between the successors of Alexander the Great of Macedonia.
10:48In those years, the eastern Mediterranean was infested with pirates,
10:54whom even warring kings gladly hired to raid foreign merchants.
10:59The sand at a depth of around 30 meters managed to preserve more than half of its wooden hull,
11:06which in itself was an enormous feat.
11:09There were hundreds of amphorae inside the hold, many from the island of Rhodes,
11:14and thousands of almonds that survived underwater for more than 2,000 years.
11:20The dining utensils inside the ship suggested that the crew consisted of only four men,
11:26since cups and spoons were found there in sets of exactly four.
11:32But the most unsettling part was found under the ship's hull, where archaeologists discovered iron
11:38arrowheads and spearheads embedded in the wood.
11:43It looked like an ambush, and many researchers believed that the traders were overtaken by pirates at sea.
11:51Perhaps the pirates took everything of value and then punched holes in the hull,
11:56or simply left the ship to sink along with the remaining cargo.
12:00In this case, almost no personal belongings of the crew were found inside, and not a single human skeleton was
12:07discovered either.
12:08Where did the four sailors go? No one knows, and this silence is far more unsettling than any corpse that
12:16could have been found.
12:17The ship itself, at the time of its sinking, was already old, repeatedly patched up, and had served its owner
12:24for several decades.
12:26Ship reconstruction specialist Richard Steffi examined every plank and reconstructed the hull's assembly logic down to its very last spike.
12:35Based on his drawings, a full-scale replica was built which sailed the sea from Greece to Cyprus in the
12:4280s.
12:43The ancient trader, robbed by pirates, found the wind in her sails once more, and that was the finest revenge
12:52science could ever take.
12:54Now, let's go down to where no living diver on the entire planet can reach today.
12:59In the depths of the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria, lies a ship that is over 2,400
13:06years old.
13:07It was discovered by a British-Bulgarian expedition led by Professor John Adams from the University of Southampton.
13:14The scientists were actually looking for shipwrecks here.
13:17They were interested in the ancient coastlines that was submerged after the ice age.
13:23But the underwater robots, typically employed by oil companies, repeatedly encountered sunken ship.
13:32In total, the expedition discovered more than 60 ships from different eras.
13:38From ancient merchant vessels to Cossack war boats, the oldest of them lies at a depth of over 2 kilometers,
13:46where sunlight never reaches.
13:49The water there is almost completely devoid of oxygen, which is why wood-boring worms and bacteria cannot destroy the
13:56wood even after thousands of years.
13:59When the cameras illuminated the discovery, the explorers saw a ship standing on the seabed as if it had just
14:07sunk.
14:08The masts, steering oars, and rowers' benches all remained in their places exactly as they were on the very day
14:15of its destruction.
14:17Professor Adams admitted that he never would have believed it was possible to find an intact ship at such a
14:24depth back then.
14:27Radiocarbon dating showed that the ship sank around 400 BC during the classical era of Greece.
14:35Before this discovery, people had only ever seen these kinds of ships in illustrations decorating ancient Greek pottery.
14:44The shape of its hull almost exactly matches the ship depicted on the famous siren vase from the British Museum's
14:51collection.
14:52The ship wasn't raised because without the protection of the freezing darkness, the ancient wood would quickly deteriorate on the
14:59surface.
15:00If on this base, Odysseus is tied to the mast so he can hear the siren's song without jumping into
15:06the sea after them.
15:08It turns out the painter wasn't drawing a fantasy, but an entirely real ship that he saw in the port
15:14every day.
15:15The legend of the clever king of Kitaka suddenly gained a solid wooden foundation, and the boundary between myth and
15:22history became noticeably thinner.
15:26Many of us are certain that behind nearly every ancient legend, a real event lies hidden, altered only by hundreds
15:33of years of storytelling.
15:34And you, what legend would you like to see confirmed to an underwater discovery?
15:41Leave your best idea in the comments.
15:44The next ship wasn't found in the sea, but in a small quiet lake where there wasn't even enough space
15:51for a large vessel to turn around.
15:54Lake Nemi is located in the crater of an extinct volcano, approximately 30 kilometers south of Rome.
16:02Fair century, local fishermen pulled up pieces of wood with their nets and told stories about giant ships sleeping beneath
16:11the water.
16:12It sounded like mere folklore from the villagers, but underwater, two giant ships belonging to Emperor Caligula were indeed resting
16:21there.
16:22The largest of these reached a length of around 73 meters, which seemed unusual for such a tiny lake.
16:30These were floating palaces complete with marble floors, mosaics, gilded tiles, and lead plumbing.
16:37The pipes bore markings with Caligula's very own name, leaving no doubt as to who owned these ships.
16:44What was even more astonishing were the rotating platforms set atop bronze balls, functioning on the principle of a ball
16:52bearing.
16:52Similar mechanisms would only reappear in inventor's drawings after a millennium and a half.
16:58During the Renaissance, why the emperor needed such massive giants on a lake too small to sail on remains a
17:06subject of debate among historians to this day.
17:10Some see them as floating sanctuaries for the goddess Diana, who was worshipped on these shores.
17:17Others consider them venues for the emperor's mad whims and lavish banquets.
17:23They even tried to recover the ships back in the 15th century, and in the centuries that followed, they dove
17:30down to the vessels.
17:31It was only in the late 1920s, by order of Mussolini, that they began lowering the water level of the
17:38lake.
17:39Engineers pumped water through an ancient Roman tunnel carved into the rock.
17:452,000 years ago, by the early 30s, both ships were standing on dry land, and a separate museum was
17:53built for them right on the shore.
17:56But at the end of May 1944, fire engulfed the museum, and the ships were completely reduced to ashes in
18:02just one night.
18:04The Italian Commission blamed the retreating German soldiers, while the Germans claimed that the American artillery bombardment was at fault.
18:13The truth was never proven, and nearly two millennia underwater came to an end in a single night of fire.
18:21The museum was rebuilt later, but instead of the actual giant ships, its halls now house ship-modeled.
18:30Only bronze details, drawings, and photographs survived, and local residents still whisper about a third ship at the bottom of
18:40the lake.
18:41The lake kept these ships safe for nearly 2,000 years.
18:46But it took humans barely over a decade to lose them forever.
18:50From Italy, let's move on to a warmer climate, to the seas of Indonesia, where fishermen in 1998 were searching
18:59for sea cucumbers.
19:01Near Beletong Island, they came across a mound of ceramics lying on the seabed for over a thousand years.
19:10It turned out to be an Arab merchant ship whose hull wasn't nailed together, but literally sewn using plant fibers.
19:18Such a design was described by travelers during medieval time, but no one had ever seen an intact ship from
19:25that era before.
19:27The ship most likely struck the reef that locals call Black Rock and quickly sank to the bottom.
19:34In its hold lay approximately 60,000 pieces of ceramics from China's Tang Dynasty, the largest single collection ever found
19:41in one place.
19:42Most of the bowls were made in the kilns of Changsha in Hunan province, where production was literally carried out
19:49on a mass scale.
19:51On one of the bowls, an inscribed date corresponding to the year 826 AD was preserved.
19:58Nearby also lay gold and silver items of such luxury that they could easily have been sent as gifts to
20:05the caliph himself.
20:08They also found bronze mirrors, spices, and rare white and green dishes, which at that time were considered an incredible
20:17luxury.
20:18The ship was sailing from China to the Persian Gulf across the Indian Ocean along the route now known as
20:25the Maritime Silk Road.
20:26These centuries are often portrayed as the Dark Ages, but this ship reveals mass production and goods exported to the
20:34other side of the world.
20:35The enduring mystery is why the shipwreck was found off the usual route, as if the ship had lost its
20:43way or was hiding from something.
20:45It is still unclear whether it was an ordinary merchant vessel or an embassy ship carrying gifts from the Imperial
20:52Court of China.
20:53Which country or city are you from, and is there an ocean or sea near you that also keeps old
20:58shipwrecks?
21:00Perhaps the most interesting discoveries are lying very close to your house.
21:05It's just that nobody is looking for them right now.
21:09The final story happened not in the ocean or a lake, but under the noisy streets of a giant modern
21:15metropolis.
21:17In 2004, in Istanbul, they built the Marmaray Tunnel, which was supposed to pass under the Bosporus.
21:24In the Yenikapa area, the workers were excavating a pit for the station when, unexpectedly, they uncovered an ancient seabed.
21:33Beneath the layers of silt lay the port of Theodosius, the largest and long-lost port of Constantinople that had
21:40been erased from all maps.
21:42The sediments from the small Lycus River filled this harbor over many centuries until it completely turned into dry land.
21:51Archaeologists halted the construction, and in the following years, they unearthed 37 Byzantine ships from beneath the ground.
22:00These dated from the 5th to the 10th century, making it the largest collection of medieval ships in the world.
22:09These included sailing merchant ships and narrow war galleys that were previously known only from ancient texts.
22:17Similar Byzantine warships, according to chroniclers, used the famous recipe of Greek fire, the formula for which remains lost to
22:25this day.
22:27Some ships were wrecked right inside the harbor during severe storms.
22:31Others simply grew too old and were abandoned at the dock.
22:36Thanks to the tecma, the wood was well-preserved, so the tool marks of the shipbuilders are still clearly visible
22:42on the plank.
22:45And even deeper, archaeologists found traces of a settlement where people lived more than 8,000 years ago.
22:53There, even human footprints left in the soft soil before the first cities emerged were preserved.
23:01It turns out that beneath a single construction site lay 8,000 years of continuous history, from the first farmers
23:09to the Byzantine emperors.
23:12Because of these discoveries, the launch of the city's most critical transportation line was delayed by several years.
23:19Millions of people walked these streets for years, completely unaware that an entire fleet of ships lay sleeping beneath their
23:29feet.
23:30The 8 ships raised from the sand, silt, and eternal darkness told a history not found in any official records.
23:37Back then, people without maps, compasses, or precise instruments, boldly sailed beyond the horizon, trusting their lives to wood and
23:49rope.
23:50They connected the Baltic to Egypt, China to Persia, and tiny islands to great empires, long before the Age of
23:58Discovery.
23:59We're used to thinking that a connected or global world is just an invention of recent centuries, but the sea
24:06keeps proving that it's actually thousands of years old.
24:10The Bronze Age, Antiquity, and the Middle Ages successively built their own networks of sea routes, and each time, people
24:19thought it would last forever.
24:22Yet, each year, this world would also collapse, leaving behind only what managed to reach the ocean floor.
24:30For the perhaps, that is why the true history of humanity was not written in the Chronicles of Kings, but
24:36in the holds of sunken ships.
24:39Official histories were written by victors who knew future generations would read them, so they chose every word with care.
24:46But sailors didn't write anything for anyone, they simply carried cargo and cups to where they were expected, which is
24:59why a shipwreck is more honest than any royal decree, because its cargo will never lie.
25:06The land only remembers the victors, but the sea remembers all those who simply dared to try to sail.
25:20The Minister of Kingsbury burst their own race, bo
25:25The First Act of Kingsbury missing the trekking shipwreckedongue
25:28The First Act of Kingsbury of the Winner
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