The 3,300 Year Old Shipwreck That Changed History

In 1982, not far from where I am now off the coast of Bodrum, a sponge diver made an incredible discovery. Scattered all over the seafloor was the most complete late Bronze Age shipwreck ever discovered. Vast amounts of ceramics that would have been filled with perfumes and oils from all across the known world. Metalwork, gold, seal stones, and possibly most amazing of all, vast amounts of copper and tin ingots bound for the palatial centres either of the Near Eastern world or the Aegean. The Uluburun shipwreck is truly a sight to behold. Absolutely incredible. Uluburun is Turkish for Grand Cape. It's a huge headland that juts out into the sea, unfortunately leading to the deaths of many ships. The sailors of that 14th century BC ship weren't the last to wreck on that coastline. They weren't the first either. Many vessels have been found over the years since and before that day. Many of them are displayed today in the Bodrum Castle where I'm standing right now. From Byzantine wrecks to medieval ships, Ottoman vessels, early Roman and even earlier ships from the Bronze Age, they all crashed here. Unfortunate for their sailors but great for people interested in archaeology like me because these ships allow us a window into what was going on at the time. Unlike burials which are done with a special purpose, there's time to put things into a burial. You can choose what you have in there. These are just a snapshot, a window into what was actually going on at the time and what a window the Uluburun shipwreck is. We've got things from Syria, we've got things from the Hittite Empire, we've got things from Mycenaean Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia. As far away as Sardinia and even north of the Black Sea, it pays testament to just how interconnected the late Bronze Age world of the 14th century BC really was. Aside from this we have records from the palatial centres, Linear B tablets from Greece, cuneiform records from the Near East. But to actually see these things that they're talking about is very special. In all we have nine or ten cultures represented in the shipwreck, which is an astonishing variety. We don't know exactly where the ship originated but there's a good argument that it was in Syria, maybe somewhere like Ugarit or a different city state. But one thing that it is filled with is things from the Mycenaean world, so Mycenaean swords and metalwork, goldwork, things like this. So it does seem like it maybe travelled to somewhere in Greece, picked up a cargo and then was making its way back. So as I said before we don't actually know where the ship originated. There's a good argument that it may have been somewhere in Syria or along the coast there, these kind of areas that would eventually become the Phoenicians. But there's another argument that it could have originated in Cyprus, which at the time was kind of a melting pot of different regions. You have Greeks ending up there, you have Near Eastern influences and it's a really interesting place. There's a lot going on there. Eventually it may be where the Sea Peoples ended up at the end of the Bronze Age, but even before then it was a place where different cultures came together and it was kind of a centre of maritime trade. And those Greek items, well they may have ended up being unloaded on roads or even somewhere around here. There are Mycenaean tombs around Bodrum and Miletus was a Mycenaean settlement for a long time during the 14th century BC. So lots of questions, more questions than there were to begin with, but that's the good stuff. So we shouldn't underestimate the sheer effort involved in excavating something that's underwater. It adds an outrageous amount of difficulties that you don't normally have to deal with when you're excavating something. How do you accurately record where everything was for a start? Thankfully the waters around here are quite clear, but even so it's a lot of extra work. But interestingly the Uluburun shipwreck itself moved maritime archaeology forward a great deal. From when they started digging in around 1984 until when they finished 10 years later, the amount of ways and methods that had been learned and perfected and tried out in underwater digs was incredible. There's even a whole institute of maritime archaeology that was founded and since then many more ships have been excavated under the water. And as I said before, a lot of them are here in Bodrum at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology and it's a great day out, highly recommend it. One super interesting thing to talk about on the ship is the swords that are on there. Now as I said before, most of the ingots and metal on the ship have not been turned into weapons yet. They would have been sent to one of the palatial centres in order to kit out an army essentially, but the weapons that were on the ship, they have very diverse origins. One seems to be from the land of Canaan on the Middle Eastern coast, one is Mycenaean and one even originates from somewhere in Italy. Now what could that mean? Well they may have been the bodyguards on the vessel. It's just an idea but it's one that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean why would a singular italic sword be making its way to one of these palatial centres? Who would have cared about that? What does make sense is maybe a battle-hardened grizzled veteran who'd been working on the seas for decades and who else would you want to be defending your things? Of course we don't know what happened to any of the crew, whether any of them survived unfortunately, but I like to think maybe some of them got to shore, but who knows? Vikings couldn't swim generally so maybe these guys couldn't either. Just imagine the amount of wealth that was on that ship. Whoever was in charge must have been extremely rich. Of course this was before coinage, this was before currency as we know it was used, so money was basically in the form of these ingots and there's a huge amount of copper and tin that's on there. It would have made so many bronze weapons that I can't help but think that this is the sort of accident that could sink an entire kingdom, like the White Ship disaster which kind of ruined Henry I's reign in England and ended up in the anarchy of 20 years of civil war. It can't have been good when this amount of stuff ended up at the bottom of the sea, irretrievable. The amount of investment into that, I mean what were they trading for this stuff? Massive respect to Mehmet Kacir, I'm probably butchering your name, sorry about that, who discovered the wreck and then basically dedicated himself to unravelling its secrets. So good on him and hopefully more wrecks will be found in the future because there's a lot going on out there. What else lies underneath? I had an amazing time visiting the Bodrum area last year, exploring around ancient tombs and ancient cities. Turkey is just incredible for that sort of thing. I've been, I don't know, seven or eight times now, something like that, over the last 10 years. First time I went was in 2012, then I went in 2014, 2015, a bunch of times since, been all over the country. Incredible, incredible place, just filled with archaeology. Everywhere you look there's archaeology. So if you're interested in these ancient things then you should come with me to Turkey in September because that's right, I am taking a group to Turkey in September. First time I've done this sort of thing, I'm super excited about it, it's going to be an amazing time. We're going to visit a lot of places that I've already been to before and I'll be absolutely delighted to take you around. Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Hatuşa, all these incredible places. We're going to go to Mesopotamia, we're going to go on a boat trip down the Euphrates River, not quite going towards the first cities of the world but, you know, that's where the river heads. And not just that, you know, we're going to go beyond these blockbuster sites, we're going to go to obscure places, we're going to a load of the Taş Tepeler sites that you may never have heard of. They're small little places where archaeology is being done right now. We'll go and look at the digs as they're taking place, oh it's going to be amazing. I'm going with History with Kayleigh and Dakota of Earth, two other great YouTubers, good friends and yeah, you should come, you should come with us, you should come with us. There's a link to everything down below, use the code HISTORYTIME to let the charity that we're going with know that you've booked with me. And yeah, it's reasonably priced, I think it's just under two weeks. The whole itinerary is down below, you can have a look at it. All your food's included, all your hotels and all that's all included. Yeah, we can hang out, we can talk history all day on the coach, at dinner, at breakfast. Oh, it's going to be great, it's going to be an adventure. I look forward to seeing you there. Cheers everybody, see you later.