Israeli archaeologists say ancient goods were recovered from the oldest shipwreck ever found in the Mediterranean

London – A routine oil and gas study conducted by an energy company has uncovered a shipment of the remains of what archaeologists believe to be the oldest and deepest shipwreck ever discovered in the Mediterranean.

Israeli archaeologists He said They recovered intact storage jars believed to be 3,300 years old from the wreck. The scientists said the amphorae, as the large jugs are known, were captured by cameras mounted on robotic submarines used by Energean during the survey.

The submarines were tasked with searching for potential energy sources off the coast of Israel.

The jars were spotted on the seabed about 56 miles from the Israeli coast, at a remarkable depth of more than 5,900 feet.

Experts at the Israel Antiquities Authority said that the shipwreck appears to be the “first and oldest” in the region.

Jacob Charvit, who heads the Israel Antiquities Authority’s marine unit, told CBS News Partners BBC News This discovery indicates that sailors of the time used celestial navigation to traverse deep, remote parts of the sea, relying on the sun and stars to determine their actual location.

From the site where the wreck was discovered, Jacob said, “only the horizon could be seen everywhere,” so navigators were unable to rely on landmarks to find their way.

“They likely used celestial bodies to navigate, by seeing the angles of the sun and the positions of the stars,” he said.

“The ship appears to have sunk in a crisis, either due to a storm or an attempted pirate attack – an event known from the Late Bronze Age,” Charvet said in a statement.

Dr. Karnit Bahartan, Energean’s chief environmental officer, told the BBC that cameras mounted on the company’s submarines found what initially appeared to be “a large pile of jugs piled up on the sea floor.”

Only two of the jars have been raised to the surface, a process that requires special equipment to avoid damaging them or any other artifacts around them. The jars, which are believed to belong to the ancient Canaanite people of the Middle East, who lived along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, will be displayed this summer at the National Campus of Israeli Archeology in Jerusalem.

The wrecked ship, buried beneath the muddy seabed with hundreds of jugs scattered atop it, appears to be between 39 and 45 feet long, the Israel Antiquities Authority said. She added that the boat and cargo appeared completely intact.

Bahartan called it a “really exciting discovery” and said the only two other wrecks containing goods found in the Mediterranean dated to the late Bronze Age – hundreds of years after the wreck containing the amphorae sank, and further north near the coast of Turkey. . .

Based on the locations and depths of previously discovered shipwrecks, “the academic assumption until now is that trade at that time was conducted by moving safely from one port to another, hugging the coastline in visual contact,” Bhartan said.

“The discovery of this boat now changes our entire understanding of the abilities of ancient sailors,” she said.