Archaeology by Prau123 – Page 329 – Main Forum

Prau123 · 2020-04-23T00:56:31Z

Here's an update on some of the new discoveries in recent years in the Mesoamerican region. Tonina - Considered the new tallest structure in Mesoamerica. It's debatable since El Mirador is actually 172 meters tall. The largest structure is still Cholula. There are still several areas in the El Mirador Basin that needs to be excavated and measured. There are 61,000 plus sites that were scanned a few years ago and that was only a mere portion of the El Mirador Basin. 15 facts about the Maya Civilization 1. THEIR PYRAMIDS AND CITIES ARE STILL BEING DISCOVERED.It’s amazing to think that something as large as a pyramid could elude archaeologists today. But it was only a few years ago that a Maya pyramid more than 1000 years old was discovered at Toniná in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It had been hidden under what was believed to be a natural hill. In 2015, researchers said this newfound monument was actually Mexico’s tallest pyramid at 246 feet (75 meters) in height, surpassing the 213-foot Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. The ruins of two Maya cities concealed by thick vegetation were also recently discovered in Mexico’s state of Campeche. Tonina Picture They also found El Palmar and Angamuco a few years ago also. El Palmar - El Palmar is 40 to 70 times larger than previously acknowledged. It’s 40 times larger than we thought it was,” Garrison says. “This is now this huge city that would have been a rival to Tikal An early city called El Palmar seemed now to be 70 times larger than we had suspected, with raised fields for agriculture. An “isolated” royal palace had an extensive swath of settlement extending a kilometer or more. Angamuco - Angamuco had as many buildings as Manhattan city. A new laser-mapping technology, called lidar, has been used to confirm a truly mind-blowing ancient city buried in western Mexico. Called Angamuco, researchers say that it has about 40,000 buildings. This is around the same amount of building foundations as there are in Manhattan, New York. Whoa! El Mirador - Articles: Videos:

In the waters off Madagascar’s northeast coast, archaeologists say they have uncovered the final resting place of a ship plundered in one of history’s most dramatic pirate raids. The wreck, they believe, is that of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo—a Portuguese vessel overtaken in 1721 by the infamous pirate Olivier “The Buzzard” Levasseur.

More than three centuries after its capture, the remnants of the ship lie beneath the waves near Nosy Boraha, an island once known as Île Sainte-Marie, a notorious pirate haven during the “Golden Age of Piracy.”

The discovery is the result of 16 years of painstaking research by American archaeologists Brandon Clifford and Mark Agostini from the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation. Their findings, recently published in Wreckwatch magazine, have not yet been peer-reviewed. Still, they present a compelling case based on sonar scans, historical records, and over 3,300 recovered artifacts.

The archaeological investigations have revealed wooden frames from the hull of Nossa Senhora do Cabo among the ballast stones. Credit: Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation

A Forgotten Battle on the High Seas

The Nossa Senhora do Cabo, or “Our Lady of the Cape,” set sail from Goa, India, in early 1721. Aboard were two of the most powerful figures in Portugal’s Indian empire: the outgoing viceroy and the Archbishop of Goa. Below decks were more than 200 enslaved people from Mozambique, pressed into the service of the empire and now caught in a maritime nightmare.

a pretty loaded ship, in more ways than one. Except the ship never reached its destination. On April 8, 1721, it was ambushed near Réunion Island by a fleet of pirate ships.

At the helm of their pirates was Olivier Levasseur, a man so feared he earned the nickname “The Buzzard.” The luck favored the pirates. The Cabo was already reeling from a storm. Much of its artillery had been tossed overboard in a desperate bid to stay afloat. Resistance was futile, the attackers could not be stopped.

The pirates swarmed the vessel and took control. The ship’s haul was “an eye watering treasure, even by pirate standards,” Clifford and Agostini wrote. They estimate the loot, by today’s standards, would exceed $138 million. Historical records list gold and silver bars, coins, silks, and more than 400 gemstones, including 110 diamonds and 250 emeralds.

The Clues Beneath the Waves

The remains of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo were discovered in a quiet harbor near Nosy Boraha, about 650 kilometers (400 miles) west of the ambush site. Clifford and Agostini used sonar and remote sensing to map the seafloor, identifying a distinctive ballast pile matching the ship’s profile. Nearby, they found clusters of artifacts strewn across the site.

Île Sainte-Marie looks exactly what you’d expect a pirate island to look like. Image via Flickr.

Among them: finely carved religious figurines and devotional items made of wood and ivory. One statuette depicts the Virgin Mary. Another piece—a small plaque—bears the letters “INRI,” short for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” These, the researchers believe, were crafted in Goa and meant for Lisbon’s cathedrals.

Also recovered were Arabic-inscribed gold coins, delicate porcelain shards, and fragments of luxury pottery. Many of these pieces remain buried beneath layers of sand and silt. “Ideally, future fieldwork will lead to more analysis of the many wrecks there,” Agostini told Live Science.

Île Sainte-Marie was no random hideout. During the 18th century, it was a lawless crossroads in the Indian Ocean—favored by pirates for its calm waters and isolation from colonial authority. Dozens of pirate crews made it their base, exploiting its proximity to shipping lanes and its safe anchorages.

Clifford said records suggest that between seven and ten ships—either pirate vessels or captured prizes—were scuttled or wrecked nearby. At least four lie in this harbor alone.

For centuries, the island’s buried history went largely ignored. “The site has historically been overlooked by researchers,” Agostini noted, “and so there’s ample room for more discoveries that give us a glimpse into the past.”

Artifacts recovered at the wreck site include gold coins inscribed with Arabic writing and pieces of fine porcelain. Credit: Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation

Yet amid the gold and glamour, unanswered questions remain. The Portuguese viceroy was eventually ransomed and returned to Lisbon. But the fate of the archbishop is unknown. So too is the fate of the enslaved people locked below deck. Their lives, like so many others in the age of empire, lost at sea. History mostly remembers the “big” people, while the lives of common folk are often ignored.

The identification of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo reframes how we think about the Indian Ocean’s colonial and pirate past—about the fragile line between empire and rebellion, devotion and plunder, wealth and human suffering.

As Clifford and Agostini’s study circulates among historians and archaeologists, it may prompt new questions and, perhaps, new expeditions.

Because under the sand and silt of Madagascar’s pirate shores, history still waits—lost, but not forgotten.

Researchers believe that they've located the wreck of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, a Portuguese ship that was carrying $138 million worth of treasure when it was attacked by pirates in 1721.

Madagascar Nossa Senhora Do Cabo Shipwreck

Alberto Cutileiro/Wikimedia Commons A depiction of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo.

More than 300 years ago, a Portuguese ship carrying treasure, important religious figures, and hundreds of enslaved Africans was attacked by pirates. From that point on, the exact fate of the ship, the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, was a mystery. But researchers believe that they’ve finally located the famous shipwreck off the coast of Madagascar.

Sunken off the coast of Nosy Boraha, an island that was once home to the notorious pirate lair Île Sainte-Marie, the shipwreck appears to be the lost vessel. However, many questions about its cargo — and the people onboard — still remain.

Identifying The Wreck Of The ‘Nossa Senhora Do Cabo’ Near Madagascar

Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation A map of the shipwreck site, which was identified near the small island of Îlot Madame near Nosy Boraha.

The identification of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo shipwreck took time. According to the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation, archaeologists engaged in “over two decades of fieldwork” in order to identify the wreck, which was discovered among other 17th and 18th shipwrecks in the harbor of Îlot Madame, a small island near Nosy Boraha in Madagascar. Between 1999 and 2015, experts tried to determine if one of the shipwrecks was the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, whose capture was well-documented, though its fate was unknown.

“In spite of extensive historical records describing the Nossa Senhora do Cabo‘s capture and its eventual sinking, the precise location of the shipwreck has remained uncertain, sparking debate among historians and archaeologists alike,” the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation noted.

However, researchers unearthed a number of clues that suggested one of the shipwrecks at the site was, indeed, the Nossa Senhora do Cabo.

During the underwater excavation, they recovered more than 3,000 objects and fragments “indicative of a high-status vessel engaged in long-distance trade.” The objects included porcelain from China, Indo-Portuguese religious sculptures, “Mughal-period” ceramics, coins from Europe, African shells, and exotic spices. These artifacts, as well as a study of the ship’s timber and the identification of a nearby cannon, seem to strongly suggest that the ship is the Nossa Senhora do Cabo.

Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation A small sample of the thousands of fragments that researchers recovered from the shipwreck site.

“Together with the structural timber evidence, these materials provide a robust material profile of a ship engaged in transoceanic trade with sacred and diplomatic associations; characteristics strongly aligned with historical records of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo,” the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation reported. This evidence, and primary sources, “build a strong case for the identification of the ship as… the Nossa Senhora do Cabo.”

Thus, the ship has seemingly been located three centuries after it was captured by pirates.

The Story Of The ‘Nossa Senhora Do Cabo’ Shipwreck

Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation Archaeologists believe that they’ve identified the Nossa Senhora do Cabo after more than two decades of fieldwork.

In the 18th century, the Nossa Senhora do Cabo was described as a “massive 72-gun former Dutch man-of-war turned Portuguese treasure ship… heavily laden with diplomatic, religious, and economic cargo.” In 1721, it was en route from Goa, then a Portuguese colony in India, toward Lisbon.

But during its voyage, the ship was caught in a violent storm. It lost all of its masts and two-thirds of its cannons, and it sought refuge near Réunion Island. There, the Nossa Senhora do Cabo was easy prey for pirates Olivier Levasseur and John Taylor, who easily seized the ship and its treasure.

“The pirates seized a staggering amount of treasure,” the Center for Historic Shipwreck Preservation notes, “which in the annals of history would become one of the richest pirate heists.”

Center for Historic Shipwreck PreservationGold coins and porcelain fragments recovered from the shipwreck.

The ship’s cargo was likely worth $138 million in today’s currency and included “gold and silver bars, coins, silks, religious artifacts, and an extraordinary array of precious stones.” The ship was also carrying the former Viceroy of Goa and the Archbishop of Goa, the former of whom was ransomed, as well as some 200 enslaved Africans. At least 60 of the enslaved people were killed when the ship was taken, but the fates of the others are unknown.

From that point on, researchers aren’t entirely sure what happened to the Nossa Senhora do Cabo. The ship was seemingly scuttled near Madagascar, though not before it was commandeered and renamed Victorieux by Levasseur, who used it for a time as a pirate ship.

As such, the discovery of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo seems to have solved a centuries-old mystery about the lost ship. After being damaged in a storm and taken by pirates, the Portuguese treasure ship was ultimately abandoned. It’s spent the last three hundred years hidden in the deep, its remaining treasures scattered across the ocean floor.

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Researchers believe that they've located the wreck of the Nossa Senhora do Cabo, a Portuguese ship that was carrying $138 million worth of treasure when it was attacked by pirates in 1721.

Identifying The Wreck Of The ‘Nossa Senhora Do Cabo’ Near Madagascar