Ancient treasure has been uncovered near an island in Malta which is one of the earliest finds from the Phoenician seafarers.
A shipwreck which happened some 2700 years ago has yielded a cargo of wine jars (amphorae) and grinding stones.
Divers found the evidence about a mile from Gozo island, although they are not releasing the exact location until their research is concluded. They hope to find more of the ship and other artefacts.
The ship was probably transporting goods for trade around 700 BC between Sicily and Malta when it went down.
The discovery is some of the oldest finds from the Phoenician culture.
The Phoenicians were highly efficient traders from present-day Lebanon who ruled the Mediterranean for more than one thousand years from about 1550BC.
They traded to Spain and probably also Portugal, Egyptian, Greece and as far as England, Ireland and Senegal.
The historian Heroditus claims that Phoenicians sailed around Africa 2000 years before Vasco de Gama. If this is true, then it was the Phoenicians rather than the Portuguese who began the first age of western exploration, the voyages of discovery.
Comments
Given the wars and upheaval (and destruction of libraries and places of learning) since the Phoeneians ... this yet again brings out the odd sensitivity amongst the Portuguese over whether they were actually the first to have discovered anything with their sea trading journeys.
As though this entire countries 'raison d'etre' is tied up in being the first to discover!
Has any Portuguese heard of St. Brendans discovery of America ? (There is a belief that Brendan was the first European to reach North America.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan
And knowing the importance of sea trading along what became Portugals' coastline well over a thousand years before Portugal existed - does this also get explained to young Portuguese?
As to why their country was created in the first place??? To stop piracy ?