P19 Layout 1

Established 1961 Lifestyle WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2018 A model presents a creation by Patricia Viera during the Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo, Brazil.— AFP World’s oldest intact US museum says shipwreck found in Black Sea five Dead Sea Scroll fragments fake n ancient Greek trading ship dating depth of more than 2,000 meters (6,500 US museum announced Monday that five artifacts back more than 2,400 years has feet). The water at that depth is oxygen- it had said were fragments of the ancient manu- Abeen found virtually intact at the free, meaning that organic material can be Ascripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are in fact bottom of the Black Sea, the world’s oldest preserved for thousands of years. fake, and will no longer be displayed. known shipwreck, researchers said yester- “A ship, surviving intact, from the Washington’s Museum of the Bible-which stirred con- day. The vessel is one of more than 60 Classical world, lying in over two kilome- troversy last year for its financial backing from a billion- shipwrecks identified by the Black Sea ters of water, is something I would never aire evangelical Christian-removed the pieces from exhi- Maritime Archaeology Project including have believed possible,” said Professor Jon bition after a German research institution concluded that Roman ships and a 17th-century Cossack Adams from the University of they weren’t old enough. “Though we had hoped the test- raiding fleet. During the three-year project, Southampton in southern England, the pro- ing would render different results, this is an opportunity researchers used specialist remote deep- ject’s main investigator. “This will change to educate the public on the importance of verifying the water camera systems previously used in our understanding of shipbuilding and sea- authenticity of rare biblical artifacts, the elaborate testing offshore oil and gas exploration to map the faring in the ancient world,” he said. process undertaken and our commitment to transparen- sea floor. “A small piece of the vessel has Helen Farr, a project team member, cy,” the museum’s chief curator Jeffrey Kloha said in a been carbon dated and it is confirmed as said: “We have bits of shipwreck which statement. “As an educational institution entrusted with the oldest intact shipwreck known to are earlier but this one really looks intact”. cultural heritage, the museum upholds and adheres to all mankind,” the project said in a statement. “The project as a whole was actually museum and ethical guidelines on collection care, The ship, which is lying on its side with looking at sea level change and the flood- research and display.” its mast and rudders intact, was dated back ing of the Black Sea region... and the ship- The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest known to 400 BC-a time when the Black Sea was wrecks are a happy by-product of that,” manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, date from the 3rd centu- a trading hub filled with Greek colonies. she told BBC radio. — AFP ry BC to the 1st century AD. Numbering around 900, they The team said the vessel, previously only An undated handout picture released by Black Sea MAP/EEF Expeditions in London shows the were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran seen in an intact state on the side of remains of an ancient Greek trading ship laying on the sea bed at the bottom of the Black Sea caves above the Dead Sea. The five removed fragments ancient Greek pottery, was found at a near Bulgaria. — AFP had been exhibited in the sprawling museum since it opened in November 2017, but were labeled with expla- nations that research on their legitimacy was underway. In April last year the museum sent five of its 16 Dead Sea New Pompeii evidence demic explained of a method still used in the same Scroll pieces to Germany’s Federal Institute for Materials Sinai lagoon. The Haifa academics worked alongside Research and Testing (BAM) for testing after previous stud- rewrites Vesuvius Egyptians farmed those from German universities in Mainz and ies questioned their authenticity. One researcher, Kipp Davis Gottingen to deduce their findings from the teeth of of Trinity Western University, had published work saying “at gilthead sea bream. least seven fragments in the museum’s Dead Sea Scrolls col- eruption history fish 3,500 years ago Through studying the different types of oxygen lection are modern forgeries.”—AFP isotopes in the teeth, scientists deduced that they newly-discovered inscription at Pompeii proves the gyptians practiced fish farming more than 3,500 were “spending at least four months in the closed city was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius after October years ago, the earliest evidence of such activity lagoon”, Bar-Oz told AFP. The majority of the fish A17, 79 AD and not on August 24 as previously thought, Eworldwide according to a joint German-Israeli found by the researchers came from aquaculture and archeologists said. Archeologists recently discovered that a study released yesterday. Scientists studied 100 fish not local fishing. Irit Zohar, from the University of worker had inscribed the date of “the 16th day before the cal- teeth found at archaeological sites across modern-day Haifa and co-author of the study, said the size of fish ends of November”, meaning October 17, on a house at Israel to conclude they had been plucked from a standardized around 3,500 years ago and those Pompeii, the head of archeology at the site, Massimo Osanna, lagoon in Egypt’s Sinai thousands of years ago. “The imported from Egypt were all “the size of a plate”. told Italian media. Pompeii and Herculaneum were previously sample of teeth covered a chronological period “Exactly what we observe of the fish bred in modern thought to have been destroyed by the massive eruption of extending over 10,000 years, from the early Neolithic aquaculture,” she said. Mount Vesuvius on August 24, based on contemporary writ- period through to the early Islamic period,” said a Egypt became a “superpower in aquaculture” at ings and archeological finds. statement from Israel’s Haifa University, one of the that time, according to Bar-Oz. Scientists believe fish Nevertheless, evidence such as autumnal fruits on branch- participants in the study. farming was practiced in China 4,000 years ago, es found in the ashen ruins had suggested a later date since Of those samples, some were from about 3,500 although Bar-Oz said no evidence has yet been pro- the 19th century, Osanna said. “Today, with much humility, years ago. Farmers at the time found a lagoon which duced to prove the theory. — AFP perhaps we will rewrite the history books because we date fish were entering and barricaded it for a few months, In this ﬁle photo visitors look at an exhibit about the Dead the eruption to the second half of October,” said Italy’s Guy Bar-Oz, one of the authors of the report and Minister of Culture Alberto Bonisoli. Pompeii is the second Sea scrolls during a media preview of the new Museum of archaeology professor at the University of Haifa. the Bible, a 430,000 square-foot (39,948 square-meter) most visited tourist site in Italy, after the Colosseum in Rome, Afterwards “you can easily harvest them,” the aca- with more than three million visitors in the first eight months museum, dedicated to the history, narrative and impact of the of this year. — AFP Bible, in Washington, DC. — AFP.

Load more