FIFTY YEARS AGO, Stefano Mariottini, a chemist from Rome, was snorkelling near Riace in Calabria. A few hundred metres off the coast, in water eight metres deep, he looked down and saw an arm protruding from the sea bed: he thought he was swimming over a corpse. But, when he dived and touched the arm, it was solid, not flesh. Shortly afterwards he noticed a second figure buried in the sand.
Back on shore, Mariottini alerted the police and a week later his two finds were hauled from the Ionian