During the Bronze Age around 1300 BCE, a merchant ship, laden with treasures from around the world, was traversing a 2,700-kilometre trade route when, for reasons unknown, she sank at Cape Uluburun, near Kas, on the southern coast of the Antalya region of Turkey. Over 3,300 years later, in 1982, a Turkish sponge diver discovered the remains of the wreck, triggering euphoria among archaeologists around the world.
GREAT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
News of the discovery reached the Turkish archaeologist Cemal Pulak M. At the time, Cemal was an assistant to George F Bass, the founder and director of the Institute of Nautical was regarded as one of the most significant archaeological and historical finds of the century – its archaeological significance is compared to the discovery of the grave of Pharaoh Tutankhamen.
