Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 20 Sep 23 - 05:37 PM

World's oldest wooden structure discovered in Zambia, dating back 476,000 years, archaeologists say Archaeologists say they have unearthed the oldest wooden structure ever discovered, dating from nearly half a million years ago, which suggests that our ancestors may have been more advanced than previously thought.

The exceptionally well-preserved wooden structure was found at Kalambo Falls in the north of Zambia, near the border with Tanzania.

It dates back at least 476,000 years, well before the evolution of Homo sapiens, according to a study describing the find in the journal Nature.

The wood bears cut-marks showing that stone tools were used to join two large logs to make the structure, which is believed to be a platform, walkway or raised dwelling to keep our relatives above the water.

The ancestors of humans were already known to use wood at this time, but for limited purposes such as starting a fire or hunting.

Larry Barham, an archaeologist at the UK's University of Liverpool and the study's lead author, told AFP that to his knowledge the previous record-holder for oldest wooden structure dated back around 9,000 years. (read on)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Sep 23 - 05:23 AM

can't read it cos I have an ad blocker. They politely ask me to turn it off, but 1. I dunno how, & more importantly 2. I wouldn't even if I knew how, so I asked google - roman swords dead sea caves - & found this on BBC site

sandra

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 10:28 AM

Old Roman swords found

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Sep 23 - 02:52 PM

The Nova episode 'The Maya Metropolis' is highly recommended.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Sep 23 - 07:16 PM

3D maps of Swan River lead maritime archaeologists to unexplored wreck in Perth, Western Australia Detailed 3D maps of the bottom of the Swan River have led maritime archaeologists to a sunken barge right in the heart of Perth that has lain unexplored for about a century.

Patrick Morrison, who is completing a doctorate in archaeology at the University of Western Australia, said the find was made after studying maps of the riverbed released by the state government.

"We had seen … some of the shipwrecks that we knew existed, but we also saw some interesting lumps," Mr Morrison told Nadia Mitsopoulos, on ABC Radio Perth.

"We ended up diving one of those after checking on the sonar, and it was a shipwreck … it could be about 100 years old." (read on)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 23 - 06:48 PM

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220810-derinkuyu-turkeys-underground-city-of-20000-people

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Sep 23 - 10:36 AM

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1191263572/turkey-archaeology-zerzevan-castle-discoveries

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Sep 23 - 08:02 AM

https://greekreporter.com/2023/08/10/humans-neanderthals-lived-together-50000-years-ago/

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 28 Aug 23 - 05:18 PM

Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old tomb honouring elite religious leader in northern Peru Archaeologists in northern Peru have unearthed a 3,000-year-old tomb which they believe might have honoured an elite religious leader in the Andean country some three millennia ago.

Dubbed the "Priest of Pacopampa," referring to the highland archaeological zone where the tomb was found, the priest would have been buried around 1200 BC, Peru's Culture Ministry said in a statement.

The body was buried under six layers of ash mixed with black earth, with decorated ceramic bowls and seals indicating ancient ritual body paint used for people of elite standing ...

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 22 Aug 23 - 09:27 PM

oops, I always use DaveRo's https://revad.github.io/linkifier.html to post links, did I leave off the first character?

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Aug 23 - 11:43 AM

I recognize the name because the island had a weird role in an odd novel I read (The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel - save yourself the trouble and don't read it, it's just plain odd.)

From your article (it took a couple of tries to fix the link, but I'd seen this myself this week so figured out where it was):

While other Portuguese sugar mills relied on enslaved people solely for manual labor, in the São Tomé sugar plantation system, enslaved people — largely from what are now Benin, the Republic of the Congo, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — performed nearly all the tasks, from the harvesting and processing of sugarcane to the carpentry and stone masonry needed to build and run the mills.

This made São Tomé "the first plantation economy in the tropics based on sugar monoculture and slave labour, a model exported to the New World where it developed and expanded," the researchers wrote in a new study, published Monday (Aug. 14) in the journal Antiquity.

"The island's plantations were so successful that in the 1530s, São Tomé surpassed Madeira — an Atlantic archipelago that the Portuguese used for their lucrative sugar operations — in supplying the European markets with sugar, and dozens of sugar mills were built." - unpaid labor will do that.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 Aug 23 - 09:26 AM

Plantation slavery was invented on this tiny African island, according to archaeologists A 16th-century sugar estate on the tiny African island of São Tomé is the earliest known example of plantation slavery.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Jul 23 - 07:02 PM

43,000 year old fossil + living plant Ancient clonal tree, King's lomatia, excites scientists in Tasmania's remote south west.

Before the last ice age, deep in the mountains and valleys of south-western Tasmania an unusual little sprout grew from a seed.

The plant grew and grew, eventually unfurling deep red flowers, but as the curled petals dropped to the ground no viable seeds formed.

Today, its wild population is limited to just a 1.2 kilometre square and it may be among the world's oldest clonal plants — having grown from a single seed, genetically cloned many times over through the millennia ...

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 04:04 PM

Probably since I look Scandinavian/German Aryan, a German tour group asked me for directions in the DC metro. I did defer to my wife.
I don't have much sense of direction underground.

I gave up comic sarcasm on the web 10 years ago. Stevy has given no evidence for his one-trick pony claim.

Now can we get back to the topic.

Prototaxites

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Prototaxites
ancient tree sized fungus from en.wikipedia.org
Prototaxites /?pro?to?'tæks?ti?z/ is a genus of terrestrial fossil fungi dating from the Middle Ordovician until the Late Devonian periods, ...
?Morphology · ?History of research · ?Species · ?Ecological context
People also ask
What is the largest prehistoric fungi?
Prototaxites - Wikipedia
Prototaxites
With a diameter of up to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in), and a height reaching 8.8 metres (29 ft), Prototaxites fossils are remnants of by far the largest organism discovered from the period of its existence.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 03:10 PM

U of Rochester professors researched it for me but I forget the name.
The area was Binghamton NY.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 02:19 PM

"I discovered in my backyard a lifeform known to exist only in one small area in the world."

What is the name of this lifeform?"

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 07:34 AM

Ancient Roman ruins of Nero's Theatre discovered under hotel garden Archaeologists had been excavating deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere since 2020 as part of planned renovations on the frescoed Renaissance building

...The palazzo takes up a city block along the broad Via della Conciliazione leading to Saint Peter's Square near the Vatican.

It is home to an ancient Vatican chivalric order that leases the space to a hotel to raise money for Christians in the Holy Land.

Officials hailed the findings from the excavation as "exceptional", given they provide a rare look at a stratum of Roman history from the Roman Empire through to the fifteenth century AD.

Among the discoveries are 10th century AD glass coloured goblets and pottery pieces that are unusual because so little is known about this period in Rome ...

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 07:17 AM

"Fungi are not likely to leave any fossil trace. There were mushrooms as big as small trees."

How do you know without evidence ?

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 07:09 AM

btw Any mass extinction event or die off has been followed by an age of fungus. Fungi are not likely to leave any fossil trace. There were mushrooms as big as small trees.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 06:49 AM

There will be many examples. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/upsettingly-michigan-does-not-have-the-largest-fungi-on-earth-humongous-fungus

I discovered in my backyard a lifeform known to exist only in one small area in the world. It was an insect that made its own inch-long flying craft in the shape of a snow flake that was like stiff spider silk. It would repel being touched because of an electromagnetic charge. This tiny aphid like thing would sit in the middle and fly around. Unique LIFE can be very local to one small area.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 04:40 AM

As we're talking of long-lived trees: Many years ago, I heard a report about someone investigating the fungi in a wood. Much to their surprise, they found it constituted a single plant, which was basically wearing the wood like a wig. It was thought to be the world's largest-known organism, but they were expecting to find bigger ones, as it wasn't a particularly large wood.

.... If anyone can find the article, please do paste the link here. My google fu has deserted me this morning.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 04:15 AM

The fact that the trees we're talking about are easy to propagate and are popular does ensure their future existence, even if their habitat is degraded or damaged. This is indeed the case with the Dawn Redwood in China, where over-collecting of cones for its seeds is preventing its ability to propagate itself (its habitat has been degraded too). In an ideal world we'd fervently protect the habitats of rare species. I understand that this has happened in the case of the Aussie ravines which support the Woolemi pine, but it seems that this has not happened in those limited areas of China in which Dawn Redwoods are hanging on. Keeping species alive "in captivity" is second-best but it's better than letting species go extinct, or (as we do) force them towards extinction.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 03:09 AM

snip - From: Steve Shaw - PM
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 07:28 PM

Fortunately, the Woolemi pine is easily propagated. Its future is secure. - snip

yes, but bushfires don't know that! Inside top-secret mission to save NSW's last surviving Wollemi pines from bushfire - January 2020 the pine was saved but some were damaged

No doubt fires will approach their little corner again, but fire protection measures are in existence.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 10:25 PM

Dawn redwood wasn't on the brink of extinction, it, along with the gingko, were thought to be extinct until pockets of them were discovered in remote Chinese forests at the turn of the last century. In Washington State at Vantage is a highway overlook and park called Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, and at one time it was thought that these were examples of an extinct tree. (This park has a lot of types of petrified wood and it also has great petroglyphs).

Metasequoia glyptostroboides is the scientific name of dawn redwood, and was one I loved for the way it rolled off my tongue when I learned about it in a college botany class. It was such a great story. I must have told my daughter about it, because as a fluke, when she was spending a semester abroad in Japan and had a ceramics class she made me a mug and spelled out the scientific name under the glaze around the base. (I tried planting one here at the house, but it got fried one summer, and I realized I'd set it too near to some overhead wires so would have had to trim it a lot if it had survived).

(Ginkgo were also brought to many places in the US after this discovery and it's a feature in many parks and arboretums.)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 07:28 PM

Fortunately, the Woolemi pine is easily propagated. Its future is secure. We have several (I think) at the Eden Project in Cornwall. Another brought back from the brink is the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. It is the only surviving species of the genus Metasequoia, a genus previously thought to be extinct for over a hundred million years. s you could guess from the name, it's related to the giant redwoods. It was found in a small area of China in the 1940s, but it's threatened in its only known native habitat by land degradation and over-collecting of seeds. Luckily, it's also very easy to propagate, and it grows into a beautiful specimen tree.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 06:40 PM

The Wollemi Pine is one of the world's oldest and rarest plants dating back to the time of the dinosaurs With less than 100 adult trees known to exist in the wild, the Wollemi Pine is now the focus of extensive research to safeguard its survival. Assist in the conservation effort by growing your own Wollemi Pine and becoming part of one of the most dramatic comebacks in natural history.

My neighbour was one of the many gardeners who seized the chance to have one in his garden.

Turning this into a music thread - Lyrics - THE DAYS OF THE DINOSAUR [The Wollemi Pine] by Jim Low

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 01:54 PM

That's one of those huge organisms, along with things like creosote bush that when discovered open new avenues of study. There may be things like that all over the world, we just never thought to look. (Perhaps all of the hackberry trees in Texas are spreading from a huge old one somewhere Under the X in Texas.) :)

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 12:26 PM

There are a few examples of living fossils. A forest variety of a very old remaining species is the Pando forest

Since it can clone itself or make seed there is no way to judge its ancient age. It is believed to be the last stand of what was a widespread species.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jul 23 - 11:09 AM

The Olympic Peninsula in the northern coast of Washington State has a "ghost forest" from when the land level dropped in an ancient earthquake/tsunami event that bounced across the Pacific. Actually, a search on "ancient tsunami buried forest in Washington State" brings up results of "ghost forests" along the west coast. This may be the one I learned about years ago in Geology class. There's a similar place in Oregon where earthquake mud slides or a tsunami dropped debris, burying and killing them. Here is a US Geological Survey paper about that earthquake zone.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jul 23 - 07:47 PM

We have a submerged forest a few miles north of here. You can only see it at very low spring tides, on the beach at Westward Ho! (Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the town's name). I went there on a field trip in 1990 and was able to pick up some wood and acorns, around six thousand years old. All to do with sea level changes during warmer and colder periods since the last Ice Age. I think the submerged forest is around 6000 years old. The town is also slightly famous because Rudyard Kipling lived there for a few years. One of the shoreline features is called Kipling Cliff.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 26 Jul 23 - 06:29 PM

a Miocene jigsaw!

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jul 23 - 11:41 AM

This goes farther back than archaeology topics, but still, it's fascinating: the late Miocene was relatively recent (10.4 to 5 million years ago). Exquisitely Preserved Fossil Forest Uncovered in Japan. The story is in Science Alert, and I think sometimes it throws up a paywall.

The forest was first seen in modern times during a severe drought in 1994, when roughly 400 fossilized tree stumps emerged from the water.

Most of the stumps have since been submerged once more, but researchers have successfully examined 137 of them, and the surrounding fossilized leaves.

They've now published their analysis of the site and provided a picture of the plants that once covered the wooded area.

They could build a coffer dam in the area if they really want to work on it.

This forest offers a rare opportunity because one type of trunk and one type of leaf were clearly dominant in the area. Of the 137 stumps examined, 130 were identified as Wataria parvipora.

Apparently all of the scientific names that things were called by were decided based upon particular items found individually, not together with other parts of the plant. So different parts of the plant found at different times or places received other names. Now they have to fit it all together.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:43 PM

A Trove of Rare Gold Coins Found In a Cornfield May Actually Be Worth More Than $2 Million The coins were minted between 1840 and 1863.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 09:49 AM

From The Observer

"Were small-brained early humans intelligent? Row erupts over scientists’ claim

Homo naledi was claimed to be artistic, make tools and bury its dead, but warring experts now ask, where’s the evidence?"


Homo naledi’s resting place

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:59 AM

not just archaeology - The Channel Islands were the only piece of British territory Germany ever managed to occupy during the Second World War. On this deserted island, the Germans left a fingerprint of the Holocaust: SS concentration camps run on U.K. soil ...

Wikipedia - Alderney Camps

Journal article - Nazi camps on British soil by Gilly Carr -Journal of Conflict Archaeology

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 21 Jul 23 - 06:39 AM

3,000-Year-Old Grave of Charioteer Could Rewrite Siberian History

2 related links on the same page

2,000-Year-Old Mummified ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Dressed in Silk Emerges from Siberian Reservoir

Legal Bid Fails to Rebury Remains of 2,500-year-old Tattooed Ice Princess

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 06:39 PM

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/stone-tools-and-camel-tooth-suggest-people-were-in-the-pacific-northwest-more-than-18000-years-ago

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 Jul 23 - 10:16 AM

Mammals may have hunted dinosaurs much larger than them, rare fossil find suggests An unusual fossil find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaurs for dinner.
The fossil shows a badger-like creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined ...

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jul 23 - 07:26 AM

A quarter million years ago our ancestors were humanoid but not us. Primate social cooperation traits were there but megalithic structures are not seen until 15,000 years ago despite homo sapiens being around for 100,000 years. We are the builders. Perhaps older structures may be found but an Ice Age and great floods could have obliterated the evidence. The capacity for language is more powerful than muscles when it comes to building.
100,000 years is a blink in the fullness of time.

Could such a blink have occurred and failed long before homo sapiens?
As Stilly said, "it's a matter of science fiction".
There are many dead ends in evolution but there is no fossil evidence for such a prehistoric blink.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 02:04 PM

Here is a photo of a pile of extra Bison skulls courtesy of new Americans.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/arthistorystudycollection/636/

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 01:52 PM

The earliest examples of homo sapiens burial are about 100,000 years ago. Our ancestors like homo erectus, Neanderthal and Homo naledi whose brain was only a third our size. The naledi did bury their dead in a very purposeful manner.

Here is a wonderful film about the naledi cave of bones

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 03:43 PM

*Agree*, SRS. I twice entered, and twice cancelled, blethers about the suspicious correlation in the archaeological record between the arrival of Hom Sap in various parts of the Americas and catastrophic population decline of the big beasts. Then, come to think, it happened all over again with the bison when the railroads opened the Central US to immigrants with guns.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 11:01 AM

Perhaps, but it doesn't take humans long to kill off the big stuff once they settle in an area. "Charismatic megafauna" don't fare well when people start hunting them.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 09:49 AM

Mammoth tusks are not simple treasures but I'll even take ones that smell.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Jul 23 - 01:12 AM

"British and Europeans had long since killed off the elephants, lions, etc. that once roamed outside of Africa."

I think that the climate played a big part too.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 11:51 PM

History is relative to where we live. I'm in a house built in 1976 on an area that was a dairy farm for decades, probably the first European use of land in this area beyond the occasional transit of cattle being driven north through the region. Prior to this, it had Comanche encampments, US military encampments, and in the distant past, wild horses (escaped from early Europeans to the continent), Clovis-era people, and the passage of charismatic large mammals. Bison (southern populations), perhaps antelope, and way back, mammoths.

British and Europeans had long since killed off the elephants, lions, etc. that once roamed outside of Africa. Think of the Lascaux caves.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 09:02 PM

1929 barely classifies as "history" on this side of the pond.

A while back someone said to me that the difference between Americans and the Irish and British is that Americans think 100 years is a long time ............. and we think 100 miles is a long way.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 03:38 PM

Attics of homes a century or more old are full of simple treasures.
My Mom also found; photos, pictures, letters, and sheet music from the civil war to 1929.;

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 10:18 AM

Speaking of bringing tragic shipwrecks to life, we found an old newspaper account of a tragic shipwreck off the coast of Oregon in the attic of the Hurlbert house where the family resided in the civil war era. The family was the first to patent a telescope in the US and later another Hurlbert learned how to train horses without reins and use only a light touch on the neck with a crop. This method was featured in one of the earliest issues of Scientific American Magazine. While there were no survivors the horses told the story. They were on tour across the US when the ship went down. The victims that washed ashore included the horses that had numerous life vests attached to them. The final moments of the ship must have lasted long enough to try a desperate attempt to save the lives of the Hurlbert horses.

Subject: RE: Armchair Archaeologist (via Google Earth) pt 2
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 15 Jul 23 - 06:10 AM

Wreck of the Batavia brought back to life in forensic reconstruction by Flinders University Experts have used 3D imaging to bring the story of one of Western Australia's most tragic shipwrecks to life in intricate detail.
The Batavia was wrecked at the Abrolhos Islands on its maiden voyage from the Netherlands in 1629.
A deadly mutiny followed.
The wreck was not discovered until 1963, when all that remained was the ship's hull, now on display in the Maritime Museum in Fremantle.
But for the first time, antique models housed in Dutch museums are being used to make 3D scans revealing how the Batavia was made ...

"[The Batavia] is an iconic ship from the point of view of Australian archaeology, and also one of the only ships of this type where we have physical remains of the hull that … lends itself to this forensic reconstruction approach."
Dr McCarthy said the Batavia was a case study on how forensic imaging could be used to reconstruct other shipwrecks and archaeological sites ...
caption of a photos - A view from the air of the reef indentation made by the Batavia.

In 1976 my sister moved to Perth & some time after that took me to visit friends who worked in the Museum & I had a private backroom tour - wow! I can't remember now if the hull & artifacts were on public display.

Batavia's History - Western Australian Museum

video - Mudcatter Daniel Kelly's cover of John Warner's Batavia Shanty

~~~~~~~

THE BATAVIA SHANTY - words & music John Warner

John Warner’s song of the tragic and grisly tale of shipwreck, mutiny and slaughter in Houtman’s Abrolhos, a group of islands off the central coast of Western Australia, in 1629 by renegade sailors of the Dutch East India Company.

Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, tea
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Fill the holds of the VOC
Roll Batavia down

But down in stout Batavia’s hold
There’s a massive weight of jewels and gold
Quarter-million guilders worth, all told
Roll Batavia down.

For months the murderous plot’s been laid
Heave and fall on the southern swells
To slip away from the ships of trade
Roll Batavia down

Make passage south to the unknown land
Turn buccaneer as the skipper has planned
Slaughter all others out of hand
Roll Batavia down.

What’s that gleam on the larboard quarter?
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Moonlight glinting on the water
Roll Batavia down

No moonlight here, but the crashing wave
The lookout cries too late to save
Batavia from her island grave
Roll Batavia down

Now some did drown and some made land
Heave and fall on the southern swells
But few can hide from death’s cold hand
Roll Batavia down

The sword and dagger do their work
Who knows where bloody murderers lurk
To silence traitors with a dirk
Roll Batavia down

The commander’s gone and the captain too,
Heave and fall on the southern swells
Along with the best of the barge’s crew
Roll Batavia down

Protection that they might have made
By this desertion is betrayed
Throats stretched to the slaughterer’s blade
Roll Batavia down

The rescue ship has come too late
Heave and fall on the southern swells
For those who met a bloody fate
Roll Batavia down

The thieves have paid for their plunder dear
Trial and torture, pain and fear
Death for every mutineer
Roll Batavia down

Stark the creaking scaffolds stand
Heave and fall on the southern swells
The dead swing over the blowing sand
Roll Batavia down

They say that dead men tell no tales
Who knows but many a spirit wails
In the cold lament of the southern gales
Roll Batavia down