The 800-year-old gold bracelet is extremely delicately crafted.
The ship, named Nanhai 1, was first discovered by a British-Chinese expedition in 1987. However, it took another two decades for the ship to be raised to the surface A safe way to study.
Worth mentioning, this is China’s largest and oldest sunken cargo ship, which departed from China towards the Indian Ocean along the former Maritime Silk Road. Accordingly, the ship dates back to the Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279 AD.
One of two newly unearthed gold bracelets.
“It is very possible that the ship was overloaded, or it was submerged in a storm,” Director of the Chinese Institute of Underwater Archeology, Jiang Bo told UNESCO Courier.
This extremely well-preserved ancient ship is a high-capacity ocean-going merchant ship, approximately 22 meters long and approximately 9 meters wide.
Even though it was buried for 800 years at the bottom of the sea, the bracelet still looks like new.
Although the shipwreck was buried at the bottom of the sea for about eight centuries, the hull of the Nanhai 1 remained intact, preserving tens of thousands of ancient objects.
Accordingly, many antiques made of gold, silver, and copper were recovered, among them more than 17,000 coins with many personal items such as bracelets, delicate lacquerware, and rings, showing that there were a number of people on board the ship. it sank.
It is estimated that the wreck contained 100 tons of ironwork, half its weight, including nails, pots and pans, as well as 13,000 porcelain objects originating from Fujian’s famous kilns, Jiangxi and Zhejiang. Some of the ceramics in there were packaged and even labeled with the names of the shops where they were sold and where they were made.
“What we found was completely beyond our expectations,” Mr. Bo said.
By the time Nanhai 1 set sail, China’s international trade had reached a new peak of prosperity.
Besides the gold necklaces, the exhibition also includes more than 400 other relics recovered from this shipwreck, as well as other items from the Southern Song period.
These artefacts include ceramics, woodcut tablets, metalwork, gemstones, silver jewelry and both animal and plant specimens.
The exhibition will be on display at the Guangdong Museum until August 25, 2019.
