The treasure hunter in all of us just loves this kind of thing. As a Kid, I used to dig up the backyard hoping to find some buried treasure like ten centavo coins from the previous decade or so. My grandmother was an antique collector in Cebu and we were always fascinated by her antique coins, many of them from excavation sites all around the island of Cebu… So when a construction crew at the World Trade Center site goes digging in downtown Manhattan and finds the hull of an 18th century boat/ship, I think that is VERY COOL. Very, very cool. See story here. You never know what might be buried in your own backyard… Start digging. :)
6 Responses
I am sure Clive Cussler can weave a good story on how the ship got stranded in that part of NY.
When I was a kid, I buried some of my mom’s vases in the backyard. I was more interested in “making” treasure than hunting for them. Maybe in a thousand years those vases will give someone a glimpse of life in the 1980s…
There are dozens of ships buried under San Francisco…old merchant ships, whalers, etc. Not surprising given the maritime history of the bay. Other neat “big city” finds include bones of a mammoth and prehistoric whale found in downtown San Diego.
Here’s an interesting forum for digging and finding…enjoy!
https://www.antique-bottles.net/forum/Digging-and-Finding/forumid-3/tt.htm
It is a mere 15-minute drive where I live to Slagen, the site where the oldest Viking ship Oseberg was dug up, and a bicycle ride to the Viking gravesite in Borre. There are many archeological diggings going on in this county that whenever I go to the beach, I hope to find something ancient—I mean really ancient!
We had our backyard dug up in 2007 to place a sort of black PVC mat around the the wall of the basement for proper drainage and to remove a paraffin tank under the lawn. Well, nothing much came up except for broken pieces of 1950’s Chinese bowls and a small perfume flask. The Chinese crockery goes with the year the house was built which is 1957. It would’ve been nice if I can persuade a friend to dig around her house since it dates back 1825. But then again, it’s a listed house that we have to ask permission before we could even dig a hole near it to plant a rosebush!
My six-year-old boy and our basset hound are also always on the dig, you know, complete with a “treasure map” drawn on an A4 paper they found under the bush and there’s this X mark on it, LOLZ! I really have to dig in, or else I’ll be the kill joy!
In the news last week, a man from England found 52,000 roman coins using his metal detector and the loot is worth $5m+ and he’s sharing it with the farmer who owns the land.