Sunken Gold Treasure
Sunken Treasure! Gold and silver, diamond rings and pendants, pearls and gold doublouns! The hallmarks of treasure-hunting are the stuff of adventure stories, more than fun enough to make archaeologists, who are mounting increasing complaints against the pillaging of sunken ships, seem like wet blankets.
But more is at stake than just a few loose doubloons, archaeologists say. The big picture is that a fair amount of humanity’s past they don’t know, and it’s important they don’t let it become lost forever.
The latest flashpoint comes with the recent premiere of the show Treasure Quest on cable’s Discovery Channel, which follows deepwater exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration as its teams explore two historic shipwrecks. Odyssey is in hot water with Spain over one of them, fighting it out in U.S. federal court over rights to the wreckage code-named the “Black Swan.” Odyssey announced the discovery of the shipwreck site in 2007.
Odyssey says it recovered more than 500,000 silver and several hundred gold coins from the Black Swan wreck, some of which it intends to sell to finance its work.
An editorial in Archaeology magazine, published by the Archaeological Institute of America, charges that “the Discovery Channel is cashing in on the business of systematically looting shipwrecks” in teaming up with Odyssey. “The artifacts that Odyssey sells might inspire people to wonder about what life was like on board a ship a few hundred years ago when they played an integral role in the rise and fall of nations, but getting real answers about that history requires wrecks to be scientifically excavated and analyzed. The results have to be shared and debated so that they can become part of the historical and archaeological records.
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Karat is the term that states the ratio of glod in an alloy. Pure gold is 24 karat. This term is applied to the American made gold, while in Europe the term fineness is used. Any of the jewelry items are required to be stamped in order to inform the buyers about the quality of gold the item was made of. The table below will help you to understand the marking of gold.