Armed with top-notch technology, archaeologists have scoured one of the richest shipwrecks of antiquity for overlooked treasures, finding artifacts amid indications that significant artworks may await under the seabed.
The Roman commercial vessel's wreck was accidentally located by sponge divers more than a century ago lying 164 feet down a steep underwater slope off Antikythera Island, in southern Greece.
Assisted by the Greek navy and using primitive suits, the researchers were able to raise marble and bronze statues luxury tableware and the Antikythera Mechanism, an entrancingly complex clockwork computer that tracked the cycles of the Solar system, according to the Associated Press.
The wreck is now accessible through modern applied science after being too deep for proper investigation since being discovered.
A U.S. and Greek-led team comprehensively mapped the seabed over the past three weeks, despite being hampered by strong wings that only allowed archeologists one day's use of an Iron Man-like diving suit, likened to a wearable submarine, that can take people more than 985 feet deep without the "dangerous and time-consuming process of decompression," according to the AP.
Divers were able to raise sample artefacts, like a bronze spear that probably belonged to a larger than life-sized statue, metal fittings from the 1st century B.C. wooden ship, a pottery flask that could have contained wine or oil and a metal leg from a bed, according to a statement released by the Greek Culture Ministry.
Excavators hope to find much more beneath the sand.
"I don't know what there is there, perhaps more works of art or parts of the ship's equipment, but we really have to dig," said Angeliki Simossi, head of Greece's underwater antiquities department who coordinated the large team that included Greek navy Seals, according to the Associated Press.
"(The spear) is not connected to any of the known sculptures from the wreck."
Simossi said the freighter was likely sailing from a Greek island to Italy carrying works of art from Roman-conquered Greece.
"It was a floating museum, carrying works from various periods; one bronze statue dates from 340 B.C, another from 240 B.C, while the Antikythera Mechanism was made later," she said to the AP. "This was when the trade in works of art started."
The ship was at least 130 feet long, and sunk sometime in the 1st century B.C. between mainland Greece and the southern island of Crete.
Senior team archaeologist Brendan Foley, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said evidence from the site makes it "the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered."
"It's the Titanic of the ancient world," he said, according to the AP.
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