Divers Mistook This for a Rock

They thought it was a rock. Send this to the friend who never looks twice at anything. Two spearfishermen were training off the coast of Sicily, about three miles out, when they passed a dark shape on the sea floor. One of them said afterwards that he took it for a boulder. It was a Roman ship, and it had been lying there for roughly two thousand one hundred years.

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Picture the moment the shape resolves. You are down at about forty six meters, the light is thin and blue, and what you took for stone turns out to have edges and order. Rows of clay wine jars, still standing where somebody stacked them, still in their cargo shape, stacked higher than you are tall and running the length of the hull.

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Italy's culture minister called it one of the most important underwater discoveries of recent years. The jars are the ordinary shipping containers of the ancient Mediterranean, and there are hundreds of them down there, from more than one region, which suggests a ship that had been trading in several places before whatever happened to it happened. Nobody is saying exactly where the site is, in order to keep it safe.

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