While searching for shipwreck remains near Oman in the Arabian Sea in 2014, divers discovered an unusual metal disk that has since proven to be the world’s oldest known mariner’s astrolabe, British researchers report.
A metal disk found at a shipwreck site near Oman is the oldest known mariner’s astrolabe, a device for navigating at sea.
Guinness World Records have independently certified an astrolabe excavated from the wreck site of a Portuguese Armada Ship that was part of Vasco da Gama's second voyage to India in 1502-1503 as the oldest in the world, and have separately certified a ship's bell (dated 1498) recovered from the same wreck site also as the oldest in the world.
Astrolabes are considered to be the rarest and most prized of artefacts to be found on ancient shipwrecks—only 108 have been recovered by archaeologists. The astrolabe in question was located during an excavation of the wreck of the Esmerelda in 2014. The vessel was part of an expedition to subdue local merchants along India’s Malabar Coast undertaken by Da Gama in 1502, several years after the Portuguese explorer had successfully pioneered a trade route around the tip of Africa to India in 1497.
The artefacts were discovered by David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries, the oceanographer who in 2001 located the wreck of the Second World War Royal Navy battleship HMS Hood, and Bismark—the German ship, which sunk it.
“Without the laser scanning work performed by WMG [Warwick] we would never have known that the scale marks, which were invisible to the naked eye, existed,” he said.
