Skip to Content
Videos

Archaeologists Just Unearthed a Giant Bronze Arm From the Antikythera Shipwreck

Archaeologists Just Unearthed a Giant Bronze Arm From the Antikythera Shipwreck

The Antikythera Shipwreck is a Roman-era wreck dating all the way back to the 2nd quarter of the 1st century BC that’s been explored since the early 1900s by various archaeologists and explorers (including Jacques Cousteau) to unearth treasures and artifacts that are nothing short of mind-blowing. During the most recent expedition, 2017 Return to Antikythera, a team of archaeologists from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and Lund University in Sweden uncovered quite a few new treasures including the giant bronze arm you see here. Seeing as how bronze statues were regularly melted down for other purposes during antiquity, this find is particularly interesting because of the fact that it’s been preserved until today. In addition to the arm, the team found a few other sculpture fragments, pottery shards, lead sheathing and a metal disc decorated with a bull (observed through x-rays) that could be ornamental or a part of the Antikythera Mechanism.