{"id":53,"date":"2008-10-22T23:03:36","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T23:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/?p=53"},"modified":"2009-02-18T05:20:02","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T05:20:02","slug":"asia-pacific-undersea-treasure-chest-stirs-up-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/2008\/10\/asia-pacific-undersea-treasure-chest-stirs-up-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Asia-Pacific  Undersea treasure chest stirs up tensions :"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/images\/123.jpg\" alt=\"Shipwrecked treasure\" width=\"213\" height=\"218\" \/>, recently recovered from the bottom of the South China Sea, is threatening to inflame a diplomatic row over an area believed to be rich in oil.<\/p>\n<p>Divers working for the French oil company Elf, stumbled across the wreck of a 15th Century Chinese galleon containing a hoard of priceless porcelain and ceramic pieces.<\/p>\n<p>The ship went down off the coast of Brunei and is thought to contain one of the largest hauls of buried treasure ever uncovered.<\/p>\n<p>Using the same two-seater submarine as those used to survey the Titanic, archaeologists uncovered an Aladdin&#8217;s Cave of intricately painted ancient pottery.<br \/>\nFor more than two months, a daily haul of hundreds of artefacts were hauled to the surface. Back on land, a vast hanger was built to clean and catalogue the discoveries, thought to be worth millions of dollars.\u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s a fascinating project,&#8221; says John Perry, Managing Director of Elf Petroleum Asia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The artefacts themselves, in their day may have been ordinary things in the street but today they have a timeless beauty, which is so hard to define but so real to touch.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For Brunei, a nation keen to lessen its dependence on oil revenue, the discovery has become a source of new national pride.<\/p>\n<p>The artefacts provide the tiny sultanate with something money alone cannot buy &#8211; symbols of a cultural identity which, officials hope, will boost tourism. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"vertical-align: text-bottom;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/images\/134.jpg\" alt=\"Marine Archaeology\" width=\"349\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>, recently recovered from the bottom of the South China Sea, is threatening to inflame a diplomatic row over an area believed to be rich in oil. Divers working for the French oil company Elf, stumbled across the wreck of a 15th Century Chinese galleon containing a hoard of priceless porcelain and ceramic pieces. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marine-archaeology","tag-undersea-treasure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatarchaeology.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}