Skeleton recovered from ancient Greek shipwreck

POTAMóS, Greece, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- In the second quarter of the 1st century B.C., a Greek cargo ship sank off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea. This summer, researchers pulled most of a human skeleton from the wreckage.

"Archaeologists study the human past through the objects our ancestors created," Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in a news release. "With the Antikythera shipwreck, we can now connect directly with this person who sailed and died aboard the Antikythera ship."

Foley is one of several scientists from WHOI who teamed with researchers from Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports for an excavation of the famed shipwreck.

Previous expeditions have yielded dozens of artifacts, including ancient coins, statues and even the world's oldest known analog computer, the Antikythera mechanism. But the latest find marks the first time human remains have been recovered.

"Against all odds, the bones survived over 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea and they appear to be in fairly good condition, which is incredible," said Hannes Schroeder, a DNA expert at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

As soon as Greek authorities permit, skeletal samples will be sent to Schroeder's lab for analysis. If scientists can successfully retrieve an intact DNA sample from the remains, researchers may be able to confirm the ethnicity and geographic origin of the Antikythera passenger.

Like all the artifacts pulled from the Antikythera wreckage, the skeletal remains -- which include a skull with jaw bone and teeth, as well as arm bones, leg bones and ribs -- will be scanned in 3D and uploaded to the web for citizen scientists to analyze for themselves.