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Rio artifacts may indicate Roman visit (1982) (nytimes.com)
15 points by janandonly on April 19, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Interesting story I had never heard about before. Seems in the years since there has been no resolution unfortunately. Here is a more recent link I found with a tiny bit more info: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/05/the-mysterious-ancien...


There's been plenty of resolution.

The "artifacts" were never authenticated by anyone responsible, and were almost certainly modern reproductions dumped in the bay to gain a patina and then lost.


There's no resolution in the sense that there's no firm evidence one way or the other. The null hypothesis/Occam's Razor of course suggests that these aren't Roman but that's not the same as proof that they're not.


The consensus seems to be that these are unlikely to have been Roman artifacts: http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/2004/02/08.html

AFAIK, it hasn't been definitively debunked but no solid evidence has ever come out either.



Also with a NY Times sourced story: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/science/underwater-explor...

It would seem to me that if the amphorae were truly made in the 3rd century, there should have been enough time in the intervening 38 years to establish more conclusive dating than the stylistic comparisons that were apparently used originally (and that were bound to be misleading if the amphorae were replicas of a particular style).




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