In a major victory for underwater archaeology, a collaborative team from the National Institute of Oceanography has located a ship buried 40 meters deep in the Andaman Sea. Preliminary dating and cargo analysis suggest the vessel was an Indo-Greek or Ptolemaic merchant ship returning from the Coromandel coast. The cargo includes hematite ingots, peppercorns preserved in resin, and rare Greek-style amphorae.
This find provides the first direct archaeological evidence of maritime trade routes extending significantly further east than previously documented for this era. It suggests that the trade networks linking the Mediterranean to India were even more expansive and utilized eastern island chains as critical navigational waypoints.