Trade was brisk on the Black Sea around 400 BC.
Well-fed by East Asian grain and powered with slave labor, great coastal cities had risen along its shores and now buzzed with merchants haggling in Greek, Persian, Scythian and Thracian tongues.
Graecan trade ships crisscrossed commercial sea routes, ferrying exotic wares among the Black Sea’s ports on their way back west.
Yet during great tempests, more than a few ships sunk into the sea and out of memory.
Now, one vessel has re-emerged after slumbering below the waves for more than two millenia — and it could provide the clearest glimpse yet of life during the time of the Black Sea-faring traders.
Scientists with the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project announced Tuesday that they have uncovered the world’s oldest intact shipwreck — a 2,400-year-old Greek trading vessel that seems to have been frozen in time more than a mile below the water’s surface.
“A small piece of the vessel has been carbon-dated, and it is confirmed as the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind,” the project said in a statement.
The roughly 75-foot-vessel, found about 50 miles off the coast of Bulgaria, dates back to roughly 400 BC — when the Black Sea was dotted with trading colonies tied to various Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta.
It is the oldest of more than 60 such ships from the Roman, Ottoman and Byzantine empires that the project stumbled upon while conducting a survey of the impacts of sea-level rise on the Black Sea, according to the researchers.
Intact ships of its ilk have largely survived only in paintings and on pottery, such as the famous Siren Vase depicting Homeric hero Odysseus contending with mythological Sirens.
Project member Helen Farr told the BBC that her group’s historic find was stunning in terms of the information it could now yield.
“It’s like another world,” Farr said of the ghostly visage beneath the waves.
“It’s when the ROV [remote operated vehicle] drops down through the water column and you see this ship appear in the light at the bottom so perfectly preserved — it feels like you step back in time,” she said.
The ancient wreck defied decay thanks to a geological quirk of the Black Sea that creates pockets of oxygen-deprived water inhospitable to the microorganisms that normally munch shipwrecks into oblivion.
“What they found in the Black Sea is so spectacular because it is the superstructure of the ship,” Brock University professor and classical-shipwreck expert Elizabeth Greene told The Post.
“The rails, mast, ports for rowers — that’s the sort of discoveries that you really would probably only find in that kind of environment.”
The ship’s cargo, however, remains a mystery for now.
The Archaeology Project doesn’t have the money to crack open the wreckage and catalogue its treasures just yet, researchers said.
Similar wrecks have been found to contain wine stored in ancient jars called amphorae.
But sacks of grain, furs, seafood and slaves were also frequently traded along the ancient Black Sea routes, according to Antonis Kotsonas, an assistant professor of Mediterranean history and archaeology at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
“The degree of preservation is really stunning,” he told The Post.
“It promises important finds within the wreck. Commodities must be preserved to some extent at least, and this will also be very important.”
The wreck closely resembles the destroyed ship immortalized on the Siren Vase.
The Greek pottery relic depicts Odysseus confronting the mythological Sirens on his epic trek home following the Trojan War, chronicled in “The Odyssey.”
The Sirens’ song was thought to lure sailors to watery graves, so Odysseus instructed his men to plug their ears with wax.
The inquisitive hero, however, wished to hear their voices, so he lashed himself to the boat’s mast to keep from wandering into the sea at their beckoning chantey.
The wreck’s resemblance to the famous pottery has captured observers’ attention and imagination — but experts say the real-life seafarers who sailed aboard the ship weren’t nearly as revered as Homer’s heroes.
“Greeks did not think highly of seamen,” Kotsonas said, adding, “There is this stereotype in ancient Greek culture that agriculture is the source of all money while the sea has a corrupting effect on people.
“Accordingly, the people that conduct sea trade — sometimes even those providing the capital for this trade — were looked down upon because of this stereotype.”
The newly discovered shipwreck likely held an estimated 15 to 25 sailors, but no bodies have been found yet, either because they are buried under sediment or because the corpses decayed over the ages, researchers said.
It’s safe to assume that the sailors’ socio-economic status was low and that they included a robust mix of ethnic groups, according to Kotsonas.
‘It’s like another world’
“Crews on an ancient boat could be as international as crews on modern boats,” he said.
“It’s reasonable to assume Greek [was spoken aboard], but at the same time, these people were traders, and they had to pick up some other languages to facilitate their work.”
Even as the crew and cargo remain a mystery, the boat itself is already challenging assumptions about ancient maritime practices, according to Greene.
Most merchant ships relied on sails, while warships were powered by humans and oars.
The newly discovered wreck, however, appeared to use both.
“We tend not to think of these combination vessels — either merchant ships sailed or war ships that were rowed. So if this is a combination, it would be a kind of interesting hybrid vessel that would be unusual,” Greene said.
“It’s an exciting discovery. It’s tantalizing.”
Unfortunately for history buffs, however, the ship may never see the light of day — raising the vessel would be a Herculean task that could compromise its structural integrity and its cargo, experts said.
The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project has photographed and 3-D-mapped the wreckage using a pair of remote-controlled submarines.
Team members plan to publish their findings during a conference at the Wellcome Collection in London later this week.
With Wire Services