Ancient Treasures: The Discovery of Lost Hoards, Sunken Ships, Buried Vaults, and Other Long-Forgotten Artifacts

By Brian Haughton

Why are such a lot of humans desirous about treasure? Is it simply a wish for wealth, or is it additionally the romantic charm of stories of misplaced historical artifacts?

It is unquestionably actual that the tales in the back of the loss and restoration of a couple of old treasures learn like edge-of-the-seat fiction, someplace among Indiana Jones and James Bond.

In Ancient Treasures, you'll learn attention-grabbing tales of misplaced hoards, looted archaeological artifacts, and sunken treasures, including:

  • The Sevso Treasure, a hoard of huge silver vessels from the overdue Roman Empire--estimated to be worthy $200 million--looted within the Seventies and offered at the black market.
  • The Amber Room, an entire chamber ornament of amber panels sponsored with gold leaf and mirrors, stolen by way of the Nazis in 1941 and taken to the fortress at Königsberg in Russia, from which it disappeared.
  • The impressive wealth of Roman and Viking hoards buried within the floor for safekeeping, in simple terms to be unearthed centuries later via humble steel detectorists.
  • The wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleets, whose New global plunder has been the objective of tricky salvage makes an attempt via sleek treasure hunters
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    Executive was once no longer entire with the Meador relations, and, in January 1996, they and their former lawyer, John Torigian, have been indicted on fees of conspiring to promote the Samuhel Gospel and the Evangelistar. If stumbled on responsible, the defendants may have confronted greatest felony sentences of 10 years and a superb of as much as $250,000. yet good fortune was once on their aspect, and years later a federal pass judgement on brushed off the indictments on a technicality. although, almost immediately after the federal case used to be pushed aside, the IRS made a declare for greater than $50 million in taxes, consequences, and curiosity from the relations. back the Meadors acquired fortunate, and in April 2000, they escaped with in simple terms having to pay the IRS $135,000. In may perhaps 2003, Jack Meador died on the age of eighty three, in July of a similar 12 months by means of his sister, Jane, on the age of seventy one. This magnificent tale doesn't relatively finish there. Representatives of the Church Quedlinburg have acknowledged that a few gadgets from the treasure stay unaccounted for. Thomas R. Kline, now a litigation associate with legislations company Andrews Kurth, represented the Quedlinburg church within the federal case of 1990 and believes that items from the hoard (a crystal reliquary formed like a bishop’s hat and a hole gold move) are nonetheless within the Dallas region. certainly, legal professional Alan Harris, who additionally represented the Quedlinburg church within the case, as soon as bought a telephone name from a girl whom he's confident used to be in ownership of the hole gold pass. there's additionally the tantalizing danger that Joe T. Meador was once no longer the single one taking items of the Quedlinburg Treasure out of the mineshaft in 1945; different U. S. infantrymen or maybe Soviet or German troops can also have looted many of the gadgets. might be in the future someplace in the dead of night international of unlawful antiquities different items from this beautiful medieval assortment will floor and confidently locate their long ago domestic to the Church of St. Servatius. bankruptcy 14 the hunt for the traditional chinese language Treasure Ships conventional and renowned bills of the exceptional early-15th-century voyages of chinese language eunuch admiral Zheng He describe fleets of titanic nine-masted wood vessels travelling to Arabia, Brunei, the Horn of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Thailand. On those expeditions the chinese language traded gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and in go back obtained ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory, or even a giraffe from Swahili. in this interval the chinese language have been additionally seeking to extend their impression past India and Africa, and if the Ming emperors had persevered their funding within the treasure fleets, there could have been chinese language colonies arising during the international, instead of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British. yet this by no means occurred, the priorities of the chinese language courtroom replaced, the treasure junks have been decommissioned, and maritime alternate was once ultimately banned. What occurred to reason this modification in perspective, and what may well global background were like if the voyages of the chinese language treasure ships had persisted? And what of the treasure ships themselves?

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