Lost Treasures

The Lost Hull of the Antikythera Wreck: What Else Lies Below?

By The Unsolved Report Editorial Team · Last reviewed 2026-06-19

The Antikythera wreck gave us an ancient computer and bronze masterpieces. Divers say 7-9 statues may still be buried. What else lies unexcavated in the hold?

In the spring of 1900, a crew of Greek sponge divers from the island of Symi sheltered from a storm off the rocky coast of Antikythera, a speck of land between the Peloponnese and Crete. While they waited, one diver, Elias Stadiatos, descended roughly 50 meters and surfaced with a wild story about a seabed strewn with corpses and horses. What he had actually seen was a field of bronze and marble statues, scattered across one of the richest ancient shipwrecks ever found (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Cambridge Core Blog).

More than a century of diving later, the wreck still has not given up everything. Archaeologists working the site today say its hold and its surrounding debris fields are far from empty. So what, exactly, is still down there?

The Documented Facts

The first major salvage ran from 1900 to 1902, conducted by sponge divers with the support of the Greek Navy. It produced a haul now displayed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens: bronze and marble statues, statue heads, a bronze lyre, glassware, jewelry, coins, and lumps of corroded bronze (WHOI). One of those corroded lumps turned out to be the single most famous object from the wreck: the Antikythera Mechanism, a complex set of interlocking bronze gears capable of modeling the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. It is widely described as the earliest known geared analog device, predating comparable technology by more than a thousand years (WHOI).

The ship is generally dated to roughly the second quarter of the first century BCE, with the sinking commonly placed around 65 BCE (WHOI). Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team dived the site in 1976, recovering coins, bronze statuettes, glass, jewelry, and human skeletal remains (Cambridge Core Blog).

Modern, systematic excavation resumed in the 2010s and has been formalized in a multi-year program led by the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece, with the University of Geneva's Lorenz Baumer among the directing scholars (University of Geneva). Recent seasons have been productive. In 2016, divers recovered a partial human skeleton, nicknamed "Pamphilos" after a name scratched on a wine cup from the site; ancient-DNA specialist Hannes Schroeder of the Natural History Museum of Denmark assessed the bones, which appeared unusually well preserved for material submerged in saltwater for two millennia (Nature; Scientific American).

In 2022, the team relocated natural boulders weighing up to 8.5 tons each, opening a previously inaccessible part of the wreck and revealing marble fragments, including one possibly belonging to the beard of a known statue head of Herakles (phys.org). The 2023 season turned up marble and pottery fragments, glass, copper-alloy, lead and wooden structural elements, and the bone remains of at least one additional individual (University of Geneva).

The 2024 and 2025 seasons reached the ship itself. Divers identified three outer hull planks still attached to an internal frame, an unusual survival that was carefully excavated in 2025 using a custom support system. The timber, identified as elm and oak, points to "shell-first" construction, in which the outer hull is assembled before the internal framework. Initial analysis suggested the wood dates to around 235 BCE, though that figure reflects the age of the timber, not necessarily the date the ship was built or sank (Archaeology Magazine). The same recent work recovered Chian amphorae spread across more than one zone, a clay mortar for grinding food, and the marble base of a statue with the lower portion of a leg still attached (Archaeology Magazine).

The Genuine Open Question

Here is what keeps drawing divers back: the evidence strongly suggests significant material remains buried and unrecovered.

The strongest hint comes from a 2017 survey. Using a custom underwater metal detector, the "Return to Antikythera" team detected anomalies beneath the heavy boulders consistent with buried metal objects. Archaeologist Brendan Foley estimated that "a minimum of seven, and potentially nine" bronze sculptures could still lie under the seabed (Smithsonian Magazine). That matters enormously, because ancient bronzes were routinely melted down and recycled, making intact classical bronze statues exceptionally rare survivals (Smithsonian Magazine).

There is also a structural mystery about the site's scale. Artifacts are scattered over an area on the order of 50 to 60 meters at depths reported between about 35 and 60 meters, a spread so wide that it has long raised the question of whether one enormous ship or more than one vessel went down here (Live Science). In 2024, the Swiss-led team reported confirming a second wooden wreck within the study area, roughly 200 meters from the main site and apparently dating to about the same period (SWI swissinfo.ch; CBS News).

So the open questions are concrete and testable: How many statues are still buried under the boulders? Was this one heavily laden ship or two sailing together? And what does the rest of the hold contain that 1900-era divers, working with primitive equipment, simply could not reach?

Theories and Interpretations (Labeled as Speculation)

The following are interpretations and working hypotheses, not settled fact.

A war-booty or luxury-cargo ship bound for Rome. A common scholarly reading holds that the ship was carrying Greek art and luxury goods westward, possibly as plunder or as commissioned cargo destined for wealthy Roman buyers in the first century BCE. This fits the mix of fine statuary, glass, and jewelry, but the ship's exact origin and destination ports are not documented with certainty (WHOI).

Two ships, one storm. Some researchers propose the second wreck and the main wreck may have been traveling together and foundered in the same event. The two sites reportedly share similar amphora types from comparable periods, which would be consistent with vessels that stopped at the same ports and sailed in tandem (Greek Reporter). This remains a hypothesis under active investigation rather than a confirmed conclusion.

More mechanisms? It is tempting to wonder whether another geared device might still lie in the hold. There is no evidence for this; it is pure speculation. What the documented record does support is that the wreck remains, in the words of the recent team, far from exhausted, with dives continuing to deliver finds (Archaeology Magazine).

For now, the lost hull of Antikythera keeps its accounts open. The boulders have been moved, the framing has been mapped, and the seabed has been scanned. The next answer is likely sitting a meter down in the sand, waiting for the right season and the right tide.

Sources & Further Reading

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "Antikythera Shipwreck": https://www.whoi.edu/ocean-learning-hub/ocean-topics/ocean-human-lives/underwater-archaeology/antikythera-shipwreck/
Smithsonian Magazine, "Seven Bronze Statues May Be Buried at Antikythera": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seven-bronze-statues-may-be-buried-site-antikythera-shipwreck-180965127/
Archaeology Magazine, "New Discoveries from Famed Antikythera Shipwreck" (2025): https://archaeology.org/news/2025/07/11/new-discoveries-from-famed-antikythera-shipwreck/
University of Geneva, "New discoveries on the wreck of Antikythera" (2023): https://www.unige.ch/medias/en/2023/nouvelles-decouvertes-sur-lepave-danticythere
Nature, "Human skeleton found on famed Antikythera shipwreck" (2016): https://www.nature.com/news/human-skeleton-found-on-famed-antikythera-shipwreck-1.20632
Scientific American, "Human Skeleton Found on Famed Antikythera Shipwreck": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-skeleton-found-on-famed-antikythera-shipwreck/
SWI swissinfo.ch, "Swiss researchers uncover second ship in Antikythera shipwreck investigation": https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/swiss-researchers-uncover-second-ship-in-antikythera-shipwreck-investigation/82471105
Cambridge Core Blog, "The Statues from the Antikythera Shipwreck, 125 Years Later" (2025): https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2025/10/08/the-statues-from-the-antikythera-shipwreck-125-years-later/
Live Science, "Famed Roman Shipwreck Could Be Two": https://www.livescience.com/26009-antikythera-roman-shipwreck-two.html

Sources & further reading

https://www.whoi.edu/ocean-learning-hub/ocean-topics/ocean-human-lives/underwater-archaeology/antikythera-shipwreck/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seven-bronze-statues-may-be-buried-site-antikythera-shipwreck-180965127/
https://archaeology.org/news/2025/07/11/new-discoveries-from-famed-antikythera-shipwreck/
https://www.unige.ch/medias/en/2023/nouvelles-decouvertes-sur-lepave-danticythere
https://www.nature.com/news/human-skeleton-found-on-famed-antikythera-shipwreck-1.20632
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-skeleton-found-on-famed-antikythera-shipwreck/
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/swiss-researchers-uncover-second-ship-in-antikythera-shipwreck-investigation/82471105
https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2025/10/08/the-statues-from-the-antikythera-shipwreck-125-years-later/
https://www.livescience.com/26009-antikythera-roman-shipwreck-two.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discoveries-antikythera.html
https://greekreporter.com/2013/01/08/antikythera-wreck-possibly-involves-two-ships/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antikythera-shipwreck-greece-divers-find-second-wreck-new-treasures/