Written by the Treasure Guide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Ancient Metal Death Mask Reportedly Found on Florida Beach by Metal Detector. Source: FoxNews. |
Archaeologists have discovered a rare death mask dating back thousands of years on a beach in Florida, a sign that more treasures may be nearby.
A team of researchers with Seafarer Exploration Corporation found the artifact made of precious metal on Melbourne Beach and believe it served as part of a funeral headpiece from a pre-Incan civilization in Peru, Fox 35 reported...
“This is some of the earliest evidence of man’s ability to metal-work and to use iridium,” Dr. Michael Torres, who found the mask, told Fox35. "That changes things, and may change the way we perceive ancient Peruvian cultures."
Torres is working with a team to discover artifacts from the 1715 shipwreck of the La Concepcion. Researchers believe the mask was taken by Spanish tomb raiders and washed up after the wreck.
The discovery of the mask hints that more precious items could be nearby.
Torres told Fox 35 that he hopes to give the mask to a museum as a gift.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/ancient-funeral-mask-uncovered-at-florida-coast
That is all the information provided by the link so I tried to find out more about it. I did find some sites with information on the find. The most helpful being the immediatley following link.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/archaeology/ancient-death-mask-may-point-to-billiondollar-florida-treasure-haul/news-story/6e5561eb696dfd022ea08f3d76f96768
Putting what I read together, and it doesn't all seem to stick together very well. It sounds like Seafarer Exploration Corporation found the mask on a Florida beach with a metal detector. The mask is thought to be an Incan funerary mask made of space metals (iridium was mentioned somewhere), looted by Spanish and transported on La Conception, which wrecked, leaving a debris trail, which included the mask. The mask was said to be paper thin. (See photo above.)
Iridium is a very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group. It is the second-densest metal. Being so brittle and dense, I'm surprised that if it washed up on the beach and was covered by sand that it was as whole as it was.
It is not clear to me why Seafarer Exploration Corporation, a public traded company, was searching the beach with a metal detector, or why they concluded that the mask was part of the cargo of the La Conception. Maybe beach detecting is part of their operation. And maybe the artifact was found in the general area where they expect to find La Conception. That is all possible, but the connections are not strong in my opinion. Of course, I only have a very little information about it all.
I'd like to get more information on all of this. I'm not confident that it is all correct, but that seems to be what has been reported.
I looked up Seafarer Exploration Corporation and found their web page (link below). One of the things I found is that after eleven years of searching, in Oct. 2018 they received their first revenue. It was not anything to do with salvage, but a dividend check for $1,500 which they received from a company they bought.
Here is that link.
http://seafarerexplorationcorp.com/
The stock symbol of the company is SFRX. The stock price at the close of 1/24/19 was a small fraction of one cent per share.
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I was out of town yesterday and haven't been to the beach in a couple of days so that is all I have for today.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
