Chinese Ship Wreck Treasure

Trade activities in Asia started during pre-historic ages

as early as the Neolithic ages. Proven by objects such as cowries found at excavation sites. During the Metal Age, traded items were metal axes, bells, drums, bronze sockets and bowls, beads etc.. The emergence of several political powers and small governments increases the trade network.

Chronicles from China, Arab Countries and India together with other archeology research show that other goods for trading includes ceramics, cloth, products from the forest, spices, and metal items, that trade volume resulted in plenty of sunken Chinese treasure in sunken Chinese shipwrecks,

The Chinese ship wreck found treasure shown below have bee recovered from several Chinese and European shipwrecks off the Malaysian coast. The oldest ancient treasure shipwreck with a mixed cargo of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese antique pottery and other ceramic antique items, discovered, was the Turian, a Chinese Junk type vessel similar to the picture below.

A typical trading place was Melaka on the today's Malaysia west coast, Melaka emerged as an international trade center, inheriting the great tradition of the Srivijaya Empire from today Indonesia.

Out of Melaka the the export was spices such as pepper, mace, clover, and other items such as tin, ivory, turtle shell and silver with traders from Shanghai and other places in China, India, Europe, Middle East and other countries.

Today some of this old treasure are recovered from ship wrecks by scuba wreck diving. Plenty of sunken Chinese shipwreck treasure is still down there in the south China sea.

The import was weapons, perfumes, woven cloth, silk, sugar, sulphur, sandal wood, ion, ore, ceramics, camphor etc., many of this items are recovered from shipwrecks in Asian waters and sold as very valuable antiques.

Western colonial  powers such as the British, Portuguese and Dutch in the 

16 Century brought about western ceramics, modern armory and other items to Asia and China. On the Malay Peninsular raw material such as tin ore and rubber for export especially to Europe were traded.

The Risdam -model picture left- a freight sailer of the Dutch East India Company was discovered near Mersing in 1984. The ship was abandoned after a fatal leak.

The Diana, a sunken ship of the British East India Company -model picture below- crashed into a submerged boulder in 1817. The sunken ship was full with Chinese treasure antique items.

Coming from China, sailing to Madras, the wreckage was discovered in 1993 in a depth of  35 meters about 2 miles off shore near Melaka.

Part of the cargo was Chinese ceramics of

There was the alternate system of monsoon winds which determined the course and direction of sailing ships.

Today's technology allows to find many shipwrecks along the Malaysian and Indonesian coast and the recovery of countless and priceless antique ceramics from China, Thailand and Japan is on the way.

There are still many known locations along the Malaysian coast of sunken Chinese Junks, Dutch, Portuguese and British trade sailing ships and Spanish galleons with valuable merchandize up to the brim.

Chinese Ship wrecks with antiques treasures from the centuries preceding the year 1200 are rather seldom.