Our history books teach us that Australia was discovered in 1606 by a Dutch explorer named Willem Janszoon when he reached the Cape York peninsula in Queensland with his ship Duyfken (picture of a replica of the ship above). Now, 5 copper coins might lead to a discovery that could rewrite Australia's history.
In 1944, Australian soldier Maurie Isenberg was stationed on an island off Australia's north coast. While sitting in the sand with his fishing-rod, he discovered a handful of coins in the sand. In 1979 he decided to send the coins to a museum to get them identified. The coins proved to be 1000 years old.
The discovery was apparently forgotten again until anthropologist McIntosh got the ball rolling a few months ago. The coins raises an important questions: How did 1000-year-old coins end up on a remote beach on an island off the northern coast of Australia?
3 comment(s):
...or it wasn't 'discovered' at all- because the aborigines lived there already!
Yes, it was discovered. To discover means to gain knowledge or awareness of something not known before.
So, for everyone else except the aborigines, this was a discovery.
Someone could have collected old coins and then lost their old coins.
Post a Comment