BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: A recently discovered ancient shipwreck is providing scientists with new insight into how people lived more than a millennium ago. David George has the story.</s>DAVID GEORGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You're looking at something that until just a few weeks ago hadn't been seen by humans for 1,500 years. It's the almost perfectly preserved wreck of a ship sunk in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey around the year 500 A.D. The ship is 1,000 feet down in water where there's no oxygen. A situation that's fatal to the wood boring organisms that would normally devour a wooden shipwreck.</s>ROBERT BALLARD, OCEANOGRAPHER: Basically wood borers are extremely opportunistic organisms. When food is supplied, they multiply very rapidly and they eat the wood supply and then they literally die at the dinner table.</s>GEORGE: Three other nearby wrecks are less preserved. But the ship's cargo, jars that probably held wine or honey or olive oil, are clearly visible on the ocean floor. Scientists from the National Geographic Society discovered the wrecks with the aid of three deep diving robots. The million-dollar expedition was led by Dr. Robert Ballard who found the Titanic in 1985. The National Geographic researchers say this discovery is especially exciting because of what it will tell them about how people lived 1,500 years ago.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No archaeologist has ever been able to study anything like this.</s>GEORGE: Earlier, the same team of scientists found what they say appeared to be remnants where humans might have lived and pieces of stone apparently shaped by human hands. Robert Ballard says laws need to be strengthened to prevent undersea archaeological sites like this one from being destroyed by treasure hunters. David George, CNN.
Well-Preserved Shipwreck Provides Unique Window to the Past