Santo Domingo.- The oldest known shipwreck has been located off the coast of the Dominican Republic, when divers of Utah based Deep Blue Marine uncovered gold coins, jade statues, and ancient Mayan jewelry, myfoxdc.com reports.
It said the company still believes there are greater treasures.
"This is the history and the birthplace of America and here we are lucky enough to finding the shipwrecks from that time era," president of Deep Blue Marine, Wilf Blum said.
The news source reports that just a few years after Christopher Columbus discovered the new world, the ship sank into the dark waters off the Dominican coast. “It lay undisturbed until now.”
Myfoxdc.com said captain William Rawson was the first to find the treasure’s trail. "We found some old fella in town that was selling a coin. I bought the coin from him and we looked in a book and found it was one of the oldest coins ever minted in the new world."
Rawson used technology such as side scan sonar to search the area where the old local liked to dive. Little by little he uncovered parts of the wreckage. This is pretty incredible when you think about it. This has been on the ocean floor for 450 years."
Divers found gold coins that date back to 1535.