listen to part of a lecture in an archeology class.So in our last class, we looked at Bronze Age trade routes.And remember when we say Bronze Age,we\'re talking about the period from about 5000 years ago until about 2500 years ago.And when we discussed trade routes, we looked solely at land routes.Today, we\'ll concentrate on sea routes.And first, I want to talk about a shipwreck.It\'s called the uluburoon shipwreck.The uluburoon shipwreck was discovered in 1982 off the coast of Turkey.It was a large ship capable of carrying about 20 tons of goods,and since 1984 archeologists have been studying the ship and its cargoand the cargo. Well, the cargo included things likecopper, tin glass from Egypt, pottery. There was ivory from Africa.There was also a small amount of gold and silver.But for an archeologist,the richest part of the shipwreck wasn\'t the items,but what we\'ve been able to learn from the items.So for example,the copper and tin.Copper and tin together made up the largest part of the ship\'s cargo.This was unworked metal raw materials being shipped to a place where it would be processed into bronze and then worked into finished goods like tools and weapons.The tin is particularly interestingbecause there\'s no source of tin near the Mediterranean.We\'re pretty sure that the copper came from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus,which was the source of most Bronze Age copper.But the tin might have come from Central Asia.Of all the cargo on the ulubarune ship,the tin probably traveled the farthest.And this sort of confirms our ideas about the general flow of raw materials from an east to west directionfrom the Middle East and Central Asiato Greece and areas farther northafter copper and tinthe largest part of the cargo was made up of a substance calledterebinth. Terebinth is a resin,sort of like tree sap that hardens.And there were jars containing about half a ton of it aboard the shipfinding such a large quantityin fact, the largest quantity ever foundpoints to a large scale commercial trade in this productTerebinth had two uses at the timeThe primary use was as an incenseSo it was used in religious ceremoniesAnd since terebinth has antibacterial propertiesit\'s possible that it was added to wine as a preservativeNow there might have been some informal trading going on during this period,but what we\'re seeing here is evidence of a state controlled,highly regulated trade network.So for example,among the artifacts recovered were sets of balance weightsIf you\'re a merchantthe ability to weigh out goods in standardized amounts is essential for conducting trade in an official systemIt\'s your most important toolAnd the balance weights aboard the shipWell, it\'s the largest collection ever found, 149 objectsused for precise measuring of tiny amounts of gold and silver,as well as everyday trade goods.Looking at the weights recovered from the Ulu baron ship,we can tell there were probably four merchants aboard.Another clue that tells us about the merchants is weapons.One large and very ornate sword was found that probably belonged to the chief merchant.Three smaller swords were found as well.And judging by the style of the weights and the swords,as well as some other personal belongings found in the shipwreck,we believe that the merchants were most likely from Greece or Cyprus.So when we consider all of these fines togetherthat it was a merchant vessel with a very diverse cargothere are a number of social and economic implications of thisSo the first is that the finds originated from a very, very large, interconnected area.We\'re talking about Egypt and Ethiopia in Africaas well as Central Asia, the Middle East Turkey, Greece and Italy.This whole area was connected in a sort of exchange network.And evidence of this complex trade in raw materials is something that is very rarely seen on landwhere the archeological finds are usually finished.