Archaeology TheFoxPosts.com

Two amateur divers swimming along the Spanish coast have discovered a huge hoard of 1,500-year-old gold coins, one of the largest on record dating to the Roman Empire. The divers , brothers-in-law Luis Lens Pardo and César Gimeno Alcalá, discovered the gold stash while vacationing with their families in Xàbia, a coastal Mediterranean town and tourist hotspot. The duo rented snorkeling equipment so they could go freediving with the goal of picking up trash to beautify the area, but they found something far richer when Lens Pardo noticed the glimmer of a coin at the bottom of Portitxol Bay on Aug. 23, El País reported .  When he went to investigate, he found that the coin "was in a small hole, like a bottleneck," Lens Pardo told El País in Spanish. After cleaning the coin, Lens Pardo saw that it had "an ancient image, like a Greek or Roman face." Intrigued, Lens Pardo and Gimeno Alcalá returned, freediving to the hole with a Swiss Army...

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has announced the discovery of a massive hoard of almost 2,000 gold coins by diver s in the ancient harbor in Caesarea. The coins, which are over 1,000 years old, constitute the largest find of its kind in the country. It is believed the treasure belongs to a shipwreck of an official treasury boat on its ways to Egypt with collected taxes. The discovery was made when a group of divers from a local dive club spotted what they initially thought were “toy coins”, while diving in the Caesarea National Park. The ancient Caesarea Maritima (or Caesarea Palestinae) city and harbor, which lies on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, was built by Herod the Great in about 25–13 BCE and was populated through the late Roman and Byzantine era. Caesarea Ancient Harbor where the gold coins were discovered (Deror Avi / Wikimedia Commons) The divers reported the discovery to the Marine Archaeology Unit of the IAA, which immediately sent out additional div...