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The 2,000-year-old anchor discovered in the sea

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East Anglia One windfarm anchor find on deck of boatImage source, ScottishPower

An anchor older than your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents has been discovered off the coast of England!

The 2 metre long, 100 kilogram anchor was found near an offshore wind farm, off the coast of Suffolk, and researchers believe it could be between 1,600 and 2,000 years old.

This means that the anchor could date back as far as the Roman or Iron Age!

Experts have said this anchor is "incredibly rare" and would have belonged to a very heavy ship that weighed as much as 600 tonnes.

That's the same as 400 hippos!

Image source, ScottishPower
Image caption,

The anchor was first found in 2018 and was removed from the sea in 2021

More research is needed, but archaeologists believe that the anchor is likely to date from Roman times.

This means it is a very rare find for this area of the world.

"We only know about three pre-Viking anchors from northern European waters outside the Mediterranean region, and only two actually survived," said Brandon Mason from Maritime Archaeology Ltd.

Brandon said this could give archaeologists and historians "hard evidence" of Roman ships sailing off the coast of the east of England.

Image source, ScottishPower
Image caption,

More tests are needed to figure out how old the anchor is

Romans were thought to have first made contact with Britain in 55 or 54 BC - just over 2,000 years ago.

So the anchor could date as far back as this period in the UK's history!

But the anchor was not the only artefact discovered near the windfarm.

Scottish Power Renewables, which built the windfarm, said workers also uncovered a German submarine dating to World War One and a 6,000-year-old wild cattle skull.

How a-moo-zing is that?