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Marine archaeologists have discovered that two Costa Rica wrecks are ruins of Danish slave ships that have been missing for centuries – A discovery that restores ancestral lineages across the Costa Rican community more than 300 years after ship residents reached the coast.

According to the National Museum of Danish, the remains were long known to be sitting in shallow waters in Cajita National Park on Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean coast.

But for years they were believed to be pirate ships, the museum said in a news release.

The fishermen who established themselves in the area in 1826 thought of this because the relics on the ship were dispersed and broken. They believed that the two ships had engaged in battle and capsized, Maria Suarez Toro, founder of Sea Community Diving Center, the local community initiative ambassador, said CNN on Friday.

The ship’s identity was only questioned in 2015, when American marine archaeologists found a yellow brick in one of the shipwrecks.

This discovery was significant as yellow bricks were produced in the German town of Hunsburg in the 18th and 19th centuries for use in Denmark and its colonies. According to the museum, they were not fashion in other European countries at the time.

Historical documents documented the shipwreck of two Danish slave ships off the coast of Central America in 1710. The Frideriksquats burned, while the anchor rope of Christ Skintus was cut and the ship was wiped out.

However, the location of the shipwreck was unknown – up until now.

Marine archaeologists at the National Museum and the Danish Viking Ship Museum conducted an underwater excavation of a Costa Rican wreck in 2023, taking wood from one, finding samples of bricks and several clay pipes.

Researchers from the National Museum and the University of Southern and Denmark later conducted scientific analysis confirming the historical account, the museum noted.

Treering dating revealed that oak timber has been born from one of the shipwrecks that originated from the western Baltic Sea, including Denmark, northeastern Germany and southern Sweden. According to the museum, the timber was from trees cut between 1690 and 1695.

The yellow bricks were measured and found to be the same size as those made at Friendsburg for the Danes.

clay Used with bricks It turns out to be from southern Denmark, from the small town of Egernsand, or from Illerstrand, where the large brick-making industry was in the 18th century.

It has also been revealed that the clay pipes are Danish, indicating that their size, shape and design were made just before 1710, when the ship was destroyed.

“The analysis is very persuasive and there is no more question that these are the wrecks of two Danish slave ships,” said marine archaeologist David Gregory, a research professor at the New Maritime Research Centre at the National Museum of Danish National Museum, in a news release.

“Brick is Danish, and the same applies to wood. The wood is further burned and sipped from the fire. This fits perfectly with the historical account that one of the ships burned,” he added.

Rebellion and rebellion

Gregory led the excavations along with marine archaeologist Andreas Kalmeyer Bullock, who is also a curator of the National Museum.

“It was a long process and I was approached halfway through, but this is definitely the craziest archaeological excavation I have still been involved in,” Bloch said in a news release.

“Not only is it very important to the locals, but it’s because it’s one of the most dramatic shipwrecks in Danish history and now we know exactly where it happened. This offers two pieces that are missing from Danish history.”

Bloch told CNN on Friday that the discovery was important because of “dramatic events related to the (ship) journey from Copenhagen to West Africa, and to the coast of Cahita, Costa Rica.”

The rebellion by enslaved people, the “terrifying” navigational errors, and the rebellion by the crew when they arrived in Cahita are one of the events recorded in Danish archives, Brock said.

The rebellion took place on the Friderik Square, which had travelled from Ghana to the Dutch colony of St. Thomas. The uproar combined with the French and English Declaration War influenced the Dutch’s decision to send ships on their partner’s ships, Toro said.

There were 800 people on the two ships, but she said they got lost because of the smog. Instead of going north of the light they saw that they might have been Barbados, they went south and on March 2nd to Costa Rica.

Fear of pirates and indigenous people led to two days of debate The captain explores whether he should go to the beach to find food and water. This led to a rebellion between the sailors and enslaved people. After that, about 650 people remained.

“The most dramatic part is life that has been transformed due to this event. Today in Cahita National Park, more than 600 Africans were left on the beach,” Bloch said.

“This discovery is important to Danish history and the fact that we can link our history to Costa Rica. But it’s even more important for locals in Costa Rica, as it has a direct meaning to the locals’ identity,” he added.

The effort to unravel the identity of the ship and connect it to the identity of the community was a decade-long project managed by a group of young scuba divers of African and Indigenous origins, Toro said. They added, “I feel proud because they found their roots.”

The discoveries “also change the story about the region,” she said, adding that the Afro-Costa Ricans are proof that they are “100 years before they were registered in official history.”

The efforts by communities and scientists to identify the sinking slave ships appeared in the 2020 television documentary series Enslaved, hosted by Samuel L. Jackson.

Celia Ortiz, from Carthage, Costa Rica, said her 103-year-old mother was a descendant of Miguel Maloto, one of the enslaved men who disembarked from one of the ships, according to the sea ambassador. Ortiz said that even later in her mother’s life, she “bred a new light into our lives.”

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Immunologist Jacob Granville came across media reports in 2017 about men who injected hundreds of times the venom of the world’s deadliest snakes, including cobras, manbus and rattlesnakes.

“The news article was a bit flashy. “The crazy guy puts a little hand on the snake,” Granville said. “But I could see it, and I seemed to have diamonds in the rough here.”

Granville Diamond is a self-taught snake expert based in California, and has been exposed to snake venom for nearly 18 years, effectively gaining immunity to several neurotoxins.

“We had this conversation, and I know it’s annoying, but I’m really interested in seeing some of your blood,” recalls Granville. “And he said, ‘At the end, I was waiting for this call.’

The two agreed to work together, and Friede donated a 40ml blood sample to Granville and his colleagues. Eight years later, Granville and Peter Kwon, Dr. Richard J. Bazillos and Professor of Medical Science at the University of Surgeons published details of the anti-toxicity that could protect against bites from at least 19 venomous snakes, based on Friede’s blood antibodies and Venom blocking drug antibodies.

“Tim, to my knowledge, he has an unparalleled history, which was a very diverse species, different from all continents where snakes are.

“But we are all very discouraged to try and do what Tim did,” Granville added. “Snake venom is dangerous.”

Friede gave up on vaccinating snake poison in 2018 after several close calls and is currently employed by Granville biotechnology company Centivax, Granville said. Glanville is CEO and Chairman of Centivax.

The study was published in the Science Journal Cell on Friday. CNN contacted Friede, but he did not respond to the interview request.

If you are unlucky enough to sink a venomous snake into you, your best hope is anti-venom.

Traditionally, this process involves milking the snake’s venom by hand and injecting it into the horse or other animal to evoke an immune response. The animal’s blood is drawn and purified to obtain antibodies that act on the poison.

Production of anti-products in this way can be messy, let alone dangerous. This process is error-prone and cumbersome, and the completed serum can have serious side effects.

For a long time, experts have been sought a better way to kill about 200 people per day, mainly in developing countries, and about 200 people a day with disabilities. The World Health Organization added Snakebite to its list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017.

Granville grew up in rural Guatemala, but said he had known for a long time the health issues brought on by Snakebitt, and quickly realized that Friede’s experience presented a unique opportunity.

Exposing snake venom for nearly 20 years by injecting venom and allowing it to bite, Friede has produced effective antibodies at once against several snake neurotoxins.

Researchers isolated antibodies from Friede’s blood that reacted with neurotoxins found in 19 snake species tested in studies including coral snakes, mamba, cobras, taipan, and craite.

These antibodies were then tested one by one in mice poisoned with poison from each of the 19 species, allowing scientists to systematically understand the minimum number of ingredients that neutralize all venom.

The drug cocktails the team created ultimately contained three things: It is a small molecule drug varespladib that inhibits two antibodies isolated from Friede and enzymes present in 95% of all snake zones. The drug is currently undergoing clinical trials for human clinical trials as a standalone treatment.

The first antibody, known as LNX-D09, protected mice from lethal doses of the venom from six snake species.

The addition of Varespladib gave protection against three additional species. Finally, the researchers added a second antibody isolated from Friede’s blood called SNX-B03, expanding protection with 19 species.

Anti-vivenom provided mice with 100% protection against 13 venoms and partial protection (20%-40%) for the remaining six people, the researchers said.

Stephen Hall, a snake pharmacologist at Lancaster University in the UK, called it “a very clever and creative way” and developed the antivenom. Hall was not involved in the study.

And although the cocktail has not been tested in humans, if approved for clinical use, Hall said that the human origin of the antibodies is likely to mean fewer side effects than antivenoms made traditional methods using horses and other animals.

“This is impressive for the fact that it is done with one or two antibodies and small molecule drugs, increasing the number of species compared to the usual antidotes.

“When it reaches the clinic, it becomes people in the long run, but it’s innovative. In fact, it’s going to completely change the field from a snake bite perspective,” he said.

Columbia’s Kwon said the published research focused on a class of snakes known as elapids. Viperids, another major group of venomous snakes, including rattlesnakes, sawed vipers and additional species, were not included.

However, the team is investigating whether additional antibodies identified in Friede’s blood or other drugs could provide protection against the viperide family of this snake.

“The ultimately contemplated product could be a cocktail protested against a single bread, or potentially creating two, one for the Elapids, and the other for Viperids, as they only have a portion of the world,” Kwong said.

The team also wants to start field research in Australia. In Australia, only snakes exist, allowing anti-toxicity to be used in dogs bitten by snakes.