Three ships sank in a freak tsunami 800 years ago. They just gave up the 'artifact of the decade.'

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• For hundreds of years, the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain found themselves caught between ongoing battles between the Moors and various Christian kingdoms.
• A new expedition, searching for medieval treasures from this period, chanced upon three ancient shipwrecks from the 13^th century that contained both Moorish and Christian artifacts.
• One of those shipwrecks contained a encolpium—a kind of reliquary or sacred container—that likely belonged to a high-ranking clergy member.

Today the Balearic Islands—a Spanish archipelago whose main inhabited islands are Majora, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera—are some of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. But in the 13^th century, the islands were caught in a centuries-long struggle between the Moorish states and various Christian kingdoms.

In 1229, James I of Aragon—the longest-serving Iberian monarch in history—conquered Majorca and also seized Ibiza six years later. Eventually, his grandson, Alfonso, got his hands on Menorca in 1287. And it’s there, nearly 750 years later, that archaeologists have uncovered three distinct shipwrecks in Menorca’s “Cove of Mysteries,” each preserving rare artifacts from this rich historical period.

Located at the Cala en Busquets, an ancient harbor near the present-day city of Ciutadella (which was once a Roman capital and later a bustling Moorish town), the cove is known to contain vessels dating back two millennia, according to Smithsonian. These ships are likely the victims of rissagas, meteorological tsunamis that, unlike seismic tsunamis, are caused by rapid atmospheric pressure changes. While the site has been surveyed since at least 2009, an expedition conducted by the New York-based Explorers Club—along with archaeologists and cultural heritage experts from Menorca—has been ongoing since 2023. It’s this relatively recent survey that has revealed one of the cove’s most incredible finds.

In this ship cemetery, experts uncovered three ships dating from the 13^th century named simply Busquets I, II and III, after the ancient harbor where they were found. The ships’ final resting places overlapped one another, suggesting that they must have sunk at the same time, and carbon dating suggests the ships likely met their watery fate sometime in the 1240s.

According to Smithsonian, the ships likely survived underwater for so long primarily because of two lucky developments. The first was a switch from the use of amphorae to wooden barrels sometime in the second century C.E. Treasure hunters often use magnets to find these amphorae and loot ships, but the use of degradable wood barrels left the Busquets undisturbed. The second stroke of luck came much later—the modern port of Menorca was built on the island’s eastern side, leaving the western “cove of mysteries” untouched.

That’s a good thing, as the expedition has already uncovered incredible treasures of both Moorish and Christian origin, including what Xavier Aguelo Mas, a Catalan archaeologist with the Menorca Shipwreck Project, says is the island’s “artifact of the decade.” This item is what’s known as an encolpium, a kind of reliquary worn by high-ranking clergy that often contained a small, sacred item inside. According to The Smithsonian, the artifact is still being professionally desalinated at the Museum of Menorca, but Mas is already busy guessing at what might be inside.

“Maybe a bone? Parchment? We don’t know” Aguelo Mas tells Smithsonian. “It’s an unraveling story still […]. This tiny little cove, this underwater museum […] still has a lot to tell.”

The team hopes to publish a detailed paper of the findings sometime in 2027. In the meantime, they’ll keep searching for more medieval treasures buried under the sediments of the Balearic Islands.