Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

The reason why Fan Meng was so excited was simple, because they had been digging for several days, and all they found were a pile of worthless pieces of rusty iron or nearly rotten wood.

Although those things are indeed extremely precious from a historical perspective, in the eyes of an outsider like Fan Meng, the excavation work in the past few days feels no different from digging a landfill.

Therefore, after seeing the golden box now, Fan Meng finally felt a little bit like hunting for treasure in the wild, so he encouraged Liang En to open the box quickly.

Different from the well-sealed containers that Liang En found before, it can be seen at a glance that this container is not sealed at all from the seawater constantly emerging from the gaps in this container.

This means that if the things can withstand corrosion, opening the box will not cause the contents inside to weather quickly, but if they cannot withstand corrosion, the contents inside will have rotted away long ago, and opening the box now will not make it worse.

"Let me see." Instigated by Fan Meng, Liang En couldn't control his inner curiosity and opened the box. What surprised him was that the box contained only a transparent stone.

You know, the ancient Vikings' views on various metals were similar to today's, and gold was naturally the most expensive metal in their hands. Therefore, it seems a bit strange that there is only a stone in the box made of gold.

After all, under normal circumstances, the outer packaging of the item often matches the content inside the item. It is very rare to use an expensive box to pack a cheap product.

"Could it be that people pretend to be confused in an emergency?" Fan Meng raised his own point of view. "After all, this kind of gold box will definitely not be thrown around. It should be just an accident that it appears here."

"You are right. Considering the location of this reef, I think this box was probably originally placed on the ship, but fell out of the ship when the ship hit the rocks." Liang En nodded and approved of Fan Fierce statement.

Compared with the ancient Germans and ancient Gauls who were accustomed to throwing various sacrifices into the water, the Vikings were more likely to throw objects into the flames or kill animals or even people when making sacrifices, so this It is unlikely that the object was used as a sacrifice.

Unlike those sailing ships of the Age of Discovery, the decks of the famous Viking longships are open-air, so if an unfortunate accident occurs, things on the ship can easily be scattered around the ship due to a collision.

"But I don't think so when you say this thing was put in accidentally." Liang En said, lifting the stone in the box and looking at the sun.

The light transmittance of this stone is very good, even close to that of some cheap optical glass. In other words, even if it is just a piece of calcite, it would have been valuable in ancient times because of its transparency.

"Even in an emergency, experienced sailors are unlikely to panic and pack the wrong things. Especially since this place is so close to the coastline, even a rookie will not panic." Liang En pointed to the reef at his feet.

"Then why is this stone so precious? It deserves to be put in a gold box." Fan Meng looked at the stone in Liang En's hand with doubts on his face, because although stones with such transparency in ancient times were rare, they were not valuable. "

Let me think about it—" Fan Meng's question was indeed on a key point, especially since many important historical discoveries were found out from seemingly unreasonable places.

"I wonder if this thing could be the legendary Sun Stone?" After thinking for a few minutes, Liang En suddenly had an idea and came up with a conjecture that he had seen on the Internet before.

The reason why it is said to be a conjecture is because this thing has always been a legend, and there is no corresponding archaeological data to prove whether this legend spread in the epic is true.

The only archaeological information related to the sunstone comes from an ancient British shipwreck discovered in the English Channel a few years ago. At that time, a piece of calcite was found in a gap in the hull.

But the problem is that the ship is a ship from the Age of Discovery, and the stone was just stuck in the gap in the ship's plank before. Therefore, the archaeological community is still unable to determine this fact.

Now, the mystery should be solved. After all, what the Vikings could pack in a gold box was definitely something very important to them. If you add that this stone is calcite, it should confirm everyone's previous guesses.

More importantly, when Liang En made this judgment, three new cards appeared in his mind. This also shows that his guess is true.

"Sunstone, it sounds like something very exciting, let me check it out." Fan Meng immediately took out his mobile phone and started to check it, but soon put it down again.

"Damn it, there's no cell phone signal here." Fan Meng put away his cell phone helplessly. Then he looked at Liang En and asked. "Can you tell me what this sun stone is?"

"This is a tool used by the ancient Vikings for navigation." Liang En held the calcite stone in front of his chest and explained. "The ancient Vikings wanted to navigate the vast sea through various means, such as using marine animals, ocean currents or wind direction, etc."

"Among so many methods, the most important navigation method is to use the sun to navigate, because most other navigation methods can only navigate in the near sea, and cannot do anything in the open sea."

"However, since they mainly sailed in the North Atlantic, they often encountered very long rainy days. In order to overcome this difficulty, the other party finally found this kind of calcite that can see the sun on cloudy days, and named it sun stone. .”

"What's the principle of being able to see the sun on a cloudy day?" After hearing what Liang En said, Fan Meng showed a puzzled expression. "I know a thermal imager can do this, but with a rock like this—"

"Don't underestimate this stone." Liang En said after searching the memories in his mind. "According to scientists' verification, calcite can really do this."

"According to scientists, the reason why humans can see the sun through calcite is entirely due to the principle of polarized light. When light waves propagate, they can be decomposed into electromagnetic waves that vibrate in various directions. If the light waves only vibrate in one direction, It’s called polarized light.”

"Calcite is a special crystal whose internal molecular structure allows it to filter out all light except sunlight, thereby forming polarized light."

"Of course, not all calcite can do this. I suspect there may be only a few stones that can do this, so no one has ever found it in archeology."

Because it happened to be cloudy now, Liang En tried to hold the stone in front of his eyes and look at the sky. Sure enough, after more than half an hour of trying, he successfully saw the sunlight in the clouds through the calcite at a special angle.

"Yes, we once again proved a legend." Liang En said while instructing Fan Meng to use the calcite stone. "As the legend goes, the Vikings were literally able to navigate the sea with a stone."