Bronze Age mouse offers clues to royal shipwreck’s place of origin

An archaeologist has identified the remains of a long dead mouse, in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey, which makes the specimen the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of the ship’s place of origin.

According to a report in New Scientist, the archaeologist in question is Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, who identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from the ancient ship.

The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold – including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti – indicates that the ship was a royal vessel.

Because the cargo carried artefacts from many cultures, its nationality and route is hotly debated, but the mouse’s jaw may provide answers.

Cucchi’s analysis confirms it belonged to Mus musculus domesticus, the only species known to live in close quarters with humans.

The shape of the molars suggests the mouse came from the northern Levantine coast, as they are similar to those of modern house mice in Syria, near Cyprus.

When generations of rodents live aboard ships, they evolve larger body shapes. Yet this mouse was roughly the same shape and size as other small, land-dwelling mice of the time, suggesting it boarded just before the ship set sail. (ANI)

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