Australian researchers have discovered a
17th-century postal system made of dozens of stone inscriptions on the island
of Madagascar.
Carved between 1601 and 1657 by sailors
aboard Dutch East India Company ships on their way to the East Indies, the
stones often featured letters placed at their base. The missives, carefully
wrapped in layers of canvas, tar and lead envelopes, were left for other ships
to pick up.
"The idea was that the crew of the next
Dutch ship to anchor in that same place would pen down the message on the rock
and collect the letters," Wendy van Duivenvoorde, a lecturer in maritime
archaeology at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, told Discovery News.
"Basically it was like an early postal
system," she said.
In the 1500s, the Portuguese were the only
Europeans who knew the route to South East Asia so they supplied all the spices
and exotic goods to the Netherlands.
As the Dutch made their way to Batavia
(modern day Jakarta) for the first time in 1595, they realized they didn't have
any systems in place to communicate via other Dutch ships to send messages back
home and relay their last port of call.
From the first voyage on, they went to a
small beach in the Antongil Bay on the northeast corner of Madagascar.
"They knew from the Portuguese that they
could get fresh water there and that it was the only place in the bay where
they could anchor safely to ride out a storm or repair a ship," said van
Duivenvoorde.
"They started using the beach as a
communications area by inscribing messages on the rock faces and frequently
leaving letters for other ships to pick up," she added.
About a dozen of these inscriptions were
discovered in the early 1920s, but the recent expedition, led by van
Duivenvoorde under the auspices of the Australian Research Council, was the
first to conduct a detailed archaeological assessment of the rock carvings within
their environment.
The team, which included Mark Polzer, a
research associate in archaeology at Flinders University, and Jane Fyfe, a
Ph.D. candidate and rock art specialist from the University of Western
Australia, discovered more than 40 inscriptions left by at least 13 different
ships.
The carved messages revealed official
communications that recorded the names of ships, the times and dates of their
arrivals and other such details.
They also showed unofficial messages left by
higher-ranking seamen, who carved their names into the stone.
"That was much as someone today might
write, 'Hendrick was here'," van Duivenvoorde said.
According to the researcher, the earliest
inscriptions dated to 1601 and were carved by the crew of the fifth Dutch
expedition to the Indies—one year before the official founding of the Dutch
East India Company in 1602.
"They are indeed visual reminders of the
earliest Dutch voyages into the Indian Ocean," she said.
One carving reveals that the ship Middelburg
reached the bay after a cyclone in 1625 without masts, and was anchored there
for seven months while it was being repaired.
"It’s quite amazing to think that they
managed to sail into the bay after suffering such damage," van
Duivenvoorde said.
A few inscriptions reveal that letters were
left beneath them.
"These stones are really part of an
early Dutch postal system and they show how European ships relayed information
about their whereabouts when far away from home," van Duivenvoorde said.
"Unfortunately, should the next ship to
arrive belong to their British or Portuguese rivals, the messages and letters
would be absconded for their intelligence and to confound the Dutch," she
said.
Van Duivenvoorde and her team hope to return
to Madagascar in 2013 to create a 3D rendering and to petition relevant
authorities for cultural heritage protection.
"The stones are under threat from sea
erosion, cyclones and rain, as well as from jungle vegetation and moss
growing," she said.
"Some inscriptions are still legible and
relatively well preserved, but most have faded over time and several have been
reduced to only a few letters remaining," van Duivenvoorde said.
Photos: 1626 inscription left by crew of
Dutch East India Company ship Wapen van Rotterdam, carved over an earlier
inscription left by VOC ship Middelburg in 1620 (top left of photo).Credit:
Mark E. Polzer;
Recording rock inscriptions using LED
lights.Credit: Mark E. Polzer; The beach where the inscriptions have been
found. Credit: Mark E. Polzer.
Courtesy : Discovery News, June 15, 2012
