Archaeologists used the coins to help work out when the Shinan ship sank. The dates of the newest coins carry a clue – there is no way a ship could have carried coins made after it had gone down!
There were about eight million coins of more than 70 different types on board, so it was a big job to date them all. They found a span of 1,300 years from the oldest coin to the newest.
Can you date the wreck?
