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Riches or a Few Old Bottles?

Christopher Columbus is famous for discovering America, but of course he did not really discover it. There were plenty of people already living there. Because he thought he had arrived in India, he called these (1 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded people 'Indians'. Many of the American Indians you see in films appear to poor, simple people, but in fact, the Indians of Peru and Mexico and were rich and highly developed. They had well organized governments and lived in planned cities. Many could read and write, and their engineers designed a complex (2 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded system to bring water to their farmlands. But Columbus, and the other Spanish and Portuguese explorers who came after him, had little respect for the people of the lands they discovered. They felt Indian culture was (3 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded to their own, and they worked hard to convert the Indians to Christianity. But there was one thing that the Europeans saw there and liked: gold, and huge amounts of it. Again and again during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europeans (4 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded South America and robbed the Indians of their gold, silver and jewels. Thousands of Indians died, whole societies were destroyed, and the valuable treasure was carried away to Europe on ships. However, not all of those ships filled with gold managed to reach Spain or Portugal. Many sank in storms or were destroyed in battles near the Caribbean island of Cuba. Today the government in Cuba estimates that there are 6,000 sunken ships in the waters along its coasts. Recently the Cuban government (5 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded a plan to find the sunken ships and the valuable treasure inside them. The plan involves using a boat equipped with computer technology and metal detectors. The boat pulls a metal detector along the ocean floor. When the detector finds metal, it (6 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded the exact location of the find on a map on the computer screen. Later divers can return and go under water to (7 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded the area. Hopes are high --the same technology succeeded in finding jewels worth $400 million in a sunken ship near the coast of Florida. So far the Cuban project has found eight sunken ships but none of them have contained gold, silver or jewels. Divers brought up some (8 indigenous launched irrigation indicates investigate inferior items invaded from one of the ships but after the layers of sand and dirt were removed, they turned out to be 200-year-old bottles!

--from The Toronto Globe and Mail, March,1996