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Saudi Heritage Commission Reveals Antiquities in the Red Sea

Press conference to announce the survey of the area between Umluj and Ras Sheikh Humaid (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Press conference to announce the survey of the area between Umluj and Ras Sheikh Humaid (Asharq Al-Awsat)
    Thuwal - Asma al-Ghabri
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Saudi Heritage Commission Reveals Antiquities in the Red Sea

Press conference to announce the survey of the area between Umluj and Ras Sheikh Humaid (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Press conference to announce the survey of the area between Umluj and Ras Sheikh Humaid (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The Saudi Heritage Commission announced it would begin surveying the area between Umluj and Ras Sheikh Humaid in the Red Sea to uncover submerged antiquities.

During a press conference hosted by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the Commission explained that the project, which is scheduled till Sept 5, will search for the wreck of the sunken ship and monitor more than 25 designated sites.

The project comes in cooperation with King Abdulaziz University and the participation of an Italian team from the University of Naples.

The project includes a marine sonar survey of the sites containing submerged archaeologies to create nautical maps and high-resolution images of all areas.

The data will be collected and analyzed using sonar and sound waves.

The entire site will be photographed using high-quality 3D photogrammetry and video technology, making an accurate map of the wrecks and determining the locations of fixed reference points using the GPS.

For his part, the CEO of the Heritage Commission, Jasir al-Herbish, said that the Commission has made significant achievements and uncovered underwater cultural heritage.

It established a new marine center to preserve underwater cultural heritage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.

It will encourage scientific cooperation with local and international universities to uncover underwater heritage sites and build capacities in the field.

The Commission participates in several local and international programs to preserve the underwater heritage.

Herbish stressed that the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf harbor many secrets about the Kingdom's cultural heritage, hoping the center will contribute to discovering new items.

For her part, Senior Associate to the President and VP of Strategic National Advancement at KAUST, Najah Ashry, stated that KAUST welcomes everything that serves scientific research in Saudi Arabia.

The discovery of the underwater heritage is an excellent example of what can be achieved through cooperation with Saudi universities and public sectors in the Kingdom.

The project is linked to the Minister of Culture, Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan's announcement during the G20 summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in November 2020 and includes establishing a center for underwater heritage.

The project aims to document the Kingdom's pivotal location and its prominent role as a civilizational center for thousands of years and consolidate the efforts of the Heritage Commission to document, preserve, and disseminate the national heritage.

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119-year-old Brazilian Woman Stakes Claim as World's Oldest Person

Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, 119, sits in her house in Itaperuna, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes
Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, 119, sits in her house in Itaperuna, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes
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119-year-old Brazilian Woman Stakes Claim as World's Oldest Person

Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, 119, sits in her house in Itaperuna, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes
Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, 119, sits in her house in Itaperuna, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, January 14, 2025. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

Two months away from what she says is her 120th birthday, Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, a great-grandmother from the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is rushing to be recognized as the world’s oldest living person by the Guinness World Records.

The institution currently features another Brazilian, Inah Canabarro Lucas, a nun from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul as the oldest living person at 116 years, but Deolira’s family and doctors are confident that she will soon take the religious woman’s title.

“She is still not in the book, but she is the oldest in the world according to the documents we have on her, as I recently discovered,” said Deolira’s granddaughter Doroteia Ferreira da Silva, who is half her age, Reuters reported.

The documents show that Pedro da Silva was born on March 10th 1905 in the rural area of Porciuncula, a small town in the state of Rio. She now lives in a colorfully painted house in Itaperuna, where her two granddaughters Doroteia, 60, and Leida Ferreira da Silva, 64, take care of her.

The grandmother is also supervised by doctors and researchers who are interested in how she outlived the average life expectancy in Brazil, which currently sits at 76.4 years, by more than four decades.

“Mrs. Deolira, in 2025, will be 120 years old. She is in a good general state of health for her condition, she is not taking any medication,” said geriatric doctor Juair de Abreu Pereira, who checks up on Pedro da Silva frequently and is assisting her family in the process with Guinness World Records.

In a statement, Guinness said it couldn't confirm receiving Pedro da Silva's application, because it receives many from people around the world who claim to be the oldest living person.

Major floods in the region almost twenty years ago destroyed most of Deolira’s original documents, her doctor said. That may pose a challenge for the official recognition of her age.

Even if her age is not precise, Pedro da Silva is certainly older than 100 years, according to Mateus Vidigal, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo who has studied her case as part of a project to understand the super elderly population of Brazil.

“Mrs. Deolira has not been excluded from the study, but there is this fragility which is the lack of documentation that is approved by those organizations,” Vidigal said, referring to vetting institutions such as the Guinness World Records.

Pedro Silva’s healthy diet and sleeping habits are key to her longevity, according to Dr. Pereira. To this day, she has a good interaction with her family and likes eating bananas.

“I wish I could get to her age and be like that,” Ferreira da Silva, her granddaughter, said. “While we have high blood pressure and diabetes, she does not have any of that.”