Medieval Helmets Experts Thought Were Roman—What They Actually Reveal About History

In 1990, Spanish fishermen hauled up something unexpected in their nets. Not fish. Metal. Two enormous masses of corroded iron, fused together by centuries of marine growth into solid blocks the size of large suitcases, snagged from the seabed off the coast of Benicarló on Spain's eastern Mediterranean shore. When archaeologists cut those blocks open, they found helmets. Dozens of them. Iron helmets, packed together in what appeared to be a deliberate arrangement — a cargo, sitting in six meters of water at a site called Piedras de la Barbada, preserved by the cold dark of the Mediterranean seabed for however long they had been there.