Read the full transcript of explorer Trevor Wallace’s talk titled “How Archaeologists Find The Truth (And You Can, Too)”, at TEDxDaltVila, June 27, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Finding Truth in Ancient Waters
Trevor Wallace: This past fall, my team and I uncovered a graveyard full of ancient shipwrecks in Western Menorca. But what really surprised us is that they were relatively undisturbed, something almost unique in the Mediterranean and rare in the whole world. But for me, the biggest discovery was not a wreck or an artifact, but a series of lessons about truth that archaeology can teach us. One, truth is firsthand. Two, truth is slow. And three, the thing that we are looking for can often get in the way of truth.
But before getting into all that, I think it’s worth acknowledging that it’s kind of a weird time for truth. Even though we have access to more information than ever before, the internet is a minefield of disinformation. Scientists, researchers, and journalists are in a crisis of trust. But why look to archaeologists? Aren’t they the ones literally with their heads in holes in the ground?
Looking at the past is like looking at a broken mirror. And with archaeological science, we can make incredible insights by pulling those shards just a little bit closer together. Our current moment, it’s like a complete mirror. Everything is captured and digitized and played back to us, but it’s often distorted. There’s an Inuit proverb that I learned in the Arctic that I often think of. “The past is like a bow. You must draw the arrow back to go far in the future.”
Stories That Connect Us Across Time
I’ve always loved stories. Stories can connect us with other cultures around the world.
Stories can put us in the shoes of people who lived thousands of years ago. It’s stories that first put me on this path to become an expedition leader and a filmmaker, tracking down tomb raiders in northwestern China, excavating the burial mounds of warrior nomad kings in Siberia, mapping temples in Hawaii, and now leading shipwreck expeditions in Menorca. My big brother is still asking me when I’m going to get a real job.
So before we dive into these lessons, I want to tell you a little story. Imagine it’s a dark night at sea. The moonlight is flickering off the black metallic waves as your wooden galley ship sails forward. You’re 14 years old, a merchant sailor from Ibusus, the ancient name for Ibiza, and you’re tucking into your dinner of pooled punica porridge and olives, and on the bottom of your plate, you’ve proudly inscribed your name and a self-proclaimed sarcastic title, “The Prince.” And as the harbor lights grow near, you feel as though you could be royalty.
Then all of a sudden, you feel a surge. You look next to you in the cliffs, there’s water cascading down. You look to the harbor and the ships are straining at their anchors. You sound the alarm and the crew below scrambles, and in the chaos, your plate slips overboard to the depths below, but your call probably saved the ship. Two thousand years later, I hold that very same plate in my hands, and miraculously, the inscription is still there, a tiny message from the ancients, a thread across time from one person to another.
Lesson Number One: Truth is Firsthand
While we’ll never know exactly how that plate got there, maybe even who the prince was, direct evidence can build a bridge. The internet is an amazing tool to spread information quickly, remix it, re-cut it, but it’s important to remember the value of things in their original form that we can see and touch.
So, should you start looking for artifacts yourself that you can dig up and see and touch? I would say yes, actually, but with a little bit of help and guidance from archaeologists because the dangers of amateurs digging up sites is real. In archaeology, it’s a destructive process, but I think the public has a lot to gain from participating in archaeology and science as a whole. That’s why we do our expeditions differently.
When I first approached Xavier Aguiló, the archaeologist who found the clues of these wrecks back in 2009, he was very skeptical about bringing a group of non-experts to excavate our site, but I explained to him, I myself don’t have a traditional background in archaeology. I was lucky enough to have friends and archaeologists who are interested in storytelling, and they put up with my camera and my questions, and over the course of a decade, I learned how to excavate, and it changed my world view. Luckily, Xavier was willing to take that risk, and we’ve trained over 25 people in underwater archaeology, which brings me to lesson number two.
When one of our field school participants, Al, arrived, he was full of enthusiasm and excitement, but he also brought along with him ideas about lost ancient technology and giants and Atlantis, but see, Al isn’t dumb, he’s curious, and I felt like if we gave him some training and first-hand experience, he would see things differently.
I remember on Al’s first dive, as we descended below to the underwater museum that is our site, floating weightlessly over the wreck, I could see his eyes go wide, he was scanning for jewels and clues to Atlantis. Back up on the surface, still in our wetsuits, sipping coffee, the questions began to flow. What was the name of the captain? What kind of treasure was in the cargo? When exactly did the ship sink? We had to tell him. We didn’t know, and that is the reality of working in archaeology, is dealing with that uncertainty, because for an entire year, we thought we were excavating a ship called La Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora, a ship that we had found in the old tomes and salvage records as sinking in that little cove in 1702.
As we expanded our excavation trench, and here you’re seeing a 3D model created by our tech lead, Bruno Pérez, we found this, basically a big mess. But with our team of experts and our field school participants, we carefully removed each layer by layer going down, and we were able to find this. Anybody see it? Eh? It’s okay. I actually didn’t see it myself first either. We were not excavating one wreck, but two wrecks stacked on top of each other. Here you can see the red arrow is the bow of one ship, and the white lines is the hull of another.
As we kept going, we started to find some ceramic vessels, like the ones you see here. There’s Dr. Caspari. But there was something kind of weird about these vessels. None of them came from the 1600s, the time of the Purísima Concepción. They were all from the 14th century. And then the picture began to get a little bit clearer, because we knew in the 1500s there was a series of pirate attacks, including one by Redbeard the Pirate. Almost all of the documents were destroyed, and that’s why these probably wouldn’t have been on the salvage records. It was a real discovery. Al didn’t find gold, and he didn’t find Atlantis, but his perspective shifted. Archaeology isn’t about instant answers, something that we’re very used to with the internet.
Lesson Number Three: What We’re Looking For Can Get in the Way
The thing that we are looking for can often get in the way of truth. Online algorithms are trained to confirm our biases. If we want to find evidence of Atlantis online, we’re going to find it. If we seek out conspiracies about health or government or climate or whatever, they’ll find us. If we had convinced ourselves that we were excavating La Purísima Concepción, we might have missed what was actually there. Archaeologists always challenge their own assumptions.
Over the course of weeks, Al and the field school participants changed the way they view archaeology and changed the way they view truth itself. The road ahead isn’t an easy one. The gap in trust between experts and the public is wide. That’s why I challenge archaeologists and scientists to think creatively how they can engage people like Al, curious minds drawn in by disinformation. Podcast debates are fun and exciting, but I think they can do little to build common understanding. Real firsthand experience is much more powerful.
Finding Truth, Not Just Answers
Archaeology is not about finding answers. It’s about asking better questions. In Menorca, we didn’t find the ship we were looking for. We found something far greater, a maritime crossroads of trade, storm, and survival. Archaeology isn’t about finding answers. It’s about finding truth, and that’s never whole, but it’s honest, and that is enough. Thank you.
