Half a millennium after it vanished, a 500-year treasure ship has surfaced from beneath the sands of the Namib, its timbers and cargo revealing a frozen moment from the age of global empires. What ...

It wasn’t what the miners had come for. In Namibia’s far southwest, near the edge of the Atlantic, workers clearing sand in a high-security diamond concession struck something unexpected. Timbers.

In the sandy hell of Namibia'sSperrgebiet desert, time seems to have crystallized. This 26,000 km2 territory, controlled since 1908 by the German colonial authorities and then by diamond giant De ...