A shipwreck, believed to be 500 years old, containing a treasure trove of coins and ivory has been discovered off the southern African coast.

A Namibian diamond company, Namdeb, said on Wednesday that it found the wreck during mining operations in the Atlantic.

"The site yielded a wealth of objects including six bronze cannon, several tons of copper, more than 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins, minted in the late 1400s and early 1500s," said Hilifa Mbako, a company spokesman.

Dieter Noli, an archaeologist, identified the cannon as Spanish, dating from about 1500.

©Reuters

The site yielded a wealth of objects including thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins

Company sources said that human remains and ornaments linked to royalty suggested it could be the caravel of Bartolomeu Dias, the Portuguese explorer, which went down off the Cape of Good Hope in 1500.

Dias, a nobleman from the Portuguese royal family, was the first European to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, in 1488, opening the lucrative trading route with the Far East.