Shipwreck found off coast of Turkey thought to be the oldest in history
Archaeologists diving off southern Turkey have found what they say is the oldest shipwreck ever discovered, with some of the ancient storage jars on board still holding traces of what they once carried
The waters around Kekova Island, just off Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast, are known for strong currents and winds, and over the centuries they’ve claimed hundreds of ships, thus becoming a bit of a graveyard for shipwrecks.
But now, a team from the Mediterranean Archaeology Association, which specialises in finding and studying those wrecks, have revealed they're working on a shipwreck they believe is older than anything they've found before.
The archaeologists have dated the wreckage back to between 4,400 and 4,700 years, which puts it in the Early Bronze Age - roughly the same time the Great Pyramid was being built in Egypt. That knocks the previous record holder, a wreck off the Greek island of Dokos dating back about 4,200 years, off the top spot.
‘A time capsule at the bottom of the sea’
While none of the ship’s wood survived (meaning the team couldn’t use radiocarbon dating to work out how old it was), what they did find were three big stone anchors and more than 30 ceramic storage jars known as amphorae - all scattered across a slope about 30m down.
According to Prof Hakan Öniz from Akdeniz University, who led the expedition, it;s these jars that have given away the ship's age. Öniz explained how the amphorae have a distinctive design, with two handles, a ridge round the middle and a flat base, which matches pots found in Egypt and the Middle East that are known to be 4,400 to 4,700 years old.
“The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea,” he told BBC News.
The team reckons the ship was around 10m long and was a trading vessel that set off from somewhere on the eastern Mediterranean coast. It was probably heading either to the ancient city of Troy, in what’s now north-west Turkey, or to the Minoans on Crete, according to the researchers.
A surprising find
What surprised some of the scientists is that some of the jars came up intact, and Dr Karin Sowada, an archaeologist from Macquarie University in Australia who examined them, and found they still had a thick, glossy residue inside.
“I looked inside and nearly fainted. I could not believe how much was visible,” she said.
The team is now trying to work out exactly what was being carried.
“It could be olive oil, it could be wine, it could be tree resins,” Sowada said, adding that the jars could also have been reused for years before the ship went down.
The recovered artefacts are set to go on display at the new Mediterranean Underwater Archaeology Museum in Antalya when it opens in the coming months, according to Turkey’s culture minister.
News reference
BBC News via New Scientist. (2026). World's oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey.