Video: World’s oldest shipwreck found off Turkish coast

Archaeologists examining remains near Kekova Island off the Turkish coast believe they have identified the earliest known shipwreck, with pottery recovered there suggesting the vessel sank between 4,400 and 4,700 years ago.

The dating places its loss in the Early Bronze Age, around the time work was underway on Giza’s Great Pyramid. Researchers estimate that the vessel measured approximately 10 metres and carried goods between Mediterranean ports, although none of its timber survives.

More than 30 amphorae – large ceramic containers – and three nearby stone anchors lie approximately 30 metres below the surface, scattered over a sloping seabed of sand and rock close to the island in Antalya province.

“The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea,” Prof Hakan Öniz, from Akdeniz University, who led the Mediterranean Archaeology Association expedition, tells the BBC.

Öniz says that researchers first located the remains four years earlier, while excavation began this year under Antalya Museum’s supervision and with authorisation from the Turkish culture ministry.

The team initially thought the pottery was much younger, but Öniz reconsidered after reading about vessels recovered near Egypt’s Giza pyramids. Researchers returned for another dive and invited Australian archaeologist Karin Sowada, of Macquarie University, to examine the finds.

“These resembled the amphorae in our shipwreck,” Öniz tells CNN, adding that a team of researchers made a follow-up dive at the site.

With no wood left to test, researchers could not obtain a radiocarbon date from the hull, so they compared the jars’ shapes and decoration with pottery of an established age. The containers have paired handles, flat bottoms and a central ridge, while one carries parallel incisions near its top and a zigzag motif further down.

Comparable ceramics have been documented at Egyptian sites including Saqqara and Abusir, alongside finds from Troy and Crete.

“We reached a consensus and proceeded with further analysis,” Öniz tells CNN, adding that the team is “generally confident” this is the oldest shipwreck in the world.

“It is not just the amphorae; the anchors and other artefacts found at the shipwreck site also point to the same centuries,” he says.

Two anchors have three openings apiece and the third has one, with shapes resembling Bronze Age examples from locations including Cyprus, Anatolia and the Levant, as well as Minoan sites. However, the published research leaves open whether they belonged to this vessel.

Clay testing suggests the jars were made in Jordan Valley workshops, and researchers believe the ship may have departed from the Levant’s Mediterranean shoreline before heading west towards Troy, in the present-day northwestern part of the country, or Minoan Crete. Its route remains uncertain.

Several jars survived whole, retaining a thick, shiny substance that specialists are analysing to find out what the containers held. Sowada recalls her surprise at how much remained.

“I looked inside and nearly fainted. I could not believe how much [residue] was visible. It wasn’t just like spots… a lot of this material was still remaining,” she tells the BBC. “It could be olive oil, it could be wine, it could be tree resins,” Sowada says.

She also suggests the deposits might reflect repeated use, since containers this large could have remained useful for years after their original contents were unloaded.

Another jar, bearing nine markings and two openings, may have served as a churn for making dairy products, raising the possibility that sailors kept goats aboard to supply milk during extended journeys. Neither this interpretation nor the contents of the other jars have been confirmed.

The finds offer clues about what crews ate and how they lived, as well as evidence of maritime trade in an area where strong winds and currents make navigation hazardous. Hundreds of wrecks have been recorded locally.

The research appeared in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, and the wreck belongs to the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy says recovered objects will be exhibited at a forthcoming Antalya museum dedicated to Mediterranean underwater archaeology.

If confirmed, the proposed dating would make the Kekova remains older than the approximately 4,200-year-old wreck near Greece’s Dokos island, previously regarded as the earliest known example.

A roughly 2,400-year-old vessel discovered in Black Sea waters near Bulgaria holds a different distinction: its surviving timber makes it the oldest known intact wreck.