Archaeologists have found what they describe as the world's oldest shipwreck off Kekova Island in Turkey's southern Antalya province, Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced on Wednesday.
The BBC reported that the team dates the wreck to between 4,400 and 4,700 years ago, in the Early Bronze Age, around the time the Great Pyramid was being built in Egypt. The ship's wooden hull has not survived, but more than 30 ceramic storage jars, known as amphorae, and three stone anchors were found on a slope about 30 metres below the surface. The vessel is estimated to have been about 10 metres long.
Because no wood remained, radiocarbon dating was not possible. Instead, the archaeologists compared the jars' shape with amphorae from Egypt and the Middle East of known age. Prof Hakan Öniz of Akdeniz University, who led the expedition, called the wreck "a time capsule at the bottom of the sea".
According to Al Jazeera and the Anadolu news agency, clay analysis shows the jars were made in workshops in the Jordan Valley and likely carried olive oil or wine. Dr Karin Sowada of Macquarie University in Australia said some jars still contain a thick residue that is now being analysed.
Researchers believe the ship sailed from the eastern Mediterranean coast towards Troy or Crete. The previous record holder was a wreck off the Greek island of Dokos, dated to about 4,200 years ago.
Ersoy said the recovered artefacts will be displayed in Antalya's new Mediterranean Underwater Archaeology Museum, which is due to open in the coming months.