A wreck off Kekova, west of Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast, may be the oldest shipwreck ever found, according to archaeologists led by Hakan Öniz of Akdeniz University. The team tentatively dates it to about 2700 to 2400 BCE, and the evidence is a cargo of two-handled storage jars with a raised clay belt around the middle. The wooden hull is gone, and the date is the researchers’ own preliminary estimate, not a settled finding.
Tech news worth reading: Get Techpresso, the daily email with the most interesting tech news and insights, read by 400,000+ professionals from Google, Apple and OpenAI.
We may earn a commission if you sign up.
Turkey’s culture and tourism minister, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced the find in a social media post on October 14, 2026, saying Turkey was bringing to light traces of the world’s oldest shipwreck. Karin Sowada, an archaeologist at Macquarie University who was part of the team that dated the pottery, set out the case in an article published on October 15. Later reposts, including one on ScienceDaily dated October 26, trail those original dates by days or weeks.
Dating a wreck by its pottery, not its wood
No wood survived, so radiocarbon dating was not possible. The National reported that the pottery suggests an age of 4,400 to 4,700 years, in the Early Bronze Age, with the method being a comparison of jar shapes and decoration against finds from other sites. In the account reposted by ScienceDaily, Sowada wrote that the team tentatively dated the wreck to around 2700-2400 BCE, based on the shape of the pottery and the technique used to make it, and that earlier or later dates are possible. She also stated that the results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
A preliminary report does exist. Preliminary Report on the Early Bronze Age Shipwreck in the Kekova Region of Antalya, by Öniz and Ceyda Öztosun, appears in volume 21, issue 3 of the Journal of Maritime Archaeology in 2026. Its abstract says Akdeniz University surveyed the Kekova region in 2024 and documented a wreck carrying amphorae that resemble Early Bronze Age Levantine types, with side handles and flat bases. Two amphorae were recovered for study, one in 2024 and one in 2025. The record gives the period as Early Bronze Age and offers no narrower range, so the 2700 to 2400 BCE window comes from Sowada’s account.
Belted jars and what they may have carried
In the version Popular Science carried on October 15, Sowada described the cargo as large ovoid, flat-based storage jars with two handles, many with a raised horizontal clay belt around the widest part. Residues were visible to the naked eye inside some of them. Scientific analysis is pending, and the contents could have been olive oil, wine or tree resin. She also tentatively suggested that some jars, or the clay used to make them, came from the Central Jordan Valley, a view she called preliminary.
The Art Newspaper put the number at about 30 jars and said the ship, possibly about 10 meters long, was probably consumed by a wood-boring mollusc. The team first assumed the jars were Ottoman.
Dokos and the claim to be oldest
The current title-holder is a wreck off the Greek island of Dokos, which Sowada gives as about 4,200 years old. The National cites the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology dating Dokos to around 2200 BCE. If the Kekova range holds, even its later end, 2400 BCE, would be about 200 years older, which is why the researchers describe the wreck as possibly the oldest. The word possibly carries weight, because the dating rests on comparison with pottery elsewhere, and a range that spans 300 years leaves room for it to shift.
Some of the more vivid claims come from the minister rather than from a published study. Euronews reported that Ersoy said clay analysis points to workshops in the Jordan Valley and that researchers believe the ship sailed from the Levantine coast toward Troy or Crete, an inference drawn from similar vessels found elsewhere. The same coverage said the idea that a marked jar served as a churn for cheese or butter rests on initial examinations and is speculative.
What remains unconfirmed
Several basics are still open. The Art Newspaper reported that X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction analysis of the residues is under way, and that the cargo could also have been dried meat or dried fish. The journal abstract says three stone anchors were found near the wreck, two with three holes and one with a single hole, but it is not yet known whether any belong to the ship. Accounts also differ on when the site was first identified, with the Art Newspaper saying 2022 and Sowada and the journal pointing to 2024.
Excavation under the Antalya Museum Directorate began in 2026, with Öniz leading the scientific work, according to Euronews. Sowada wrote that divers spent four months removing pottery from barnacles on a rocky slope, and that the direction of the ship’s voyage is unknown. Until the residue results and the full excavation report appear, the oldest-shipwreck label remains the team’s claim, resting on a pottery date that could move earlier or later.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
Tech news worth reading: Get Techpresso →
We may earn a commission if you sign up.
More from Morning Overview
- Regulators cleared the first U.S. small modular reactor, 4 months early
- Lake Powell sank to a record 3,517 feet, nearing the level that stops Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines
- Seven of Earth’s nine planetary boundaries are breached, and all seven are worsening
- The NSA says three phone features should be off whenever you aren’t using them
