Shipwreck believed to be the world's oldest discovered off the coast of Turkey

Archaeologists announced they have discovered the remains of the world's oldest shipwreck, a wooden cargo vessel they estimated sank off the coast of Turkey nearly 5,000 years ago.

Hakan Öniz, who led the underwater excavation, said the shipwreck dates back to when the Great Pyramid of Giza was being constructed.

Among the artifacts recovered from the ship, estimated to be around 30 feet long, were ceramic storage pots and clay containers that may have been used to transport olive oil and wine, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the Turkish minister of culture and tourism, said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Ersoy said one of the amphoras, or containers, recovered featured nine different markings and two holes in its body and may have been used to churn cheese or butter.

Ersoy said the discovery could shed light on the history of the maritime trade along the Anatolian coasts.
In an interview with the BBC, Öniz, who led the Mediterranean Archaeology Association expedition, estimated the ship sank near Kekova Island, off the southern coast of Turkey, 4,400 to 4,700 years ago during the early Bronze Age.

"We are the first humans who touched these objects after about 5,000 years," Öniz, head of the Mediterranean Underway Cultural Heritage Division at Akdeniz University in Antalya, Turkey, told the BBC.

He said the wreck was discovered in about 100 feet of water.

"The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea," Öniz told the BBC.