Announced October 14, 2026: divers off Kekova Island mapped a Bronze Age wreck that may predate every other known shipwreck by 500 years — and one jar hints the crew made cheese at sea.
The National's October 14, 2026 report: more than 30 storage jars and three stone anchors at 30 metres down, dated to 4,400–4,700 years ago by their pottery alone, since no wood survived.
Euronews on the cargo: jars whose clay traces back to the Jordan Valley, and one pierced, nine-marked vessel that may be a churn — suggesting the crew kept goats and made dairy on board.
Off the same Turkish coast lies the most famous Bronze Age wreck of all: a royal cargo of copper, tin, ivory, ebony and gold that rewrote what we knew about ancient trade networks.
A feature-length dive into how a sponge diver's chance sighting led to a decade of excavation and a snapshot of the connected Bronze Age Mediterranean.
Until now the oldest known wreck was the ~2200 BC Dokos site near the Greek Argolid — a hoard of ceramics and no hull, discovered by Jacques Cousteau's former diver Peter Throckmorton.
How a single wreck proves kingdoms from Egypt to the Aegean were bound into one trading world — context for why a 4,700-year-old ship matters so much.
The waters where the wreck lies are already famous for drowned Lycian ruins visible beneath the surface — one of the Mediterranean's richest underwater archaeology zones.