Oldest shipwreck

The oldest-known shipwreck is a site at a depth of 30 m (100 ft) near Kekova Island in Antalya, Türkiye, the cargo and anchors of which have been estimated to be between 4,400 and 4,700 years old, placing it in the Early Bronze Age. The preliminary findings of the analysis of the wreck were published in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology on 24 July 2026.

No structure of the wooden trading vessel, believed to have been 10 m (33 ft) long and originated somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, remains today, but three contemporary Bronze Age stone anchors were retrieved from the site, plus most crucially more than 30 amphorae (storage vessels) which would have been cargo on board the ship; these are the physical items that were assessed to date the wreck.

The Kekova wreck remains were first discovered in 2024 in a region that has revealed a number of very early shipwrecks in recent decades. The expedition to retrieve artefacts from the wreck site, and their subsequent analysis, was led by Professor Hakan Öniz and Dr Ceyda Öztosun of Akdeniz University.

This surpasses the previous record holder situated off the Greek island of Dokos in the Aegean. Peter Throckmorton of the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology first discovered that wreck on 23 August 1975. It was identified by a large pile of pottery 20 m (65 ft) below the sea, which was dated by archaeologist George Papathanasopoulos to 2200 BCE, making the Dokos shipwreck around 4,200 years old.

The cargo of another Bronze Age merchant ship was found off the coast of the Kumluca District in Antalya, Türkiye, in 2018. Excavations in July/August 2019 from the site, ranging from 38 m to 52 m depth, uncovered copper ingots dating to the 16th–15th century BCE. The work was conducted by Akdeniz University and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, led by Dr Cemal Pulak.

A Greek merchant ship dated to c. 400 BCE was discovered in the Black Sea, some 80 km (50 mi) off the coast of Bulgaria in summer 2017. Reports that emerged in October 2018 of the discovery described it as the "oldest intact/complete shipwreck", however given the subjectivity of assessing "intactness", this is not a category that Guinness World Records currently monitors.