World's oldest shipwreck found off Kekova Island in Turkey

Figure caption, Artefacts from the ship were found just off the coast of Kekova Island

The world's oldest shipwreck has been discovered off the coast of Turkey, archaeologists say.

They have dated it to between 4,400 and 4,700 years old, which is the Early Bronze Age, and is around the same time that the Great Pyramid was being built.

The ship's wooden structure has not survived, but the ceramic storage pots it was carrying were lying on the sea floor and, remarkably, some still contain traces of what they held inside.

The archaeologists who found the ship say it was about 10m in length and was a trade vessel carrying cargo across the Mediterranean Sea.

"The shipwreck is a time capsule at the bottom of the sea," said Prof Hakan Öniz, from Akdeniz University in Turkey, who led the Mediterranean Archaeology Association expedition.