A team of divers off the coast of Turkey found what might be the oldest shipwreck ever discovered, so they needed to check what was inside the large ancient jars the ship carried when it sank.
Archaeologists from Akdeniz University, who published a preliminary report in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, discovered a site nearly 100 feet underwater off Kekova Island. There, they found about 30 ceramic amphorae and three stone anchors belonging to a sunken vessel dating to 4,400 to 4,700 years ago.
There’s not much of a ship to see in this shipwreck, as the wooden ship disintegrated long ago, but it still suggests a 33-foot vessel filled with ancient booze and olive oil.
An Archaeologist ‘Nearly Fainted’ After Seeing What Was Left in These Ancient Jars
Lead archaeologist Hakan Öniz described the site as a “time capsule at the bottom of the sea.” Is this time capsule filled with the usual time-capsule fodder? A newspaper from the day it sank? Nifty tchotchkes of the day? Nope.
They found a lot of sludge! Sludge that apparently has some kind of archaeological value, according to Australian archaeologist Karin Sowada, who says she “nearly fainted” when she looked inside the recovered jugs, bowled over by how much material was still lingering around after being at the bottom of the ocean for nearly 5,000 years,
Experts believe these Levantine-style vessels originally hauled wine, olive oil, or tree resin, but sailors were crafty and found other uses for their ships, like how one appeared to have two holes carved out in its body that researchers think may have been used to make butter or cheese, since these guys were likely hauling live goats across the Mediterranean.
Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy says the vessels match designs from Egypt, Troy, and Crete, suggesting global trade networks were already fully operational thousands of years ago, and that ancient sailors about 5000 years ago were the ancient version of the Sysco 18-wheelers you see on the highway.
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