A team of archaeologists from Germany has discovered a submerged Stone Age megastructure in the Western Baltic Sea at a water depth of about 21 m. The structure was likely constructed by hunter-gatherer groups more than 10,000 years ago and ultimately drowned around 8,500 years ago; since then, it remained hidden at the seafloor, leading to a pristine preservation that will inspire research on the lifestyle and territorial development in the larger area.
The Stone Age megastructure was discovered in the Bay of Mecklenburg, about 10 km northwest off Rerik, Germany.
The stonewall is made of 1,673 individual stones which are usually less than 1 m in height, placed side by side over a distance of 971 m in a way that argues against a natural origin by glacial transport or ice push ridges.
Dubbed Blinkerwall, it was built by hunter-gatherers that roamed the region after the retreat of the Weichselian Ice Sheet.
Running adjacent to the sunken shoreline of a paleolake (or bog), whose youngest phase was dated to 9,143 years ago, the structure was likely used for hunting the Eurasian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus).
“At the time, the entire population across northern Europe was likely below 5,000 people,” said Dr. Marcel Bradtmöller, a researcher at the University of Rostock.
“One of their main food sources were herds of reindeer, which migrated seasonally through the sparsely vegetated post-glacial landscape.”
“The wall was probably used to guide the reindeer into a bottleneck between the adjacent lakeshore and the wall, or even into the lake, where the Stone Age hunters could kill them more easily with their weapons.”
The Blinkerwall represents one of the oldest documented man-made hunting structures on Earth, and ranges among the largest known Stone Age structure in Europe.
“Our investigations indicate that a natural origin of the underwater stonewall as well as a construction in modern times, for instance in connection with submarine cable laying or…
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