2024-02-13 13:15:00
German archaeologists reported a sensational discovery at the bottom of Mecklenburg Bay in the Baltic Sea. According to a joint statement from the universities of Rostock, Kiel and the Leibniz Institute of Warnemünde, published on Monday, February 12, scientists discovered about a kilometer-long stone wall underwater. The authors of the study believe that this structure was built more than ten thousand years ago by hunter-gatherers during the last Ice Age – at the end of the Paleolithic or the beginning of the Mesolithic.
What did a stone wall look like for a driven reindeer hunt? Illustration from a publication by the Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde in Warnemünde Photo: Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde/dpa/picture alliance
The wall was used by Stone Age people for driven hunting of migrating reindeer. At this time, only about five thousand people lived in all of Northern Europe. Taking into account the impressive size of the find, the discovery of German scientists can potentially be considered as the oldest monumental structure on the European continent.
Image of underwater relief at the location of the stone wall. The largest boulder that could not be moved is marked in red Photo: P. Hoy, Universität Rostock; Modell erstellt mit Agisoft Metashape: J. Auer, LAKD MV
Archaeological sensation at the bottom of the Baltic Sea
A report on the work done was published in a scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors exclude the possibility of this structure arising under the influence of natural processes or modern human activity.
Similar structures for hunting wild animals are known in other regions of the world – in particular, they were discovered at the bottom of Lake Huron in the US state of Michigan. This is the first time that traces of such a stone wall have been found in the Baltic Sea area. As the authors note, the remains of the structure are located approximately twenty meters deep, ten kilometers from the coastal settlement of Rerik.
Scientists noticed the first signs of the structure by accident during a hydroacoustic study of the bottom of Mecklenburg Bay in 2021. As the report says, the wall is about a meter high and consists of more than one and a half thousand stones. Most are between the size of a tennis ball and a football, but there are also large boulders among them. When constructing the wall, they used, in particular, multi-ton stones that could not be moved, that is, the wall was laid between them accordingly.
The shore of the Mecklenburg Bay near the place where a stone wall was found in the sea Photo: Peter Schickert/picture alliance
The total weight of the structure is estimated to exceed 140 tons. It found itself under water about 8,500 years ago as a result of a rise in the level of the then slightly salty Littorina Sea, when salty water from the ocean began to penetrate into this part of the depression of the future Baltic Sea.
In the near future, German scientists will continue to study the Mecklenburg Bay, where the remains of other such walls may be located. For further research of the already found structure, sonars, echo sounders, as well as methods of underwater archeology will be used.
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