Stone Age settlement misplaced to rising seas 8,500 years in the past discovered off Denmark coast

Bay of Aarhus, Denmark — Under the darkish blue waters of the Bay of Aarhus in northern Denmark, archaeologists seek for coastal settlements swallowed by rising sea ranges greater than 8,500 years in the past.

This summer time, divers descended about 26 ft under the waves near Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest metropolis, and picked up proof of a Stone Age settlement from the seabed.

It is a part of a $15.5 million six-year worldwide mission to map components of the seabed within the Baltic and North Seas, funded by the European Union, that features researchers in Aarhus in addition to from the U.Okay.’s College of Bradford and the Decrease Saxony Institute for Historic Coastal Analysis in Germany.

The objective is to discover sunken Northern European landscapes and uncover misplaced Mesolithic settlements as offshore wind farms and different sea infrastructure broaden.

Most proof of such settlements up to now has been discovered at areas inland from the Stone Age coast, stated underwater archaeologist Peter Moe Astrup, who’s main underwater excavations in Denmark.

“Right here, we even have an outdated shoreline. We now have a settlement that was positioned immediately on the shoreline,” he stated. “What we truly attempt to discover out right here is how was life at a coastal settlement.”

After the final ice age, large ice sheets melted and international sea ranges rose, submerging Stone Age settlements and forcing the hunter-gatherer human inhabitants inland.

About 8,500 years in the past, sea ranges rose by about 6.5 ft per century, Moe Astrup stated.

Moe Astrup and colleagues on the Moesgaard Museum in Højbjerg, simply outdoors Aarhus, have excavated an space of about 430 sq. ft on the small settlement they found simply off right this moment’s coast.

Early dives uncovered animal bones, stones instruments, arrowheads, a seal tooth, and a small piece of labored wooden, seemingly a easy instrument. The researchers are combing the location meter by meter utilizing a sort of underwater vacuum cleaner to gather materials for future evaluation.

They hope additional excavations will discover harpoons, fishhooks or traces of fishing constructions.

“It is like a time capsule,” Moe Astrup stated. “When sea stage rose, the whole lot was preserved in an oxygen-free surroundings … time simply stops.”

“We discover fully well-preserved wooden,” he added. “We discover hazelnut. … Every little thing is properly preserved.”

Excavations within the comparatively calm and shallow Bay of Aarhus and dives off the coast of Germany can be adopted by later work at two areas within the extra inhospitable North Sea.

The ocean stage rise hundreds of years in the past submerged, amongst different issues, an enormous space generally known as Doggerland that linked Britain with continental Europe and now lies beneath the southern North Sea.

To construct an image of the fast rise of the waters, Danish researchers are utilizing dendrochronology, the examine of tree rings.

Submerged tree stumps preserved in mud and sediment will be dated exactly, revealing when rising tides drowned coastal forests.

“We will say very exactly when these timber died on the coastlines,” Moesgaard Museum dendrochronologist Jonas Ogdal Jensen stated as he peered at a bit of Stone Age tree trunk by way of a microscope.

“That tells us one thing about how the ocean stage modified by way of time.”

As right this moment’s world faces rising sea ranges pushed by local weather change, the researchers hope to make clear how Stone Age societies tailored to shifting coastlines greater than eight millennia in the past.

“It is arduous to reply precisely what it meant to folks,” Moe Astrup stated. “Nevertheless it clearly had a big impact in the long term as a result of it fully modified the panorama.”

Sea ranges rose by a worldwide common of round 1.7 inches within the decade as much as 2023.

Denmark has seen a number of important archaeological discoveries lately, together with a steel detectorist’s gorgeous discover early final yr of gold ring set with a pink semi-precious stone that researchers hoped would make clear the nation’s historical past throughout the early center ages.

Officers on the Nationwide Museum of Denmark introduced that discover after the centuries-old ring, believed to have been owned by a member of the royal household some 1,400 years in the past, was transferred from a special museum nearer to the invention website within the south, close to the German border.

That discovery got here simply weeks after archaeologists discovered a small knife inscribed with runic letters dated to the primary or second century AD, or virtually 2,000 years in the past. It was the oldest hint of writing ever present in Denmark, in line with the Museum Odense. 

Runes, or runic letters, are the oldest alphabet identified to have been utilized in Scandinavia, having been in use for about 1,000 years till they had been largely changed by the Latin alphabet when Christians began spreading their perception system within the tenth century.

Earlier this yr, officers introduced {that a} piece of fossilized vomit, courting again to when dinosaurs roamed the earth, was found in Denmark.