An aerial view of the sunken city and the narrow road to it © University of Zadar
Thousands of years ago, a small Neolithic town existed off the Croatian Adriatic island. It suffered the same fate as many coastal cities today: it sank.
Korčula – Under shimmering azure light, a diver uses a vacuum tube to suck away fine mud from regularly arranged stones that are about four to five meters below the earth's surface. What looks so idyllic in a video from the University of Zagreb is the testimony of a drama that occurred off the coast of Croatia around 4900 BC.
Off Croatian island: Divers uncover sunken city from the Stone Age
Underwater archaeologists from the University of Zagreb have uncovered a 7000,<>-year-old settlement and a road leading to it off the west coast of the Croatian Adriatic island of Korčula. Igor Borzić, the head of the research team of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Zadar, had discovered strange structures in the sea in Gradina Bay, which made him curious.
As early as 2021, the team of archaeologists had discovered a sunken settlement on the northeast coast near the Soline holiday settlement, about 7000 years old. At that time, they discovered the remains of a stone wall that surrounded the settlement, as well as some tools and objects used by the previous inhabitants. "We found some ceramic objects and flint knives," Professor Mate Parica of the University of Zadar told Reuters at the time.
Croatia: Stone Age road was flooded 7000 years ago
This time, according to the University of Zadar, the researchers discovered a Stone Age road in water four to five meters deep, which led to another sunken city. According to Borzić, "these are complex stone slabs that were part of a four-meter-wide network of paths that connected an artificially created island to the coast." Using radiocarbon analysis of preserved pieces of wood found underwater, the entire settlement has been dated to the 5th century BC. So there were 7000 people on the streets!
The second settlement that the research team has now built on the west coast of Korčula © University Zadar
A culture with far-reaching contacts
The researchers assign the sunken settlements to the Neolithic Danilo-Hvar culture, which is named after sites near the Croatian coastal town of Šibenik and on the island of Hvar. It is believed that the people of this culture had seagoing boats. Their contacts reached as far as present-day Hungary, where the people sold prickly oysters and obdsidian stones, apparently from Italy. There are also parallels with finds in Italy, where ornate pottery with patterns similar to those found in the Danilo-Hvar culture was discovered.
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Fancy a voyage of discovery?
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Researchers from Denmark discover three sunken ships at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Although it has been in the water for hundreds of years, you can still see details. The discovery of a whaling ship was sensational. The captain of the ship was the grandson of a freed slave and a Native American woman.
The team of underwater archaeologists evaluates the finds from © the University of Zadar
But why did the Neolithic cities sink? "During the Neolithic period, people in the Mediterranean experienced a sea level rise of four to seven millimeters per year, or about twelve to 21 centimeters over the course of a lifetime," Ehud Galili of the University of Haifa in Israel told Spiegel.de. In 2019, he uncovered a flood wall of a Stone Age settlement on Israel's Mediterranean coast. At that time there were more and more floods due to storms. 7600 years ago, there was the second dramatic sea level rise after the last ice age.
A ceramic drinking vessel of the Danilo Hvar culture © Dokideide Wikipedia
City sunk: catastrophic scenario that threatens to repeat itself
The cause was to be found in the end of the Ice Age. At the height of this era 20,000 years ago, the sea level was even 120 meters lower than today. About 15000,7000 years to about <>,<> years ago, the water level rose dramatically fast due to the melting of the inland ice. Did people in the Stone Age cities off Korčula want to protect themselves from it by the wall, as in Israel? It didn't help, the settlements sank into the sea, the inhabitants had to build higher settlements. A scenario that threatens to repeat itself today due to climate change. This time, however, it is caused by man.
