As of: February 16, 2024, 11:33 a.m
By: Marcus Giebel
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View of the Baltic Sea: Researchers continue to make interesting discoveries beneath the surface of the water.
(Symbol image) © imago/Symbol image
In the Baltic Sea, researchers found a stone wall that appears to be more than 10,000 years old.
It was apparently built by humans and used for hunting.
Rerik – A chance discovery in the Baltic Sea could now make headlines around the world.
While working in the Bay of Mecklenburg in 2021, geologists came across a row of stones almost a kilometer long that appeared to have been built by humans thousands of years ago.
Researchers discover stone wall in the Baltic Sea: Apparently used by Ice Age hunters to hunt reindeer
As the
Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde
(IOW), the University of Rostock and the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel explain in a joint statement, the discovered structure is likely to be around 11,000 years old and was used by Ice Age hunters to hunt reindeer.
The structure consists of 1,673 stones the size of tennis or football, which are connected by a few large boulders to form a wall up to one meter high.
The strikingly uniform stone structure is 971 meters long and is located ten kilometers from Rerik on the southwestern edge of the marl ridge in a water depth of 21 meters on the bottom.
The total volume is given as 52.75 cubic meters and the total weight as 142,437 kilograms.
Most of the stones weigh well under 100 kilograms, but 288 of them are heavier; according to calculations, one in the middle part of the wall weighs a whopping 11,389 kilograms.
The second heaviest stone, weighing 5792 kilograms, forms the western end.
The ten heaviest stones are all located in places where the wall, which describes several slight arches, changes direction slightly.
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Scientists on stone wall: “Natural formation unlikely”
Scientists from the IOW, the CAU research focus Kiel Marine Science, the University of Rostock, the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archeology in Schleswig, which has been part of the Leibniz Center for Archeology (LEIZA) since this year, the German Aerospace Center ( DLR), the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation (LAKD MV) have created a 3D model and also reconstructed the structure of the surrounding subsoil.
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The group has now presented their results in the renowned journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
.
“The investigations have confirmed that a natural origin is just as unlikely as a construction in modern times, for example through construction work to lay submarine cables or stone fishing,” emphasizes Jacob Geersen, first author of the study: “The stones are arranged too systematically and regularly for that. “
Stone wall discovered in the Baltic Sea: Reindeer were probably cornered with the help of the wall
According to current knowledge, the wall must have been built before the water level rose sharply after the last ice age.
Around 8,500 years ago, large parts of the previously accessible landscape were flooded.
The researchers even assume that the stone wall was built around 12,000 years ago.
“It is assumed that no more than 5,000 people lived in the whole of Northern Europe during this time,” says Marcel Bradtmöller from the University of Rostock.
This is roughly how the scientists imagine the scene thousands of years ago: The stone wall on the coast can be seen in a 3D model, and the reindeer have fallen into the trap.
© Michał Grabowski
He adds: “A main source of food for these groups was reindeer, which traveled in herds in seasonal rhythms through the post-glacial landscape with little vegetation.” The wall could have served “to drive the reindeer into a corner on the edge of a lake so that they could be separated from them Stone Age hunters could be killed with hunting weapons.
Baltic Sea find amazes researchers: Stone wall is probably the oldest human structure discovered there
This hunting technique has already been proven in other parts of the world.
US archaeologists have found stone walls 30 meters deep on Lake Huron in the state of Michigan that were demonstrably used to hunt caribou - the North American equivalent of reindeer.
The stone wall in the Bay of Mecklenburg shows great similarities.
According to scientists, the fact that the structure lying in the Baltic Sea today is probably no younger than 11,000 years ago is explained by the fact that at that time the climate was warming, the forests were expanding and, with the reindeer, the last migratory herd animals disappeared from our latitudes.
The wall would therefore be the oldest human structure ever discovered in the Baltic Sea.
Jens Auer from LAKD MV refers to “numerous well-preserved archaeological sites from the Stone Age” in the Wismar Bay and along the coast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
However, these mostly date from the Middle and Neolithic periods.
Research into the stone wall in the Baltic Sea: “Indications of comparable stone walls”
Now the stone wall and the surrounding seabed will be examined in more detail.
There is also hope of discovering similar formations, as Jens Schneider von Deimling from the University of Kiel explains: “In addition, we now have evidence that suggests the existence of comparable stone walls in other places in the Mecklenburg Bay.
We will explore these systematically.”
Research divers from the University of Rostock and archaeologists from LAKD MV will also search the stone wall and the surrounding area for archaeological finds.
This is intended to help with interpretation.
It is also planned to date the stone wall using the luminescence method.
This method can be used to determine when the surface of a stone was last exposed to sunlight.
Overall, the plan is to make “a significant contribution to the understanding of early Stone Age foraging groups” and to better understand their lifestyle, organization and hunting methods.
After a discovery in the Baltic Sea during routine work, researchers have a spectacular guess.
The discovery of a thousand-year-old grave with more than 1,000 dead in Lower Franconia was described as an “archaeological sensation”.
In southern France, researchers unearthed stone tablets that are 20,000 years old.
Just recently, a storm surge uncovered a mysterious stone formation on the Baltic Sea coast.
(mg)