As of: March 17, 2024, 7:47 p.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.
© imago/Symbolbild
Geologists come across a stone wall almost a kilometer long in the Baltic Sea.
It could be several thousand years old and was probably built for hunting.
Rerik – A few days ago, a farmer from Bavaria unexpectedly dug up an inconspicuous but extremely valuable fossil under his barn that could provide clues to dinosaurs.
Similarly by chance, geologists came across a remarkable discovery in the Baltic Sea that could attract worldwide attention.
While working in the Bay of Mecklenburg, they discovered a line 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: probably used by Ice Age hunters to hunt reindeer
The Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), the University of Rostock and the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel said in a joint statement that the discovered structure is around 11,000 years old and was probably used by Ice Age hunters to hunt reindeer.
The structure consists of 1,673 stones the size of a tennis ball or football, which are connected by a few large boulders to form a wall up to one meter high.
The stone structure, which is characterized by its striking uniformity, is 971 meters long and lies ten kilometers from Rerik on the southwestern edge of the marl ridge in a water depth of 21 meters on the seabed.
The total volume is 52.75 cubic meters and the total weight is 142,437 kilograms.
Most of the stones weigh well under 100 kilograms, but 288 of them are heavier, and one in the middle of the wall is calculated to weigh an impressive 11,389 kilograms.
The second heaviest stone, weighing 5792 kilograms, forms the western end of the wall, which makes several slight arches.
The ten heaviest stones are all in places where it changes direction slightly.
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Scientists on stone wall: “Natural formation unlikely”
Several research teams have used 3D models to reconstruct both the stone wall itself and the structure of the surrounding subsoil.
Scientists from the IOW, the Leibniz Center for Archeology (LEIZA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), among others, were involved in the major project.
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The prehistoric stone wall was discovered in 2021, and the group has recently presented their research 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, lead author of the study.
“The stones are arranged too systematically and regularly for that.”
A man from Bavaria, on the other hand, discovered “a freak of nature” in his cellar;
What is meant is a rare, hazelnut-sized mineral.
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.
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
“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.
He adds: “A main source of food for these groups was reindeer, which moved in herds in seasonal rhythms through the post-glacial landscape with little vegetation.”
The wall could have served to “corner the reindeer at the edge of a lake so that they could be killed by Stone Age hunters 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.
Scientists attribute the estimated age of the Baltic Sea stone wall to global warming over the course of time.
The forests had expanded and with the reindeer the last migratory herd animals had finally 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.
Researchers suspect further buildings from the Ice Age in the Baltic Sea bay
The investigation of the stone wall and the surrounding seabed will now be intensified.
Jens Schneider von Deimling from the University of Kiel, who is also involved in the research, also expresses the hope of discovering other similar formations: “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.”
The overarching goal is to make “a significant contribution to the understanding of the early Stone Age foraging groups” and to gain a deeper understanding of their lifestyle, organization and hunting methods.
A sensational find off the coast of Sardines proves how many undiscovered objects in world history are still lurking underwater.
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