The settlement of the stone age lost to the ascending seas 8,500 years ago found in Denmark Coast

Aarhus Bay, Denmark – Under the dark blue waters of Aarhus’s bay in northern Denmark, archaeologists are looking for coastal settlements swallowed by the increase in sea level more than 8,500 years ago.

This summer, the divers descended at about 26 feet under the waves near Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, and collected evidence of a settlement of the stone age of the seabed.

It is part of an international six -year project of $ 15.5 million to map parts of the seabed in the Baltic and North seas, financed by the European Union, which includes researchers in AARHUS, as well as the University of the United Kingdom of Bradford and the Institute of Bajo Saxony for historical coastal research in Germany.

The objective is to explore the sunken landscapes of northern Europe and discover the lost mesolithic settlements as wind farms on the high seas and other marine infrastructure expand.

The majority of the evidence of such settlements so far have been found in the places of the interior of the stone of the stone age, said submarine archaeologist Peter Moe Astrup, who leads underwater excavations in Denmark.

“Here, we really have an old coast. We have a settlement that was placed directly on the coast,” he said. “What we really tried to discover here is how life was in a coastal settlement.”

After the last ice age, the huge layers of ice melted and the global level of the sea rose, rose to the settlements of the stone age and forcing the human population of hunters-gatherers inland.

About 8,500 years ago, sea level rose approximately 6.5 feet per century, said Moe Astrup.

Moe Astrup and his colleagues from the Moesgaard Museum in Højbjerg, on the outskirts of Aarhus, have excavated an area of ​​approximately 430 square feet in the small settlement they discovered right on the coast today.

The first dives discovered animals of animals, stones tools, arrow tips, a seal tooth and a small piece of wood worked, probably a simple tool. The researchers are combing the site meter by meter using a type of underwater vacuum to collect material for future analysis.

They expect more excavations to find harpoons, fish or traces of fishing structures.

“It’s like a time capsule,” said Moe Astrup. “When the sea level rose, everything was preserved in an oxygen -free environment … time only stops.”

“We found completely well preserved wood,” he added. “We find Hazelnut … Everything is well preserved.”

The excavations in the relatively quiet and shallow bay of Aarhus and immerse themselves on the coast of Germany, will be followed by the subsequent work in two places in the most inhospitable northern sea.

The sea level increased thousands of years ago submerged, among other things, a vast area known as Doggerland that connected Great Britain with continental Europe and is now under the south of the North Sea.

To build an image of the rapid rise of the waters, Danish researchers are using dendrocronology, the study of trees rings.

The stumps of the submerged trees preserved in the mud and the sediment can be dated precisely, revealing when the ascending tides drowned coastal forests.

“We can say very precisely when these trees died on the coasts,” said Dendrocronologist at the Moesgaard Museum, Jonas Ogdal Jensen, while looking in a section of the stone trunk of the stone age through a microscope.

“That tells us something about how sea level changed over time.”

As today’s world faces the level of sea level driven by climate change, researchers hope to shed light on how stone societies adapted to the changing coasts more than eight millennia ago.

“It’s hard to answer exactly what it meant for people,” said Moe Astrup. “But it clearly had a great long -term impact because it completely changed the landscape.”

Sea levels increased by a global average of around 1.7 inches in the decade until 2023.

Denmark has seen several significant archaeological discoveries in recent years, including a metal detector Impressive finding at the beginning of last year of gold Set with a red semi -precious stone that the researchers expected to shed light on the history of the country during the Middle Ages.

The officials of the National Museum of Denmark announced that the finding after the Centennial Ring, which is believed to be owned by a member of the Royal Family about 1,400 years ago, was transferred from a museum different from the site of discovery in the south, near the German border.

That discovery came only weeks after archaeologists I found a small knife registered with Runic letters dated in the second or second century, or almost 2,000 years ago. It was the oldest writing trail ever found in Denmark, according to the Odense Museum.

The runes, or runic letters, are the oldest alphabet that is known that it was used in Scandinavia, which have been in use for approximately 1,000 years until they were largely replaced by the Latin alphabet when Christians began to spread their belief system in the 10th century.

Earl this year, officials announced that a piece of fossilized vomiting, It was discovered when dinosaurs wandered through the earth, it was discovered in Denmark.

• Climate change
• Archaeologist
• Denmark
• European Union