Scientists found a Stone Age megastructure submerged in the Baltic Sea

In 2021, geophysicist Jakob Gehrsen of the Leibniz Baltic Institute in the German port city of Warnemünde took his students on a training trip along the Baltic Sea coast. They used a multibeam sonar system to map the ocean floor about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) offshore. When Geersen returned to the lab and analyzed the resulting images, he noticed strange structures that didn’t seem to have occurred naturally.

Further investigation led to the conclusion that this is a large man-made structure built around 11,000 years ago to guide reindeer herds as a hunting strategy. Dubbed the “brinker wall,” it is probably the oldest megastructure ever discovered, one researcher says. new paper Accurately dating this type of archaeological structure is notoriously difficult, but it is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As previously reported, in the 1920s, aerial photography revealed the presence of a large planet. Kite-shaped stone wall giant structure Most archaeologists believe they were used to gather and trap wild animals in the deserts of Asia and the Middle East. As of 2018, he has confirmed more than 6,000 of these “desert kites,” but very few have been excavated. Last year, archaeologists discovered two stone carvings – one in Jordan and one in Saudi Arabia. they believe in representing The earliest architectural plans of these desert kites.

However, according to Geersen et al., megastructures of this kind are almost unknown in Europe, simply because they did not survive for the next few millennia. However, the Baltic Sea Basin, which includes Mecklenburg Bay, where Gehrsen made his important discovery, is known to be full of extremely well-preserved submerged ruins, such as the Brinker Wall.

After first spotting the underwater wall, Gehrsen enlisted several colleagues to lower cameras onto the structure. Images revealed orderly rows of stones forming walls less than 1 meter (3.2 feet) high. He has 10 large stones weighing several tons, spaced apart and connected by more than 1,600 smaller stones (less than 100 kilograms or 220 pounds). “Overall, the 10 heaviest stones are all located within the region where the stone wall changes direction of impact,” the authors write. The wall is 971 meters (just over half a mile) long.

They concluded that the wall was not formed by natural processes such as moving glaciers or tsunamis, especially given the careful placement of large stones in places where the wall zigzags. Ta. The structure is likely man-made and was built more than 10,000 years ago, but the lack of archaeological evidence such as stone tools and other artifacts makes it difficult to date the site. It is difficult. They reasoned that the area would have been covered with ice slabs before then. There would be lots of stones lying nearby for building a blinker wall. Rising sea levels subsequently caused the structure to be submerged under water, and it was rediscovered in the 21st century. This would make Brinkerwall one of the oldest and largest Stone Age megastructures in Europe.

As for why the wall was built, Geersen et al. Suggests it was used as a desert kite similar to those found in Asia and the Middle East. Desert kites usually have two walls forming a V-shape, but blinker walls happen to run along what was once a lake. Grazing reindeer in the lake would have slowed down the animals and made hunting easier. It’s also possible that a second wall is hidden beneath sediments on the ocean floor. “When chasing animals, they follow these structures; they don’t try to jump over them,” Geersen said. told the Guardian. “The idea is to create an artificial bottleneck on the second wall or lakeshore.”

A drive lane enclosed by a similarly submerged stone wall is known as “.drop 45” is located in Lake Huron, USA. Divers found various lithic artifacts around the drive lane, usually in a circular spot that may have served as a hunting blind. The authors suggest that larger blocks of blinker walls may also have served as hunting blinds. However, further archaeological research is required to test this hypothesis.

“We think there is good evidence that the wall is a man-made structure designed to guide the movement of migratory reindeer,” said Geoff Bailey, an archaeologist at the University of York who was not a co-author of the study. . he told New Scientist magazine. Vincent Gaffney of the University of Bradford agreed. “Such discoveries suggest that vast prehistoric hunting landscapes may be surviving in ways previously seen only in the Great Lakes.” He said. “This has a huge impact on areas of the coastal shelf that were previously habitable.”

PNAS, 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2312008121 (About DOI).