A stone wall beneath the Baltic Sea may be the oldest known megastructure built by humans in Europe. Dating back about 11,000 years, to the Prehistoric era, it was first discovered in 2021, about six miles off the Baltic coast of Germany. The findings are described in a study published February 12 in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS).
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The Blinkerwall, as it's called, stretches about half a mile across the Gulf of Mecklenburg. It was originally discovered by chance when a team of scientists from the University of Kiel in Germany were using a sonar system from a research shipto study the crust of the underwater soil.
The team believes that this structure was built around 11,000 years ago by prehistoric hunters to hunt reindeer. Hunting walls like this one were used to trap herds of animals that would run alongside the obstacle instead of jumping over it.
The approximately 1,500 stones connected to nearly 300 larger rocks that make up the wall are so well aligned that the possibility that it was formed naturally along the bottom of the Baltic Sea seems unlikely.
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Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), the University of Kiel, the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, the German Aerospace Center, the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have created a detailed 3D model of the wall. They also used modern geophysical models to reconstruct what the landscape would have looked like thousands of years ago. Sediment samples from the basin just south of the wall help them narrow down the possible time period in which it was built. It is the first known discovery of a Stone Age hunting structure in the Baltic Sea region.
It is located on the southwest side of a hill on the seabed, where a former meadow or marsh would once have been. Although the Baltic Sea is about 20 meters deep at this location, the Blinkerwall was probably built around 8,500 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age. Huge parts of the previously accessible landscape were covered by the water of the melting ice that created the Baltic.
11,000 years ago, as temperatures rose and forests spread, the last reindeer herds disappeared from what is now the Baltic Sea. The team believes it is unlikely that the wall was built after the reindeer left the area, making it the oldest human-made structure found in the Baltic.
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Future surveys of the site are planned, using side-scanning sonic, viscoelastic sonic, and multiple echo devices. Using dating based on determining when it was last exposed to sunlight could also help to more accurately determine the date of construction. The team also plans to reconstruct the ancient landscape in greater detail.
Source: popularscience
