Under the darkish blue waters of the Bay of Aarhus in northern Denmark, archaeologists seek for coastal settlements swallowed by rising sea ranges greater than 8,500 years in the past.
This summer season, divers descended about 8 meters (26 ft) under the waves near Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest metropolis, and picked up proof of a Stone Age settlement from the seabed.
It’s a part of a 13.2 million euro ($15.5 million) six-year worldwide challenge to map elements of the seabed within the Baltic and North Seas, funded by the European Union, that features researchers in Aarhus in addition to from the U.Ok.’s College of Bradford and the Decrease Saxony Institute for Historic Coastal Analysis in Germany.
The purpose is to discover sunken Northern European landscapes and uncover misplaced Mesolithic settlements as offshore wind farms and different sea infrastructure develop.
World sea ranges rose after the final ice age
Most proof of such settlements to date has been discovered at places inland from the Stone Age coast, mentioned underwater archaeologist Peter Moe Astrup, who’s main underwater excavations in Denmark.
“Right here, we even have an outdated shoreline. We’ve a settlement that was positioned immediately on the shoreline,” he mentioned. “What we really attempt to discover out right here is how was life at a coastal settlement.”
After the final ice age, large ice sheets melted and world sea ranges rose, submerging Stone Age settlements and forcing the hunter-gatherer human inhabitants inland.
About 8,500 years in the past, sea ranges rose by about 2 meters (6.5 ft) per century, Moe Astrup mentioned.
Moe Astrup and colleagues on the Moesgaard Museum in Højbjerg, simply outdoors Aarhus, have excavated an space of about 40 sq. meters (430 sq. ft) on the small settlement they found simply off at this time’s coast.
Rising sea ranges preserved historical past “like a time capsule”
Early dives uncovered animal bones, stones instruments, arrowheads, a seal tooth, and a small piece of labored wooden, probably a easy software. The researchers are combing the location meter by meter utilizing a sort of underwater vacuum cleaner to gather materials for future evaluation.
They hope additional excavations will discover harpoons, fish hooks or traces of fishing constructions.
“It’s like a time capsule,” Moe Astrup mentioned. “When sea stage rose, all the pieces was preserved in an oxygen-free atmosphere … time simply stops.”
“We discover fully well-preserved wooden,” he added. “We discover hazelnut. … Every little thing is nicely preserved.”
Excavations within the comparatively calm and shallow Bay of Aarhus and dives off the coast of Germany might be adopted by later work at two places within the extra inhospitable North Sea.
The ocean stage rise 1000’s of years in the past submerged, amongst different issues, an enormous space generally known as Doggerland that linked Britain with continental Europe and now lies beneath the southern North Sea.
To construct an image of the speedy rise of the waters, Danish researchers are utilizing dendrochronology, the research of tree rings.
Submerged tree stumps preserved in mud and sediment will be dated exactly, revealing when rising tides drowned coastal forests.
“We are able to say very exactly when these timber died on the coastlines,” Moesgaard Museum dendrochronologist Jonas Ogdal Jensen mentioned as he peered at a bit of Stone Age tree trunk by way of a microscope.
“That tells us one thing about how the ocean stage modified by way of time.”
As at this time’s world faces rising sea ranges pushed by local weather change, the researchers hope to make clear how Stone Age societies tailored to shifting coastlines greater than eight millennia in the past.
“It’s laborious to reply precisely what it meant to folks,” Moe Astrup mentioned. “However it clearly had a huge effect in the long term as a result of it fully modified the panorama.”
Sea ranges rose by a world common of round 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches) within the decade as much as 2023.
