Stone Age wall discovered at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

In an extraordinary discovery, a Stone Age wall has been discovered in the Baltic Sea that may be Europe's oldest man-made megastructure, offering a fascinating glimpse into the customs of early hunter-gatherer societies.

The wall, according to estimated to be over 8,500 years old. The kilometre-long wall, dubbed the Blinkerwall, is believed to have served ancient hunter-gatherers as a deer management tool.

Reports further add that the accidental discovery took place in September 2021 when students During exercises at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde in Germany, they came across a strange structure. The wall, less than a meter high, consists of many large stones intricately interconnected by more than 1,500 smaller stones, forming a pattern so regular that researchers consider its natural origin improbable.

Using multi-beam sonar technology, the students mapped the seabed off the coast of Germany, near the city of Rerik. Geophysicist Jacob Geersen noted: “After doing this in the laboratory, we realized that this structure looked natural. It was only when we contacted archaeologists that we realized that this could be something significant.”

Blinkerwall, located 21 meters underwater, is likely arose before the last ice age, about 8,500 years ago, as sea levels rose significantly during this period. Hunting walls, a traditional method of trapping herds of animals such as antelope, were likely used to trap deer using this particular structure.

Marliese Lombard, professor of Stone Age archeology at the University of Johannesburg, emphasized the importance of such hunting walls walls, explaining that they were designed to guide animals parallel to obstacles rather than encourage them to jump over barriers. Blinkerwall specifically targeted the deer that inhabited the region about 11,000 years ago.

This discovery has important implications for improving our understanding of early hunter-gatherer societies and their survival strategies. It also opens the door for scientists to explore other submerged Stone Age walls, providing valuable information about ancient human practices and interactions with the environment.

Source: timesofindia