An accidental discovery in the Baltic Sea has uncovered a submerged wall dating back to the Stone Age. The wall, measuring around one kilometer in length, was found off the coast of Germany (10 km offshore) in the Bay of Mecklenburg by scientists on a student trip who made use of a multibeam sonar system from the research vessel.
Dubbed as the “Blinkerwall”, the structure consists of “about 1,400 smaller stones that appear to have been positioned to connect nearly 300 larger boulders,” as per The Guardian. Describing it as a “thrilling discovery”, researchers have revealed that the Baltic Sea wall was constructed by hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago making it the oldest man-made megastructure in Europe.
Although the exact purpose has not been discerned yet, the wall was likely constructed on land next to a marsh or a lake to act as a “driving lane for hunters in pursuit of herds of reindeer”. Jacob Geersen, researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemunde, further added, “When you chase the animals, they don’t attempt to jump over them. The idea would be to create an artificial bottleneck with a second wall or with the lake shore”. It could also have acted as a blockade, forcing the animals into the nearby water body thus, making them easy prey to the “humans lying in wait in canoes armed with spears or bows and arrows”.
A Second Wall Buried In The Baltic Sea?
Researchers while elaborating on the details with regard to the megastructure, stated that a second wall running parallel to the Blinkerwall might be “buried in the seafloor sediments”.
The wall’s man-made status has also been affirmed by researchers. The lack of tsunamis in the Baltic sea and the structural make-up of the hunting architecture point in the direction of anthropogenic intervention. It currently lies 21 m under water and was submerged around 8,500 years ago as a result of rise in sea levels.
Similarities Between Drop 45 and Blinkerwall
The report further highlighted the analogous features of Blinkerwall and the submerged Drop 45 site at Alpena- Amberley Ridge in Lake Huron, United States which has also been identified as a probable drive lane for hunting ungulates. The latter shows features that bear resemblance to Blinkerwall including characteristics like “a location near the top of the slope, but below the crest, a subparallel trending marsh/lakeshore on one side, the construction on bedrock, the good preservation in a submerged context of 20 to 30 m water depth, and solid and continuous construction”.
As of now, the exact dating of the Baltic Sea architecture is difficult to trace and needs further surveys and research in order to come up with conclusive information.
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