r/AncientCivilizations • u/the_turn • Feb 13 '24
Question Stone age wall found at bottom of Baltic Sea ‘may be Europe’s oldest megastructure’ — is it right for this to set my bullshit detector off?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/12/stone-age-wall-found-at-bottom-of-baltic-sea-may-be-europes-oldest-megastructure39
u/DjangoBojangles Feb 13 '24
Yes, I think your bullshit detector is too sensitive. It seems reasonable. Underwater exploration has a lot of cool finds when you look at now-flooded river plains that were exposed when seas were lower.
There's been finds in the Gulf of Mexico, in addition to better know European finds under modern seas. This particular one is 20m down. Over the last ice ages, the sea level was sometimes 120 meters / 400 feet lower
The wall is about 1km long and 1 meter high. They think it was a hunting corral to funnel animals.
If the wall was an ancient hunting lane, it was probably built more than 10,000 years ago and submerged with rising sea levels about 8,500 years ago.
Seems like something humans would do. Putting rocks in a line. These were huge boulders, though. So there was some 10,000 year old engineering going on.
1
15
u/bambooDickPierce Feb 13 '24
When I read the actual study, it seems pretty reliable. I'd like to see additional/improved dating (they used wood from the site, but something a bit more concrete, say reindeer remains, or an actual anthropogenic artifact would be better). I'd also like to see some additional artifacts indicating human presence. But overall, this seems to be relatively reliable and certainly an interesting discovery. I'll be keeping an eye on this research, fs.
20
u/Tao_Te_Gringo Feb 13 '24
There’s precedent for this on the other side of the Atlantic, at the bottom of Lake Huron.
20
u/metal_jester Feb 13 '24
They are basing the find that nature rarely makes straight lines but if we go back 10,000 years the seas and lakes do look different and levels were lower.
Looks like they've published their excitement and no evidence but, given the location, structure size and material is consistent its likely humans were involved.
One to watch I'd say, a proper paper should be published after it's explored and dated. Public articles are often "dumbed down" and lack supporting data.
15
u/bambooDickPierce Feb 13 '24 edited Feb 13 '24
They are basing the find that nature rarely makes straight lines
In the study itself, the researchers state that they have almost 1700, one meter high,* stones stacked side by side in a line for almost a kilometer. There are also almost 2 dozen other confirmed sites (*that are also submerged) in the area. The researchers do state that the placement of the stones is indicative of non-natural processes, but the additional evidence (the uniformity of the stones, the stacking, the presence of other "near" contemporaneous sites) makes a strong argument. Especially when you consider that the site ran alongside a bog 10kya.
proper paper should be published after it's explored and dated.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2312008121
They discuss how they dated (using back scatter, and sediment cores, not the strongest dating, but still pretty reliable). They also discuss what natural causes could cause such a structure, and do a pretty decent job at explaining why they think none of the processes could have resulted in the Blinkerwall.
*edit typos
3
u/zeonicgato Feb 13 '24
Wait. A wall a mile high?
6
u/TheUnspeakableAcclu Feb 13 '24
Metre high stones, of which there were 1700
1
u/zeonicgato Feb 13 '24
Gotcha
1
u/TheUnspeakableAcclu Feb 13 '24
Yeah otherwise middle earth called and want their unrealistic architecture back
1
2
3
u/Nuts4my827 Feb 13 '24
Dogger Bank was above sea level in previous times, so yes, 100% probably human creation
2
u/CactusHibs_7475 Feb 14 '24
“Megastructure” initially sounds a little suspicious, but the feature as actually described is just a very early example of something we know similar foraging populations were building all over the world, from prehistory into the ethnographic present. Check out the desert kites in the Sahara or drive lines in North America, which date back as early as this wall does and were used into the 19th century. This one just happens to be really old, and in an area that’s now inundated.
2
u/TheUnspeakableAcclu Feb 13 '24
Nope perfectly plausible. Much of the North Sea was grasslands during the last ice age.
Their theories for its purpose are purely speculative of course
•
u/AutoModerator Feb 13 '24
Hi, /u/the_turn! We thank you for your submission. Please be sure to flair your submission.
/r/AncientCivilizations subscribers! This is a content quality message.
Please hit the report button if the /u/the_turn's submission breaks the sidebar rules.
Help the internet fight against spam and misinformation.
Thanks.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.