The Stone Age loses in front of the emerging seas 8,500 years ago found off the Denmark coast

Bay of Arahus, Denmark – Under the dark blue waters of the Gulf of Arhus in North Denmark, archaeologists are searching for coastal settlements that have been swallowed by sea levels over 8,500 years ago.

This summer, divers descended about 26 feet from the waves near Arahus, and the second largest city in Denmark, and they gathered evidence of the settlement of the Stone Age from the sea floor.

It is part of an international project worth $ 15.5 million for six years to draw a map of parts of the sea floor in the Baltic Sea and the northern Sea, with funding from the European Union, which includes researchers in Arahus as well as from Bradford University in the United Kingdom and the Separate Saxony Institute for Historic Coastal Research in Germany.

The goal is to explore the landscape in northern Europe and detect missing intermediate settlements with the expansion of marine wind and other marine infrastructure.

Most of the evidence for these settlements has been found so far in the inner sites of the coast of the Stone Age.

“Here, we already have an old coastal line. We have a settlement that has been placed directly on the coast,” he said. “What we are really trying to discover here is how life was in a coastal settlement.”

After the last ice age, the huge ice sheets dissolve and the global sea levels have risen, the Stone Age settlements are flooded and the human population was forced to plural the hunter at home.

“About 8,500 years ago, sea levels increased by about 6.5 feet per century.

Moe Astrup and his colleagues at the MOSGAARD ​​Museum in HJBJerg, outside Aarhus, dug an area of ​​about 430 square feet in the small settlement they discovered off the coast of today.

Early diving reveals the bones of animals, stones, arrow heads, sealing age, and a small piece of working wood, probably a simple tool. The researchers comb the site scale by meter using a type of underwater vacuum vacuum cleaner to collect the material for future analysis.

They hope to find additional warfare, fish fish or fishing structures.

“It is like a time capsule,” said MEE Astrup. “When sea level rose, everything was kept in an oxygen -free environment … only time stops.”

“We find well preserved wood,” he added. “We find hazelnuts … everything is well preserved.”

The excavations in the relatively quiet Bay of Hahrus, the shame and diving off the coast of Germany will follow the subsequent work in two sites in the most urgent North Sea.

Sea levels decreased thousands of years ago, among other things, a vast region known as Doggerland that links Britain with continental Europe and now lies below the southern north Sea.

To build a picture of the rapid height of water, Danish researchers use courage to study tree rings.

The stems of the submerged trees preserved in the clay can be dated and it can be specifically historian, and it is exposed when the tide rises to drown in coastal forests.

“We can say specifically when these trees died on the coasts,” said Jonas Jendal Jinsen, the world of the Stone Age tree through a microscope.

“This tells us something about how sea level changes over time.”

Since today’s world is facing a high sea level of climate change, researchers hope to shed light on how to adapt stone age societies to turn to the coasts for more than eight thousand years.

“It is difficult to answer exactly what it means to people,” said Mr Astrop. “But it was clear that it had a great -term significant effect because it was completely not the scene.”

Sea levels rose with a global average of about 1.7 inches in the nodes until 2023.

Denmark has seen many important archaeological discoveries in recent years, including metal detector Amazing discovery early last year of the golden ring He was appointed with a semi -qualified red stone in which researchers hope to shed light on the country’s history during the early Middle Ages.

Officials at the National Museum of Denmark announced that the finding of the ring for centuries, which is believed to be owned by a member of the royal family about 1400 years ago, was transferred from a different museum near the discovery site in the south, near the German border.

This discovery came just weeks after archaeologists I found a small knife engraved in Rooney’s letters Dated in the first or second century AD, or about 2000 years ago. It was the oldest trace of writing in Denmark, according to the Odense Museum.

Rosary letters, or routine letters are the oldest alphabet known to be used in Scandinavia, as they were used for 1000 years until they were largely replaced by the Latin alphabet when Christians began spreading the system of beliefs in the tenth century.

Earlier this year, officials announced that a piece of Hittal vomiting, It dates back to when dinosaurs wandered on the ground, it was discovered in Denmark.