A remarkable discovery has been made in the Baltic Sea: a massive structure that may be the oldest Stone Age megastructure built by humans in Europe. This blog post tells you everything you need to know about this amazing find and what it reveals about the ancient people who lived there.
The structure, which has been given the name Blinkerwall, is located 21 meters below the water surface in Mecklenburg Bay. It consists of 1,673 individual stones that form a wall approximately 1 km long.
The stones are not placed randomly, but arranged in a purposeful pattern that suggests a man-made origin.
The Blinkerwall dates back 10,000 years ago, when the area was part of a vast landmass called Doggerland that linked Britain and continental Europe.
Doggerland was inhabited by hunter-gatherers who exploited the rich resources of the land and sea. However, about 8,200 years ago, Doggerland was inundated by rising sea levels due to melting glaciers.
So why did these ancient people build such a huge structure? According to archaeologistsThe Blinkerwall was probably used as a hunting device to catch and kill reindeer. Reindeer were an important source of food, clothing and tools for hunter-gatherers, and they roamed Doggerland in large herds.
The idea behind the Blinkerwall was to create an artificial bottleneck that led the reindeer to a dead end, where they could be easily slaughtered. The wall would act as a barrier that the animals would not try to jump over or go around.
“When you chase the animals, they follow these structures, they don’t try to jump over them,” says Jacob Geersen of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research.
The archaeologists believe there was a second wall or lake bank that closed off the other end of the bottleneck, but they have not yet found it. It may still be hidden under the sediment or eroded by the waves.
However, they are convinced that the Blinkerwall is not a natural formation, but a product of human ingenuity and technology.
“This places the Blinkerwall within the range of the oldest known examples of yacht architecture in the world and potentially makes it the oldest man-made megastructure in Europe,” they wrote in their article published in the journal Antiquity.
The Blinkerwall is a great example of how much history lies beneath the waves, waiting to be discovered and discovered.
