“Twenty thousand years ago, global sea level was 130 meters lower than today. With progressive global warming and rising sea levels, unique landscapes that supported human societies for millennia disappeared,” recalls Professor Vincent Gaffney, from the University of Bradford.
Now, Gaffney and his team from the Submerged Landscapes Research Center, supported by researchers from Aarhus University, have set out to search for the trace of these lost civilizations. Evidence that, in most cases, is still submerged at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
“We know almost nothing about the people who lived on these great plains. As Europe and the world move closer to net zero (when no new emissions are added to the atmosphere), the development of coastal platforms is a strategic priority. That's why we use the latest technologies to explore these lands and support sustainable development," says Vincent Gaffney.
The ambitious project, which has a massive grant of more than €13.2 million from the EU, aims to map the seabed of the Baltic and North Sea from January 2024 to gain a deeper understanding of how they lived. these ancient humans before the proliferation of wind farms makes the area inaccessible to researchers.
Also using artificial intelligence and computer simulation, Gaffney's team aims to identify areas where long-lost settlements may still survive and can be explored, “enabling the ethical development of the seabed,” they say in a statement.
Over the past two decades, archaeologists have become increasingly aware that there is a major gap in our understanding of global prehistory. That gap is the 20 million square kilometers of new land around the world that was exposed for thousands of years when sea level was lower than today.
More than three million square kilometers of new land were exposed around the present-day coast of Europe, along with plains, lakes, river valleys, coastlines and islands that provided very attractive terrain for prehistoric settlements.
These landscapes, now lost to sea due to global climate change, remain almost completely unexplored. “Today, these landscapes are threatened as the world develops coastal platforms to achieve zero emissions goals,” the experts explain.
"By diving in Aarhus Bay we will determine how widespread coastal settlements were compared to those inland and determine how marine resources were exploited between 9,000 and 8,500 years ago," says Dr Peter Moe Astrup, underwater archaeologist at the Moesgaard Museum.
“The sunken landscapes in the North and Baltic seas recall a very similar past. Today, however, they differ significantly because in many areas of the Baltic the ancient land surface is much more accessible and therefore better studied. We will use these accessible areas to obtain details of the Stone Age inhabitants, their settlements and survival strategies,” concludes underwater archaeologist Svea Mahlstedt.
