A 7000 year old road. The latest discovery of archaeologists in the Adriatic
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 7,000-year-old road hidden under layers of sea mud off the southern Croatian coast.
Made at the sunken Neolithic site of Soline, this exciting find may have once linked the ancient cultural settlement of Hvar to the now isolated island of Korčula.
Once an artificial island, the ancient site of Soline was discovered in 2021 by archaeologist Mate Parica of the University of Zadar in Croatia while analyzing satellite images of the water area around Korčula.
After spotting something he thought might be human in origin on the seafloor, Parica and a colleague dived in to investigate.
At a depth of 4-5 meters in the Adriatic Sea of the Mediterranean, they found stone walls that may have been part of an ancient settlement. The landmass on which it was built was separated from the main island by a narrow strip of land.
“The fortunate thing is that this area, unlike most of the Mediterranean, is safe from big waves as many islands protect the coast,” Parica told Reuters in 2021. “This has certainly helped to preserve the site from natural destruction".
The islands near the coast have protected the structure of the settlement and the road from violent waves, preserving it over time. Here is a video showing the discovery by divers
A well done structure
About 4 meters wide, the thoroughfare was constructed of carefully stacked stone slabs. Today it is covered in a thick layer of mud, as one might expect from an underwater structure.
Researchers think that the Neolithic culture of Hvar, which once inhabited the eastern Adriatic, built the now-submerged settlement of Soline and the ancient passageway that connected the islands.
Scholars have evaluated the antiquity of the settlement with Carbon 14, placing it at 4900 years before the birth of Christ.
“People walked this [road] nearly 7,000 years ago,” the University of Zadar said in a Facebook statement about its most recent find.
This extraordinary research is the result of collaboration between experts from the Dubrovnik Museums, Kaštela City Museum, Zadar University, Korčula City Museum, together with the assistance of photographers and divers.
This is not the only secret Korčula keeps. The same research team has discovered another underwater settlement on the opposite side of the island which is strikingly similar to Soline and yields some intriguing Stone Age artifacts.
A network of Neolithic settlements
Archaeologist Igor Borzić of the University of Zadar recently noticed intriguing structures under the waters of the bay. So the researchers who dived into the Soline site went into underwater exploration and, to their great delight, discovered an almost identical submerged settlement at a depth of 4-5 meters.
“Neolithic artifacts such as cream-colored blades, stone axes and fragments of sacrifices were found at the site,” adds the University of Zadar.
The new settlement finds, such as those of Soline and its connecting road, seem to have links with the culture of Hvar.
About 12,000 years ago, the Neolithic Age, also known as the New Stone Age, emerged in parts of the world as we gradually transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and animal domestication, resulting in of more permanent community settlements.
Numerous archaeological finds, skeletal remains, artifacts, computational genetic modeling and many other sources such as 7,200-year-old Croatian cheese, contribute to our knowledge of Neolithic humans, but island settlements from the Neolithic period are not found so often. So these are exciting discoveries for archaeologists, showing how our ancestors could adapt to different environments and build roads between them.
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The article A 7,000-year-old road. The latest discovery by archaeologists in the Adriatic comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/una-strada-vecchia-di-7000-anni-lultima-scoperta-degli-archeologi-nelladriatico/ on Wed, 10 May 2023 17:03:55 +0000.