Stone Age settlement found under the sea in Denmark

[jl6]

> As today’s world faces rising sea levels driven by climate change, the researchers hope to shed light on how Stone Age societies adapted to shifting coastlines more than eight millennia ago.

Unfortunately I don't expect there is any particularly reusable solution to be uncovered. Ancient peoples facing rising tides almost certainly just walked a bit inland and built new huts there. They probably thought nothing of it. They were a far more physically mobile culture, without great dependence on immense, immovable infrastructure - nor on rigid land ownership rules.

Our culture's migration will be entirely different.

[graemep]

I think the problem is researches feel under pressure to make research of immediate relevance to get funding etc. Its value is it tells us about people and history.

There are far more relevant examples in how more recent cultures dealt with things like land being lost to erosion or desertification or shifting rivers etc.

[eigart]

I think the rigidity of land ownership will be put to the test because of climate change.

[welferkj]

>nor on rigid land ownership rules.

Land ownership was formalized about as soon as there was a reason for anyone to own land - i.e., as soon as any given people started doing pastoralism and agriculture.

[gadders]

>>Unfortunately I don't expect there is any particularly reusable solution to be uncovered.

Mad that people can write statements like this when the Netherlands exists: https://www.netherlands-tourism.com/netherlands-sea-level/

[danielscrubs]

”Unfortunately I don't expect there is any particularly reusable solution to be uncovered.” Scientist might write that in a PR piece or a grant proposal but I can guarantee you that no one thinks that.

[ehnto]

Rigid land ownership seems to be the source of a great deal of our troubles.

[skeezyboy]

> Our culture's migration will be entirely different.

yeah, weve got even better technology, itll be even less of a hassle

[devjab]

This is not related to the story as such, but I live in Aarhus and this is the first I hear about it. I read three national news outlets and one specific to my local region of Østjylland a couple of times a day. I wonder if I should swap some of them. I know about black trashbags being thrown out of a window in the white house and then I find an actually interesting non-tech story about something happening right outside my house here on HN...

[adornKey]

I've sometimes witnessed newsworthy events. It was very interesting to see what media made out of it. Local news was very inaccurate. In Big papers the stories were more like fiction - using some fact from the real event as inspiration. It was surprising that local papers can't even get simple local news right. Only once I think the local paper got into a little bit of trouble. They wrote some nagging critic about the performance of some school theatre - but the event had been cancelled...

I think it is safe to say that using newspapers to wrap some garbage is where their real value shines. Reading the garbage wrap is something that people do, but I wonder why?

[fifilura]

No, I don't think there is a reason to switch.

This is not exactly news for people living in this area, you would have learned it at school.

There is a vast area between Denmark and UK called Doggerland where fishermen constantly being up mamooth tusks and stone age artifacts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

[Someone]

Archaeologists tend to keep such expeditions fairly hush-hush until they’re done with their research. If they don’t, they run the risk of treasure hunters ploughing through their find, destroying information, at night.

So, the villagers likely knew there were people working on the beach, but may not have known they were archeologists or that they found a Stone Age settlement.

[thaumasiotes]

> This is not related to the story as such, but I live in Aarhus and this is the first I hear about it. I read three national news outlets and one specific to my local region of Østjylland a couple of times a day. I wonder if I should swap some of them.

Something that's stuck with me is the time I walked into my local bookstore and found banners advertising that a new book by Orson Scott Card was already out and available for sale then and there.

Pretty much any other type of product (that I might buy) would have managed to publicize this to me well in advance of the day you could purchase the product.

To your question, I think the types of content delivered by the publishers you read are unlikely to change, and if you want to start hearing about new types of things, you'll need to find sources that cover them.

[bazoom42]

You probably shouldnt expect the regular news media to cover ongoing archeological research unless there is some sensational find (like a viking ship in Havana).

But if you are interested in such research (and read Danish) I can recommend the magazine Skalk (skalk.dk).

[tokai]

The researchers and their work with underwater archeology has been covered extensively in Danish media. I'll bet you will see Danish media cover this project at the end of the year when the project is finished and results are finalized.

You are overreacting.

[globnomulous]

Not exactly related to the story or to your comment, but: is Aarhus as happy and wonderful a place as all writing about it claims it is? I know immigrating to Denmark is nearly impossible, but I keep telling my partner that if (or when) the political situation in the US deteriorates sufficiently, Aarhus should be our destination -- that or Copenhagen.

[tangwwwei]

wat do u think could be particular about the state of journalism in Aarhus or Denmark that could've caused this? i sometimes learn of interesting news about my country from external sources too that gets drowned out by more petty concerns in the social media news cycle

[Empact]

Given human propensity to settle near bodies of water (exhibited even to this day), and the change in sea levels after the last ice age, the bulk of intra-ice age settlement artifacts are probably submerged within a relatively short distance from our existing coastlines. I would be personally interested in an effort to systematically investigate these areas.

[rhplus]

A recent episode of The Ancients talks about how oil and mineral exploration companies have been sharing their seismic mapping data of Doggerland with archeologists:

https://shows.acast.com/the-ancients/episodes/doggerland-the...

Partnering with industries that are mapping areas is certainly the only cost effective way for academic to work in submerged landscapes:

https://archaeology.org/issues/march-april-2022/letters-from...

[flanked-evergl]

The sea level rose more than 120 meters in the last 20000 years, so it won't necessarily be that short distance, but I think at least it should be easy to calculate where to look.

[nradov]

It would be great to see more underwater archaeology, I'm sure there's a lot to find. But due to variations in local conditions it's really tough to systematically investigate: every site has to be treated individually. Plus doing anything underwater becomes at least 10× harder and more expensive. Human scientific divers can only work easily down to about 30m: anything significantly deeper requires commercial diving protocols, submersibles, or ROVs which raise the difficulty and cost even further.

[erk__]

This is not even the only stone age settlement under water in Denmark, there is at least one other I know of on Zealand, article in Danish about it: https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/fagligt/marinarkaeologi/ma...

[timschmidt]

Agree strongly. Especially around the Mediterranean including the north coast of Africa and the southern horn of Africa. Ancient humans are known to have inhabited the southern tip of Africa into the last interglacial period, and human migration across and settlement in the occasionally green Sahara could explain some things.

[adastra22]

Unfortunately most have probably been destroyed by dragnet fishing.

[barbazoo]

I was listening to Stefan Milo recently and he said something similar about how people might have lived along the coast of the Americas but because it was all mud and wood back then and is now covered in water, it'll mostly be lost at this point.

[tracerbulletx]

This is probably especially an issue for early North American settlements if people crossing over during the ice age glacial maximum were traveling down the coasts right after coming over the Bering Land Bridge

[undersuit]

The Gulf of Thailand to the Java Sea was dry land 16000 years ago. China's coastline was 100 miles out. New Guinea was fully connected to Australia. The Persian gulf was walkable.

https://sea-level.vercel.app/

[miramba]

The Archeology of Europe‘s Drowned Landscapes: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-37367-2

[jupiterelastica]

Related BBC podcast "In Our Time" about Doggerland, a landmass which was inhabited about ~10k years ago, but is now submerged in the north sea.

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m0006707

[unfitted2545]

Some say the inhabitants are still in their cars to this day..

[jorisboris]

Every time I read an article like this I end up in a rabbit hole of reading about ice ages, sea level changes, and how the human evolved throughout it. It’s mind boggling that only 20000 years ago the sea level was 120 meters lower and much of Northern Europe was covered in ice

[iamflimflam1]

I wonder how rapidly the change occurred - were the people aware of it happening? Did they have people saying “don’t listen to Yarg! These recent floods are just normal weather…”

[obfuscator]

Not far away, but partially preserved by the mudflat, lies Rungholt. A city of ~1000-1500 (some sources say 3000) inhabitants that was drowned in the Grote Mandrenke (1362 AD). That's a very big city in that time. In my childhood we were told, while wandering the tidal flat, that we should listen closely if we could hear the church bells under the mud. Only in 2023 the whereabouts of the sunken city were definitely confirmed and mapped. "Rungholt" probably means "wrong/low wood".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungholt

[thaumasiotes]

> "Rungholt" probably means "wrong/low wood".

This is an interesting point. Names are often older than they appear.

I have a book on Greek mythology that takes the position that Hercules, including his name, is considerably older than most of the Greek pantheon and should be thought of as a foreign import. But the form of his name ("Heracles") looks so natural in Ancient Greek, "glory of Hera" in the same way that you see other Greeks named Agathocles or Themistocles, that the mythology around the relationship between Hera and Heracles, which is extensive, must have developed from that apparent similarity.

Potentialities like this keep us on our toes when we look at names like "Rungholt".

[egberts1]

"Sea levels rose by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches) in the decade up to 2023."

There are seven-inch difference of sea level between Pacific and Atlantic ocean ... at the coastlines of Panama.

[nick49488171]

Makes you wonder what would happen if that was opened to a river instead of a canal.

[vintermann]

One of the fun parts of genetic genealogy is that it's always exciting to see what old DNA turns up in archeological projects like these. It's a stretch to hope for, but wouldn't a paternal-line relative from Doggerland be cool...

[hopelite]

On a related note, since the Paleolithic rarely comes up on HN, something that seems to rarely come up in English language content; Menhir [1] (Long stone) or standing stones, which are spread all across Europe, some very elaborately decorated, others with sight holes cut in them, others extremely large, i.e., 30-40 feet tall before they were knocked over by the invasive meme, Christianity.

They are found from Portugal all the way to Siberia, but very little is known about them following the Christian meme eradicating the indigenous cultures through the many purges and programs from 300CE on.

There are some references that imply at least in some places they were a kind of connection to the afterlife and ancestors that would turn into birds that would perch on top of the standing stone, something that is still part of indigenous beliefs and practices in parts of Asia. It's basically the indigenous culture of the Native Europeans that middle eastern Christianity destroyed and eradicated like it destroyed and eradicated the Native Americans and so many other native people and cultures around the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir

[SoftTalker]

It's interesting to me that items are well preserved. I thought salt water was particularly damaging and corrosive.

[alexey-salmin]

The salt water part is not particularly surprising to me, after all we have plenty of wooden shipwrecks from the bronze age. Wood is preserved much better in the salt water than on the ground (unless it's a desert).

What I don't understand is how it survived the surf. 2 meters per century means that the place had spent a century in the surf line, and surf grinds everything into sand and dust and scatters what it can't grind. I would have understood a sudden flooding but this is surprising.

[pfdietz]

Corroding what? This is before metals were widely used.

[ostacke]

There's an episode[1] of In Our Time covering Doggerland. Recommend.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/episode/6jlHaJMCfRmsMsrqqLBY3O?si=1...

[kazinator]

Stonge Age settlements can be found in numerous cities around the world, above water and bustling with contemporary human activity.

[alexey-salmin]

Do you mean just coincidental re-settlement of an old city or continuously inhabited settlements?

Former could definitely happen (and most likely did many times) but for the latter I never heard of any city from the stone age. Bronze age -- sure, but stone age? What are the examples?

[KingOfCoders]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_in...

[dang]

[stub for offtopicness]