Blinkerwall, the oldest European megastructure is at the bottom of the Baltic
Blinkerwall was probably a wall whose purpose was to help the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region in the past. It dates back 10 thousand years
At the bottom of the Baltic Sea are the remains of what was probably the oldest European megastructure, built about 10 thousand years ago. Made up of gigantic stones and one kilometer long, it is located off the coast of Germany, 21 meters deep in the Gulf of Mecklenburg. The seabed was accessible terrain until the end of the last Ice Age. It was only with global warming that the Baltic Sea area was flooded and was then under water around 8,500 years ago.
In the Baltic Sea region, the wall is the first known structure of Ice Age hunters and gatherers and possibly the oldest colossal monument in Europe.
The discovery, published in the journal of the United States Academy of Sciences PNAS (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2312008121) is due to research coordinated by Jacob Geersen, of the Institute of Geosciences of the German University of Kiel.
The team examined whether the wall could be a natural deposit, such as a moraine or material carried away by a tsunami. However, the location, orientation and composition of the wall would contradict this theory. Due to the location and water depth, it is also ruled out that the stones were piled up in modern times for fishing or for laying submarine cables. It is more likely that it was built in the Mesolithic period.
Uncovering this gigantic structure was possible using high-resolution imaging detection techniques and underwater robots, alongside more traditional divers. The data that was collected in this way revealed a long stretch of around 1,670 individual stones less than a meter high and around two meters wide, positioned next to each other to form a wall 971 meters long. This composition immediately led to the exclusion of the possibility that the structure was the result of natural processes.
Hypotheses on the function of the Blinkerwall
Many hypotheses have been formulated about its function, from a barrier for fish to a coastal defense structure, up to a port. At the moment, the best-founded hypothesis is that "the Blinkerwall was built and used as hunting architecture, to drive herds of large ungulates", probably reindeer or bison.
At that time - until around 9,800 years ago - herds of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) still roamed through this region, which then left their traditional paths due to the warmer climate. The researchers managed to demonstrate that the construction, which they called Blinkerwall, was probably a wall whose purpose was to help the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the region in the past. “The site represents one of the oldest documented artificial hunting structures on Earth and is among the largest Stone Age structures known in Europe,” the researchers write.
Similar structures have been previously discovered in different regions, from Saudi Arabia to Central Asia. On the Arabian Peninsula, so-called desert dragons have been preserved, huge funnel-shaped structures into which herds of animals were driven and then fell into traps. And structures similar to the wall in the Bay of Mecklenburg were built by foragers in North America to hunt caribou. Remains of it lie, for example, on the bottom of Lake Huron in the US state of Michigan.
The dating
It wasn't even easy to find a date. According to researchers, the megastructure dates back over 10,000 years, based on the age of the surrounding structures, and is believed to have been submerged by the Baltic Sea around 8,500 years ago. “The suggested dating and functional interpretation of the Blinkerwall make it an exciting discovery, not only for its age but also for the potential to understand the subsistence patterns of early hunter-gatherer communities,” the researchers write.
Sediment and wood samples from the area helped to narrow down the age of the structure: According to C14 dating, deeper layers not far from the wall are around 10,500 years old. And the experts dated a piece of wood that was picked up from the edge of the wall to 9,900 years ago.
