Scientists Go Under the Sea to Explore Ancient Settlements

Scientists behind a new European Marine Board report are going under the sea to explore the remains of ancient human settlements, some submerged for tens of thousands of years, to look for clues about how our European ancestors once lived.

More than 2,500 submerged prehistoric artifact collections, ranging in age from 5,000 to 300,000 years, have been found in the coastal waters and open sea basins around Europe. Now, a specialist group of European researchers are studying these remains as part of a new scientific field combining the expertise from many disciplines including archaeology, oceanography and the geosciences. They hope to learn from their findings about ancient seafaring, and the social structures and exploitation technologies of coastal resources before the introduction of agriculture some 10,000 years ago.

"Our submerged cultural heritage is not a renewable resource," Professor Jan Mees, Chair of the European Marine Board, said in a statement, "it is a unique irreplaceable cultural asset which can provide answers to many research questions about our prehistoric ancestors, landscapes and climate."

According to the paper, titled "Land Beneath the Waves: Submerged Landscapes and Sea-Level Change," ice ages over the last million years resulted in sea levels dropping some 120 meters (393 feet) at times, and the continental shelf adding 40 percent of land to Europe's acreage. Consequently, many of the remains and artifacts of Europe's prehistory are now underwater.

It's hard to believe that at one point our ancestors lived so far beneath the coastal oceans. But indeed, pre-humans inhabited the Black Sea coast 1.8 million years ago, the coast of northern Spain over one million years ago, and the coast of Britain at least 0.8 million years ago.

However, only a few of these sea-submerged settlements have been properly mapped by divers, or assessed for preservation or excavation, and time is running out. What's left of these prehistoric remains is being destroyed by natural erosion and industrial disturbance. So scientists behind this new paper stress the importance of exploring what was once abandoned by our ancestors, which includes food remains, skeletons, shaped flint tools, hand axes, and paddles for canoes embedded in the sediments on the sea floor.