$15.5 M. Project Discover Stone Age Settlement on the Seabed near Denmark

A six-year, $15.5 million international research project has discovered a Stone Age settlement deep in the Alhus Bay near North Demark, Associated Press Report Tuesday.

Funded by the EU, the project has been drawing seabeds in the Baltic and North Seas, as the country continues to build offshore wind farms in the region.

Leaded by the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, researchers at the University of Bradford in the UK and the lower Saxony Historical Institute of the German Institute of History and Coastal Research, the project seeks to discover the last ice age 8,500 years ago, an ancient settlement swallowed by the rise of the sea caused by the last ice age.

So far, divers have used an underwater vacuum to restore the mass of animal bones, stones and wooden tools, arrows and sealing teeth 26 feet 26 feet. Peter Moe Astrup of Moesgaard, who led the discovery, told AP They hope to find fishing equipment next.

“It’s like a time capsule,” Astrup said. “When sea levels rise, everything is kept in an anaerobic environment…time stops.”

To date, settlements (and understand the rise of the sea) have relied on studying the rings of submerged trees that have been preserved on the seabed for thousands of years.

“We can say very accurately when these trees die on the shoreline,” said Jonas Ogdal Jensen, who is also Mosgard. “This tells us some information about how sea levels change over time.”

The researchers told AP They hope that those who studied the rise of the sea from 8,500 years ago will reveal the adaptability of the Stone Age. At that time, sea levels rose by 6.5 feet every century.

By comparison, sea levels rose by about 1.7 inches on average from 2013 to 2023. If this speed continues, they will rise about 1.7 feet in the next century.