The hunter gatherers saw their land swallowed up (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The mystery of Atlantis has created a city-sized gap in our grasp of history, with archaeologists searching the oceans for any trace of this submerged civilisation.
A prominent theory suggests that Atlantis never actually existed. Nevertheless, as we’re now aware, the notion of a coastal settlement being consumed by the ocean is entirely plausible.
Subsequently, archaeologists in Europe believed they’d discovered the missing piece of the puzzle. You wouldn’t necessarily expect Denmark to be the maritime location of an exotic lost metropolis from ancient times, yet this is precisely where archaeologists unearthed the most compelling proof of Atlantis, according to Global News.
“Europe’s Atlantis”, stretching back to the Stone Age, was discovered beneath the waters of Denmark’s Bay of Aarhus. Researchers unearthed numerous artefacts that paint a picture of a civilised community that inhabited the area nearly 8,500 years ago.
These included stone implements, arrowheads, animal remains, and even fragments of timber that appeared to be rudimentary tools, reports the Mirror US.
Artefacts were found perfectly preserved (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Researchers plunged 26 feet beneath the surface of Denmark’s second-largest city, employing specialised suction apparatus, to retrieve the remains of Europe’s Atlantis.
The location dates back to the conclusion of the last Ice Age, when climbing sea levels submerged entire coastal communities, forcing Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies inland.
Because the artefacts have remained underwater for millennia, they are significantly better preserved than they would be inland. “What we actually tried to find out here is how life was at a coastal settlement 8,500 years ago,” archaeologist Peter Moe said.
He added: “Here, we actually have an old coastline. We have a settlement that was positioned directly at the coastline. What we actually try to find out here is how was life at a coastal settlement.
“It’s like a time capsule. When sea level rose, everything was preserved in an oxygen-free environment … time just stops. We find completely well-preserved wood. We find hazelnut. … Everything is well preserved.
“We can say very precisely when these trees died at the coastlines,” Moesgaard Museum dendrochronologist Jonas Ogdal Jensen, according to Fortune.
The specialist explained how this remarkable find has shed considerable light on how sea levels have shifted throughout history.
He said: “It’s hard to answer exactly what it meant to people,” Moe Astrup said. “But it clearly had a huge impact in the long run because it completely changed the landscape.”
Researchers are keen to press ahead with investigations at a further site off the German coastline, with ambitions to examine locations in the notoriously unforgiving North Sea also in the pipeline.
Yet this is not the first occasion archaeologists have drawn comparisons between a site and Atlantis. Doggerland was a landmass that once extended between Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands, linking the corners of Europe.
In 1931, evidence of this lost territory began to emerge after a Dutch fishing vessel retrieved artefacts from the seabed. A portrait of a hunter-gatherer community thousands of years old began to take shape. Yet, some 8,200 years ago, rising sea levels and a catastrophic tsunami ultimately swallowed this civilisation whole.
A colossal underwater landslide set off a chain of unstoppable natural disasters that plunged the landmass beneath the waves. Today, all that remains of this lost world lies buried under the North Sea.
