by Archaeologists have identified Europe’s oldest human megastructure, submerged 21 meters below the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg Bay, Germany. This structure – known as the Blinkerwall – is a low continuous wall made of over 1,500 granite stones that runs for almost a kilometre. The evidence suggests that it was built by Palaeolithic people between 11,700 and 9,900 years ago, probably as an aid to hunting reindeer.
Archaeologists investigating Mecklenburg Bay used a range of underwater equipment, sampling methods and modeling techniques to recreate the ancient lake bed and surrounding landscape. This indicated that the Blinkerwall stands on a ridge running east to west, with a 5km wide lake basin a few meters under the ridge to the south.
The human rather than natural origin of the Blinkerwall was confirmed by an archaeological dive team who photographed sections of the wall. These show that it is made up of 288 very large boulders, probably dropped by the retreating glacier in that location, and joined by 1,673 smaller stones.
These small stones appear to have been collected from the immediate vicinity, as the area immediately north of the wall contains far fewer stones than the areas further north. The resulting structure stands just under a meter high and up to two meters wide, with remarkable regularity over its 971 meter length.
A different landscape
When it was built, the landscapes and seascapes of north-west Europe were very different from today. The climate was starting to warm as the cooler Pleistocene era ended and the warmer Holocene era began. Sea levels were much lower, and large glaciers sat over much of Fennoscandia.
The land around the Baltic Sea basin was rising rapidly, released from the weight of retreating glaciers and transforming a brackish body of water known as the Yoldia sea into the freshwater lake Ancylus. Great Britain was a peninsula of continental European land, with a large lowland plain known as Doggerland stretching from Norfolk to the Netherlands. Herds of reindeer, European bison and wild horses migrated across its sparsely forested landscape.
From a cultural point of view, this period, known as the Late Upper Palaeolithic, is marked by significant hallmarks of technological innovation by the people who lived at this time. Dogs were recently domesticated; there are regional forms of stone projectile points; and decorated bone quills and antlers are often used, as well as specialized hunting strategies used to target migrating prey.
The identification of the Blinkerwall now shows that Palaeolithic hunters were managing their landscape to aid their hunting activities in a more deliberate manner than previously thought.
We are familiar with the construction of walls and other features in the landscape, especially in the context of land enclosure for farming. Both modern and ancient societies that traditionally subsisted by hunting and gathering wild resources are also known to modify their environments by building features such as stone walls. These are used for a variety of purposes including fishing, shellfishing and hunting.
The researchers compared the Blinkerwall to other archaeologically documented structures of similar length and construction identified in the Middle East, North America, Canada and Greenland. These structures are interpreted as structures built for the purpose of game hunting. In this strategy, hunters use landscape and built features to take advantage of their prey by directing their movements to a location where they are more vulnerable to attack by other hunters.
Because of the Blinkerwall’s similarity to these other structures, and its construction near a body of water, it has been suggested that the wall was created for the same purpose. The lake itself may also have been used in this strategy.
Supporting evidence
One archaeological site from Germany that supports this interpretation is Stellmoor, which is located just north of Hamburg and dates back to the latest time the Blinkerwall could have been built.
The site is located at the end of a narrow valley where thousands of reindeer bones – some with hunting impact marks, flint points and even pine arrow shafts – have been found preserved in the ancient sediments of the lake. The hunting evidence at Stellmoor shows that the reindeer were shot with arrows and driven down the valley into the lake.
Although there is no archaeological evidence at Stellmoor to suggest that humans deliberately created or altered the landscape to enhance their hunting success, it does show how the topography of the landscape was exploited to the advantage of hunters. The construction of Blinkerwall provides evidence that Palaeolithic people took this level of planning and coordination a step further.
It shows that they recognized and understood the instincts of their prey so well that they were able to predict their movements – and how they would act when faced with an artificial barrier like the Blinkerwall.
The discovery of this piece of hunting architecture is unique in Europe. At a maximum age of 11,700 years, it is one of the oldest examples in the world, possibly more than a thousand years before the desert hunting “kite” at Jibal al-Gadiwiyt in Jordan.
The Blinkerwall adds a new dimension to our understanding of the highly skilled and specialized hunting strategies that humans engineered at the end of the last ice age – strategies that have been used continuously in different landscapes for thousands of years. And the discoveries are unlikely to stop here.
Mecklenburg Bay has the potential to reveal further archaeological evidence of equal importance. The researchers do not rule out the possibility that another wall or other related features could be found, buried later in the ancient lake.
If weapons, tools or animal remains were to be recovered at the site, this would provide information on the nature and duration of their use – and much greater insight into the sophisticated subsistence strategies of the Palaeolithic hunters of the Baltic Sea.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Stephanie Piper does not work for, consult with, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and does not she disclosed any relevant connections beyond their academic appointment.
