This is Scientific American 60 Seconds Science.
I am Christopher Intagliata.
Go snorkeling in a lot of places, you'll find
coral.
But on Israel's Mediterranean coast?
"I think it's the only place in the world
that you can find whole prehistoric villages
submerged under the sea.”
Ehud Galili is an underwater archaeologist
at the University of Haifa.
He says one submerged village, called Tel
Hreiz, sits just a few meters under the water.
The community was populated some 7,000 years
ago.
There, the archaeologists have found pottery
and flint, human skeletons, the remains of
deer, cows, pigs and dogs, and hundreds of
olive pits—probably the remains of olive
oil production.
And the researchers also found a 300-feet
stretch of huge boulders—a wall.
After ruling out other possible uses for the
wall—like defense against enemies, or corralling
animals—the scientists determined that the
formation was actually an ancient seawall,
the oldest known example in the world.
The results are in the journal PLOS ONE.
[Ehud Galili et al, A submerged 7000-year-old
village and seawall demonstrate earliest known
coastal defence against sea-level rise]
The boulders that kept the waters of the Mediterranean
from flooding the village came from riverbeds
at least a few kilometers away.
And the researchers say that it would have
taken multiple people—or strong beasts of
burden—to move them into place.
Suggesting that constructing the wall was
a well-organized community effort.
But eventually, the sea beat the barrier.
"Little by little sea level continued to rise
and then it became no longer effective.
At some point the cost of continuing to struggle
with the sea was too high economically and
they made a decision to abandon the village."
Of course, our technology is far more advanced
than what they had seven millennia ago.
But this sunken seawall is still a warning
of what can happen when humans battle rising
seas.
—Christopher Intagliata
