Archaeologists have identified possibly Europe’s oldest man-made megastructure, 21 meters beneath the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg Bay, Germany. This structure – called the Blinkerwall – is a continuous low wall made of more than 1,500 granite stones that is almost a kilometer long. There is evidence that it was built by Paleolithic people between 11,700 and 9,900 years ago, probably as an aid to reindeer hunting.
The archaeologists who investigated Mecklenburg Bay used a range of undersea equipment, sampling methods and modeling techniques to reconstruct the ancient lake bed and surrounding landscape. This showed that the Blinkerwall sits on a ridge running east to west, with a 5 km wide lake basin a few meters below the ridge to the south.
The human, rather than natural, origins of the Blinkerwall were confirmed by an archaeological diving team who photographed parts of the wall. This shows that it consists of 288 very large boulders, which probably fell at that location by the retreating glacier, connected by 1,673 smaller stones.
These smaller stones appear to have been collected from the immediate area, as the area just north of the wall contains far fewer stones than the areas even further north. The resulting structure is just under one meter high and up to two meters wide, with remarkable regularity across its 971 meter length.
A different landscape
At the time of construction, the landscapes and seascapes of northwestern Europe were very different from today. The climate began to warm as the colder Pleistocene epoch ended and the warmer Holocene epoch began. Sea levels were much lower and large glaciers covered much of Fennoscandia.
The land surrounding the Baltic Sea Basin rose rapidly, freed from the weight of the retreating glaciers, transforming a brackish body of water known as the Yoldia Sea into the freshwater Ancylus Lake. Britain was a peninsula of the European continental landmass, with a vast plain known as Doggerland stretching from Norfolk to the Netherlands. Herds of reindeer, European bison and wild horses migrated through the sparsely forested landscape.
In cultural terms, this period, known as the Upper Paleolithic, is characterized by significant features of technological innovation by the people who lived during this time. Dogs had recently been domesticated; there are regionally different shapes of stone projectile points; and there is extensive use of decorated harpoons made of bone and antler, as well as specialized hunting strategies used to target migrating prey.
The identification of the Blinkerwall now shows that Paleolithic hunters managed their landscape more consciously to support their hunting activities than previously thought.
The construction of walls and other features in the landscape is familiar to us, especially in the context of land enclosure for agriculture. It is also known that both contemporary and ancient societies that traditionally lived by hunting and gathering wild resources changed 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 a similar length and construction type identified in the Middle East, North America, Canada and Greenland. These structures are interpreted as if they were built for the purpose of hunting game drives. In this strategy, hunters use landscape and built features to gain an advantage over their prey by directing its movements to a location where they are more vulnerable to attack from other hunters.
The similarity of the Blinkerwall to these other structures, and its construction adjacent to a body of water, led to the suggestion that the wall was created for the same purpose. The lake itself may also have been used in this strategy.
Supporting evidence
An archaeological site from Germany that supports this interpretation is Stellmoor, located just north of Hamburg and dating to the latest time when the Blinkerwall could have been built.
The site lies at the end of a narrow valley where thousands of reindeer bones – some of which bear marks from hunting impacts, flint points and even pine arrow shafts – are preserved in the ancient lake sediments. The hunting evidence at Stellmoor shows that the reindeer were shot by arrows as they were driven down the valley into the lake.
Although there is no archaeological evidence at Stellmoor to indicate that people deliberately created or altered the landscape to increase their hunting success, it shows how the topography of the landscape was used to the hunters’ advantage. The Blinkerwall construction provides evidence that Paleolithic humans took this level of planning and coordination one step further.
It shows that they recognized and understood the instincts of their prey so well that they could predict their movements – and how they would react when confronted with an artificially created obstacle like the Blinkerwall.
The discovery of this monumental example of yacht architecture is unique in Europe. With a maximum age of 11,700 years, it is one of the oldest examples in the world, possibly more than a thousand years older than a desert hunting “kite” at Jibal al-Gadiwiyt in Jordan.
The Blinkerwall adds a new element to our understanding of the highly skilled and specialized hunting strategies developed by humans at the end of the last Ice Age – strategies that have been used across diverse 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 significance. The researchers do not rule out the possibility that another wall or other associated features could be found, buried under later sedimentation of the ancient lake.
If weapons, tools or animal remains were recovered from the site, it would provide information about the nature and duration of their use – and many more insights into the advanced subsistence strategies of the Paleolithic hunters of the Baltic Sea.
This article is republished from The Conversation 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 has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.