by Bay of Aarhus, Denmark – Under the dark blue waters of the Bay of Aarhus in the north of Denmark, archaeologists are looking for Coastal settlements, which were swallowed by increasing sea level more than 8,500 years ago.
This summer, the divers rose about 26 feet under the waves near Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, and collected evidence for a stone time settlement from the sea floor.
It is part of a six-year international project of $ 15.5 million to map parts of the sea floor in the Baltic Sea and in the North Sea, which are financed by the European Union and belong to researchers in Aarhus as well as from the British University of Bradford and the Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research in Germany.
The aim is to explore sunken Northern European landscapes and uncover lost mesolithic settlements, while offshore wind farms and other sea infrastructures expand.
A diver covers an 8,500 -year -old coastal settlement from the Stone Age, which is dipped by the increase in sea level in the Bay of Aarhus, Denmark. August 8, 2025. / Credit: Søren Christian Bech / AP
Most of the evidence of such settlements have so far been found in locations in the interior of the Stone Age coast, said underwater archaeologist Peter Moe Astrup, which leads underwater excavations in Denmark.
“We actually have an old coast here. We have a settlement that was positioned directly on the coast,” he said. “We actually try to find out how life was in a coastal settlement.”
After the last ice age, huge ice sheets and the global sea level rose, with the settlements of the Stone Age immersed and the human population of the hunter collector forced in the interior.
About 8,500 years ago, sea level rose about 6.5 feet a year, said Moe Astrup.
Moe Astrup and colleagues at the Moesgaard Museum in Højbjerg, just outside of Aarhus, have dug up an area of around 430 square meters in the small settlement that they discovered directly off today’s coast.
Early dives discovered animal bones, stone tools, arrowheads, a sealing tooth and a small piece of wood processed, probably a simple tool. The researchers comb the location knife with a kind of underwater vacuum cleaner with a measuring device to collect material for future analysis.
The underwater archaeologist Peter Moe Astrup holds a piece of edited wood, probably a simple tool that was discovered in a 8,500 year old coastal settlement from the Stone Age in the Bay of Aarhus in Denmark. August 18, 2025. / Credit: James Brooks / AP
They hope that further excavations will find harpoons, fish or traces of fishing structures.
“It’s like a time capsule,” said Moe Astrup. “When the sea level rose, everything was preserved in an oxygen -free environment … time just stops.”
“We find completely well preserved wood,” he added. “We find hazelnut. … everything is well preserved.”
Excavations in the relatively calm and flat bay of Aarhus and dived off the coast of Germany, later in two places in the inhospitable North Sea.
The sea level rises thousands of years ago, including a huge area known as Doggerland and combined Great Britain with continental Europe and is now located under the southern North Sea.
In order to build a picture of the fast rise of the water, Danish researchers use the Dendrochronology, the examination of Baumrings.
Tree stumps in the mud and sediment can be dated and show when the increases of the coastal forests drowned rising tides.
“We can say exactly when these trees died on the coasts,” said dendrochronologist Jonas Ogdal Jensen, the dendrochronologist of the Moesgaard when he spied through a microscope in a section of the Stone Age tree trunks.
“That tells us something about how the sea level has changed over time.”
Since today’s world is increasing by climate change, the researchers hope for light on how the Stone Age companies adapted to the relocation of the coast more than eight years ago.
“It is difficult to answer exactly what it meant to people,” said Moe Astrup. “But in the long run it clearly had a big influence because it completely changed the landscape.”
The sea level rose by a global average of around 1.7 inches in the decade by 2023.
Denmark has recorded several important archaeological discoveries in recent years, including a metal detectorist Breathtaking discovery from Goldring at the beginning of last year Set with a red, half -goods stone, from which the researchers hoped to illuminate the history of the country in the early Middle Ages.
Officials of the National Museum of Denmark announced that after the centuries -old ring, which was assumed that he belonged to a member of the royal family about 1,400 years ago, another museum was transferred closer to the discovery point in the south near the German border.
This discovery came only a few weeks after archaeologists Found a small knife with rune letters dated the first or second century AD and almost 2,000 years ago. According to the Odense Museum, it was the oldest trace of writing that was ever found in Denmark.
Runes or rune letters are the oldest alphabet that is known that it was used in Scandinavia and has been used for about 1,000 years until they were largely replaced by the Latin alphabet when Christians spread their belief system in the 10th century.
At the beginning of this year, the officials announced that a piece of Vomit petrified, In Denmark, Denmark was discovered when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
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