Stone Age wall found under Baltic Sea could be Europe's oldest man-made megastructure

The Blinkerwall is submerged under 21 metres of water in the Baltic Sea. (Representational)

A Stone Age wall, potentially the oldest known megastructure crafted by humans in Europe, has been uncovered beneath the waves along Germany's Baltic coast. Named the Blinkerwall, the nearly kilometre-long structure lies hidden in the Bay of Mecklenburg, submerged under 21 metres of water.

This discovery, stumbled upon by scientists using a multibeam sonar system during a routine research vessel trip, could rewrite the history of ancient human engineering.

The Blinkerwall consists of approximately 1,400 smaller stones intricately positioned to connect almost 300 larger boulders, some of which were deemed too massive for human groups to have maneuvered.

According to Jacob Geersen from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, the purpose of this mysterious wall is challenging to ascertain definitively. However, scientists suspect it may have functioned as a strategic driving lane for hunters in pursuit of reindeer herds.

"When you chase the animals, they follow these structures, they don't attempt to jump over them," Geersen explained. The idea behind the construction may have been to create an artificial bottleneck using a second wall or the adjacent lake shore.

A potential second wall, paralleling the Blinkerwall and possibly submerged in seafloor sediments, has been hypothesized by the researchers. Alternatively, the structure might have coerced the animals into the nearby lake, slowing them down and making them vulnerable to hunters lying in wait with spears or bows and arrows.

The Blinkerwall's intentional design is indicated by the angle changes where it meets the larger boulders. It’s mostly less-than-a-metre height and intentional positioning of smaller stones suggest a purposeful connection.

The total weight of the wall's stones exceeds 142 tonnes, making it improbable that natural processes, such as tsunamis or glacial movements, formed it.

If indeed the Blinkerwall served as an ancient hunting lane, it likely dates back over 10,000 years, sinking beneath rising sea levels around 8,500 years ago. This positions it among the oldest known examples of hunting architecture globally and potentially designates it as the oldest man-made megastructure in Europe, according to the researchers.

Geersen is eager to return to the site for further exploration, aiming to reconstruct the ancient landscape and unearth potential artifacts such as animal bones and hunting tools buried in the sediments surrounding the wall.