STRUCTURES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE COULD CHANGE EUROPEAN HISTORY
10,500-year-old structures discovered at the bottom of a lake could change European history.
Thanks to the geological features of the lake, traces of thousand-year-old settlements, as well as the former coastline, have been extremely well preserved.
In Lake Arendsee, Germany , archaeologists have discovered well-preserved processed wood that may be the remains of residential structures dating back approximately 10,500 years. The discovery surprised the researchers, as it was previously believed that the first permanent dwellings in this region began to be built several millennia later.According to National Geographic , in 2026, divers discovered wooden structures created by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This is an unusual find, as archaeological layers from that period typically yield stone tools and bones, not the wood that survives today.
Archaeological research at Lake Arendsee in central-eastern Germany is being conducted by the State Office for Monument Protection and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt (LDA). The goal of the multi-year underwater research is to discover the submerged remains of structures from various historical periods.
Thanks to the lake’s geological features, traces of ancient settlements and the former shoreline have been exceptionally well-preserved. Unlike many other inland bodies of water, whose bottoms gradually silt over millennia, the Arendze lakebed has been slowly subsiding as a result of geological processes. As a result, Mesolithic finds are now located at a depth of approximately 20 meters under a thin layer of sediment, which contributes to their preservation.“These discoveries shed entirely new light on the Mesolithic, as until now traces of buildings from this period in central Germany were known only in the form of changes in soil color,” noted Saxony-Anhalt archaeologist Harald Möller.
The finds include a 1.6-meter-tall wooden post with traces of felling and trimming, which may have served as a support, as well as planks up to 1.3 meters long. The preserved wood from this period is a unique find in Europe.
According to archaeologists, only individual fragments of wood were recovered for dating. The remaining elements of the ancient structures likely still lie at the bottom of the lake.Probable purpose of ancient structures
So far, researchers cannot confirm that the structures discovered were residential huts. It’s possible they served another purpose.“Whether we are dealing with the remains of huts or other, hitherto completely unknown, wooden structures is a question that is being studied now and will be explored in the future. If permanent structures or dwellings that were in intensive use already existed 10,500 years ago—that is, 3,000 years before the first farmers with their longhouses arrived in Central Europe—this will have far-reaching consequences not only for our understanding of hunter-gatherers but also for our understanding of the origins of modern cultural landscapes,” explained Marcel Weiss, project director at the State Office for Monument Protection and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt.
Until now, it was believed that the first permanent dwellings in this part of Europe were built by Neolithic farmers who arrived in central Germany around 5500 BC. They also appeared in southern Poland around the same time. The length of these dwellings reached several dozen meters, which is why archaeologists call them longhouses.
An underwater robot was involved in the research
The Fraunhofer Institute IOSB-AST in Ilmenau provided assistance to the archaeologists. The specialists used a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) equipped with high-resolution sonar.The device enabled a highly accurate topographic map of the former coastline. This data will help plan future archaeological excavations.
Other interesting finds
It was previously reported that archaeologists have discovered the oldest human habitation in the Western Hemisphere . At Sheg Xdalthi in present-day Alaska, approximately 54 km southeast of Fairbanks, researchers have discovered the oldest known settlement of the Nenana complex east of the Bering Land Bridge.In their study, the scientists dated this early camp to approximately 13,800 years ago. At that time, it was inhabited by people of the Late Pleistocene.
