Archaeologists Discover 7,000-Year-Old Highway Under The Sea

7,000 years after it was constructed, archaeologists have discovered a prehistoric roadway at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea off the shore of an island in Croatia. Here's what we know.

7000-year-old highway found underwater

The island of Korula may have once been connected to a now-submerged Neolithic site by the Stone Age road. Before water levels increased at the conclusion of the last Ice Age (about 12,000 BC), Korula was joined to Croatia's mainland. about 8,000 years ago, the island was formed.

Archaeologists believe an ancient Hvar society constructed the 13-foot-wide road. After studying satellite photographs of the sea surrounding the sunken Neolithic site of Soline, off the coast of Korula, which is part of the Adriatic archipelago, archaeologists discovered it 13¨C16 feet beneath the Mediterranean Sea's surface.

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The old route may have once connected the island with the now-submerged site when it was a human-built continent, according to the archaeologists who uncovered the discovery.

Archaeologists decided to dig deep after seeing satellite pictures

After seeing the satellite pictures, Mate Parica, an archaeologist with the University of Zadar, decided to go on a dive to the site with other colleagues to get a closer look. There, they discovered the intriguing walls of an ancient settlement.

It seems to have a tiny strip of land separating it from the main island. "The fortunate thing is that this area, unlike most parts of the Mediterranean, is safe from big waves as many islands protect the coast," Parica said to Reuters at the time of the discovery in 2021.

That undoubtedly prevented natural disasters from destroying the site. It is thought that the Hvar-Lisiii culture, a Neolithic civilisation on the eastern Adriatic coast named for the island, constructed the roadway as a route from Soline to Korula. The Soline settlement and the preserved wood that was discovered there frozen in time were both determined to be older by radiocarbon study to be 4,900 BC.

The location also yielded flint knives, stone axe blades, and sacrifice remnants.

Archaeologists said it was evident that stone slabs were carefully set to enable safe passage back and forth despite being buried beneath millennia of silt.

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