7000-year-old road discovered at the bottom of Mediterranean Sea

In what is one of the most surprising archeological finds, a team has unearthed a 7000-year-old road hidden at the bottom of the sea. The road has been discovered at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea hiding beneath deposits of sea mud.

The road is believed to have connected the sunken prehistoric settlement of the Hvar culture with the coast of the island of Korcula, located on the Croatian island. The road is made up of carefully stacked stone slabs that were part of a four-meter-wide communication.

In a Facebook post, researchers from Croatia’s University of Zadar shared that the radiocarbon analysis of preserved wood found during previous archeological campaigns has revealed that settlement was dated around 4,900 years before Christ and people walked on these roads from even an earlier period about 7000 years ago.

The road is part of the Neolithic settlement that was inhabited by the Hvar culture around 5000 BCE, who were skilled farmers and herders who lived in small, isolated communities along the coast and on nearby islands. Soline is one of the largest and most well-preserved Hvar culture sites in the region, and it offers valuable insights into the daily life and social organization of these early farming communities.

While the discovery has been at the bottom of the sea, it was part of land research being done near Gradina Bay near Vela Luka on Korcula island.

“The archaeological team diving at the Soline site inspected the central part of the Gradina bay, and to everyone’s delight, the existence of a settlement almost identical to the one at Soline was determined at a depth of 4 to 5 meters,” researchers said in the Facebook status update.Neolithic artifacts such as flint blades, stone axes, and fragments of millstones have also been found at the site.

Apart from the concrete structure, one of the most impressive features of the Soline site is its extensive system of terraced fields, which were used for agriculture. The fields are carefully designed to take advantage of the steep, rocky terrain of the island, and they are supported by stone walls and irrigation channels that helped to maximize the productivity of the land.

Researchers said that the Soline site has not yet been fully excavated, and there is still much that we do not know about the Hvar culture and its way of life.