Divers have found a long-submerged wall some 7,000 years previous below the ocean off western France, scientists stated Thursday.
Practically 400 toes lengthy, it was discovered off the Ile de Sein in Brittany together with a dozen smaller artifical buildings from the identical interval.
“This can be a very attention-grabbing discovery that opens up new prospects for underwater archaeology, serving to us higher perceive how coastal societies have been organized,” Yvan Pailler, professor of archaeology on the College of Western Brittany, informed AFP.
He co-authored a examine on the discover, published within the Worldwide Journal of Nautical Archaeology.
The buildings have been first noticed by retired geologist Yves Fouquet in 2017 on charts of the ocean flooring produced with a laser system.
The wall is the most important underwater building ever present in France, BBC News reported.
SAMM, 2023/Yves Fouquet et al. Worldwide Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2025)
Divers explored the positioning between 2022 and 2024 and confirmed the presence of the granite buildings.
“Archaeologists didn’t look forward to finding such well-preserved buildings in such a harsh setting,” Fouquet stated.
Relationship from between 5,800 and 5,300 BC, they lie 9 meters underwater and have been constructed at a time when sea ranges have been a lot decrease than in the present day.
Researchers consider they might have been fish traps constructed on the foreshore, or partitions to guard towards rising seas.
The examine says the buildings mirror “technical expertise and social group adequate to extract, transfer and erect blocks weighing a number of tons, related in mass to many Breton megaliths,” massive stone preparations used as monuments or for ceremonial functions.
This technical know-how would predate the primary megalithic constructions by a number of centuries.
The examine’s authors speculate the positioning could lie on the origin of native Breton legends of sunken cities, in keeping with BBC Information. One such misplaced metropolis – Ys – was believed to lie within the Bay of Douarnenez, only a few miles to the east.
“It’s probably that the abandonment of a territory developed by a extremely structured society has change into deeply rooted in folks’s reminiscences,” the examine says. “The submersion brought on by the speedy rise in sea degree, adopted by the abandonment of fishing buildings, protecting works, and habitation websites, will need to have left a long-lasting impression.”
The invention comes about six months after archaeologists discovered the stays of a Sixteenth-century service provider ship more than 1.5 miles underwater off southern France, the deepest such discover within the area.
