August
08
/ 2015
At least 9,300 years ago, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in a now-submerged area of the Mediterranean Sea accomplished a feat that even most modern humans could not do: They apparently cut a 15-ton limestone pillar with precision, drilled holes in it and transported it nearly 300 meters (984 feet). The monolith is 12 meters (39 feet) long. Oceanographers studying the Mediterranean sea floor in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily in 2012 found the monolith 40 meters (131 feet) deep. In a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers say this area became submerged about 9,350 years ago, give or take 200 years. Before that, the area was shallow sea with an archipelago of several islands about
