6,000-Year-Old Submerged Bridge Found in Spanish Cave Redefines Mediterranean History

Researchers person pushed backmost the timeline of migration into Mallorca based connected the property of a submerged stone span recovered successful a cave connected the island.

The 25-foot-long (7.62-meter-long) span is astir 6,000 years old, the squad posited successful a caller paper, pushing backmost caller estimates of quality colony to astir 4,400 years ago. The team’s probe was published contiguous successful Communications Earth & Environment.

“The beingness of this submerged span and different artifacts indicates a blase level of activity, implying that aboriginal settlers recognized the cave’s h2o resources and strategically built infrastructure to navigate it,” Onac said successful a University of South Florida release.

The younger dates, Onac said, were derived from carnal bones and pottery recovered successful the acold enclosure of Genovesa Cave, connected the westbound broadside of Mallorca. In its caller paper, the squad dated overgrowths connected speleothems successful the cave, which turn precisely astatine oversea level. Using those dates, the squad was capable to precisely reconstruct the h2o levels successful the cave, revealing astir erstwhile the span was constructed.

Overgrowths connected speleothems successful the cave. Image: M.À. Perelló

The span is made of limestone blocks and connects 2 elevated chambers successful the cave. But the span is not the lone quality operation successful the cave. There is besides an past chromatic way astatine the cave’s rima that leads down to the underwater lake.

In a telephone interview, Onac told Gizmodo that the h2o level successful the cave had rapidly risen successful the past century, and volition proceed to emergence owed to clime alteration and glacial melt.

The nonstop intent of the cave remains unclear—whether it was utilized for ritual purposes, for example, oregon shelter—but the team’s extremity successful the caller insubstantial was not mentation of its use. They simply wanted to catalogue the h2o levels successful the cave implicit the past 180,000 years oregon so, and catalogue them they did.

The probe is an absorbing lawsuit survey of however researchers tin pin down the timelines of quality migration. When aboriginal modern humans moved to land environments, they altered the earthy conditions astir them. In the cave, the lone quality artifacts are poorly preserved pottery, truthful the caller squad had the agleam thought of dating mineral overgrowths successful the cave.

Just past week, a different squad found that humans whitethorn person arrived connected an land successful the South Pacific earlier than antecedently believed, based connected the dating of histrion resin that had been altered by humans, possibly successful bid to pain it for fuel.