There Are ‘Lost Civilizations’ Under the Sea. Scientists Want to Find Them Before It’s Too Late.

The remnants of some ancient human civilizations are currently lost beneath the sea, and scientists are rushing to find and study them before modern factors like coastal development makes it impossible. 

As reported by Popular Mechanics last week, the University of Bradford in the U.K. recently received a grant worth roughly $12 million from the European Council to, as a press release put it, “hunt for lost civilizations beneath [the] Baltic and North Sea.” Researchers plan on using the latest technology, including AI, to map the seabed and search for prehistoric settlements that were submerged thousands of years ago when sea levels rose due to climate factors.

“Twenty-thousand years ago, the global sea level was 130 meters lower than at present,” Professor Vincent Gaffney, an archaeologist from the University of Bradford, said in a statement. “With progressive global warming and sea-level rise, unique landscapes, home to human societies for millennia, disappeared. We know almost nothing about the people who lived on these great plains.”

Using the latest tech, researchers in Europe have recently discovered numerous underwater signs of prehistoric peoples. An underwater Stonehenge made up of 170 stone cairns was discovered under Lake Constance, which lies between Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; scientists now believe it was made by humans roughly 5,500 years ago. In the Bay of Gradina, on the western coast of the Croatian island of Korčula, scientists found a 7,000-year-old road. 

It’s these kinds of discoveries that University of Bradford researchers hope to uncover as part of SUBNORDICA, a collaboration between institutions in Denmark, Germany, and the U.K. that has received over $16 million in funding to date. Their work has become more urgent as coastal development ramps up to build out green energy solutions such as wind farms. 

“As Europe and the world approaches net zero, development of the coastal shelves is now a strategic priority,” Gaffney said. “SUBNORDICA will use the latest technologies to explore these lands and support sustainable development."

One site of interest to researchers is Doggerland, which a University of Bradford web page explains “would have been a heartland of human occupation and central to the process of re-settlement and colonization of north Western Europe during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.”

“Within this submerged landscape lies fragmentary yet valuable evidence for the lifestyles of its inhabitants including the changes resulting from both the encroaching sea and the introduction of Neolithic technologies,” it continues. 

With more funding and field work, we may soon learn even more about the ancient peoples whose societies were lost beneath the rising seas.