A road beneath the water had been discovered. The ancient road was believed to have existed thousands of years ago and was linked to the Hvar culture.
Ancient Road Underwater Discovered
Off the southern Croatian coast, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 7,000-year-old road buried beneath several feet of sea mud.
This fascinating discovery, made at the submerged Neolithic site of Soline, may have historically linked the ancient Hvar culture settlement to the now-isolated island of Korula, ScienceAlert reported.
The ancient site of Soline, which was formerly a man-made island, was found in 2021 by Croatian archaeologist Mate Parica of the University of Zadar while he was studying satellite photographs of the ocean area near Korula.
Parica and a coworker dove to explore what they suspected was something that was man-made on the ocean floor. They discovered stone walls in the Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean at a depth of 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 ft). It was constructed on a landmass isolated from the main island by a little sliver of land.
The good news is that this region, unlike most of the Mediterranean, is protected from large waves by several islands, Parica told Reuters in 2021. That undoubtedly prevented natural disasters from destroying the site.
These islands have also shielded the recently found prehistoric route from violent waves for millennia.
The highway was built from precisely placed stone slabs around 4 meters (13 feet) wide. Similar to what you might anticipate for an undersea building, it is currently covered in a thick coating of mud.
Neolithic Hvar Culture May Have Constructed the Ancient Road
The old Soline village, now underwater, and the historic route that connected the islands are believed to have been built by the Neolithic Hvar civilization, who previously inhabited the eastern Adriatic.
Hvar is a town and port on the island of Hvar, part of Split-Dalmatia County, Croatia. It is located across from the neighboring villages of Stari Grad and Jelsa in a harbor on the island's south coast.
Hvar has a long and illustrious history as an important hub of trade and culture in the Adriatic. During the 13th to 18th centuries, a commune that was a part of the Venetian Empire served as a major naval station with a castle that surrounded the town walls and guarded the port, according to Google Arts & Culture.
The settlement's total age was determined through radiocarbon analysis of surviving wood at about 4,900 BCE. According to a Facebook post by the University of Zadar on its most recent discovery, people were walking on this [route] nearly 7,000 years ago.
Collaboration between experts from the Dubrovnik Museums, the Museum of the City of Katela, the University of Zadar, and the City Museum of Korula, as well as the support of photographers and divers, led to the completion of this outstanding research.
Korula has been concealing more than just this one piece of information. On the other side of the island, a second underwater settlement that is surprisingly identical to Soline has also been found, along with some remarkable Stone Age items 5 meters below the surface, including cream blades, stone axes, and sacrifice fragments.
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