Overview
- Researchers confirmed late September that divers and teams recovered worked wooden elements from about 20 meters depth at Arendsee and dated them to roughly 10,500 years old.
- Recovered pieces include a roughly 1.6 meter felled post with cut marks and split boards of about 1.3–1.4 meters that show clear traces of deliberate shaping.
- The team used ROVs, high-resolution sonar mapping, targeted dives and careful sampling to document the finds and their positions on the buried former shoreline.
- Investigators are testing whether the timbers were parts of huts, platforms, fish installations or other constructions and say more radiocarbon dates and spatial analysis are needed to confirm function.
- The site’s exceptional preservation stems from a buried salt stock that caused the lakebed to sink and cover former shore deposits with sediment, giving rare direct evidence of Mesolithic woodworking in central Europe.