Underwater Discovery: 9,300-Year-Old Pillar Evidence of Advanced Society, Say Researchers

The idea of “technological primitivism” often attributed to hunter-gatherer coastal settlers must be reevaluated, say Emanuele Lodolo and Zvi Ben-Abraham.

A monolith found submerged between the coasts of Sicily and Tunisia, including a close-up of a hole in the monolith. Science Direct

At least 9,300 years ago, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in a now-submerged area of the Mediterranean Sea accomplished a feat beyond what today’s experts thought possible for the time: they cut a 15-ton limestone pillar with precision, drilled holes in it and transported it nearly 984 feet (300 meters). The monolith is 39 feet (12 meters) long.

Oceanographers studying the Mediterranean sea floor in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily in 2012 found the monolith 131 feet (40 meters) deep. In a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers say this area became completely submerged about 9,300 years ago, give or take a couple hundred years. Before that, the area was shallow sea with an archipelago of several islands about halfway between the island of Sicily and the North African coast.

The area studied, the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, is now undersea between Sicily and Tunisia. Science Direct