A team of researchers scuba diving near the Tynemouth coast in the North Sea stumbled upon two large Stone Age settlements dating back to the Mesolithic era.
The first site found 500 yards out to sea is approximately 10,000 years old, while the second site, about 100 yards further out, dates back about 8,500 years.
Mesolithic people, who were hunter-gatherers, lived during the Middle Stone Age. It’s the first evidence of these underwater sites since fisherman discovered a Mesolithic antler harpoon in the British North Sea about 100 years ago. Both settlements were eventually submerged under the seabed following the last Ice Age.
Dr. Penny Spikins of Newcastle University who heads up the international research team, part of the Submerged Prehistoric Landscape Project, explains: “I was learning to scuba dive and was in the middle of a training session in the sea when I noticed lots of pieces of flint beneath me on the sea bed. To the average person they would seem like ordinary stones you would find on the beach, but to a specialist they were something very exciting...[This discovery] could change our understanding of the earliest occupation of the British Isles.”
