A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15300535
Highlights
• A submerged, 12 m long monolith has been discovered at a water depth of 40 m, in a shallow bank of the Sicilian Channel.
• Morphological evidence, underwater observations, and results of petrographic analysis testify that the monolith is man-made.
• This monolith suggests a significant human activity in the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, a former island of the Sicilian Channel.
• Seawater inundated the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank at 9350 ± 200 yr B.P., presumably forcing inhabitants to migrate.
Discussion
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The discovery of the submerged site in the Sicilian Channel may significantly expand our knowledge of the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean basin and our views on technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants. The monolith found, made of a single, large block, required a cutting, extraction, transportation and installation, which undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering. The belief that our ancestors lacked the knowledge, skill and technology to exploit marine resources or make sea crossings, must be progressively abandoned. The recent findings of submerged archaeology have definitively removed the idea of “technological primitivism” often attributed to hunter-gatherers coastal settlers.
Finally, some considerations should be made regarding the provenience of these colonizers. Most likely the ancient inhabitants of the Adventure Peninsula came from Sicily, with which a direct terrestrial connection existed throughout the LGM, as indicated by morphological reconstructions of palaeo-shorelines. The provenance from North Africa would have been more difficult because of a nearly 50 km wide seaway between the Peninsula and the former Tunisian shore. The timing of the arrival of the first modern humans to Sicily remains however largely unknown (i.e., Tusa, 1999 and Mussi, 2001). Specimens discovered in some Sicilian caves testify that the island was permanently colonized by Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers (approximately 13,500 year B.P.; D’Amore et al., 2009). The migration from mainland Europe to Sicily took probably place between 27,000 and 17,000 year B.P., thanks to the emergence of a rocky continental bridge between the Sicilian coast and the Italian peninsula (Antonioli et al., 2014). These ancient inhabitants may have also colonized and settled the various islands of the archipelago, driven by a suitable climate and a favourable geographical position as a privileged route of communication. These islands thus have represented not barriers but gateways to human movement and contact.
The idea that early human ancestors once lived at the sea-floor of modern seas easily fascinates and attracts our imagination. What is more surprising, and until recently poorly recognized, is that an extensive archaeological record of early settlements still remains on the sea-floor of our continental shelves. Almost everything that we do know about prehistoric cultures derives from settlements that are now on land, and that were tens to hundreds of kilometres distant from the coastline when they were occupied. The vast majority of marine geophysicist and archaeologists have now realized that to trace the origins of civilization in the Mediterranean region, it is necessary to focus research in the now submerged shelf areas.
