Rare Mesolithic timbers found 20 metres underwater could reveal previously unknown construction by Stone Age hunter-gatherers
Archaeologists exploring Lake Arendsee in northern Germany have discovered remarkably well-preserved pieces of worked wood dating back as much as 10,500 years, raising new questions about how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers built and used structures.
The finds were made during underwater investigations by the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt (LDA). Researchers have identified wooden posts and split boards bearing evidence of human workmanship beneath approximately 20 metres of water.
Whether the timbers represent the remains of dwellings or another type of wooden structure is not yet known, and archaeologists emphasise that investigations are continuing.
The discovery is particularly significant because wooden objects from the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, have only rarely survived.
“Besides the usual finds from this period, such as stone tools or animal bones, our divers were able to recover spectacular pieces of wood, which have very rarely survived from this era,” state archaeologist Harald Meller said.
“The finds shed a completely new light on the Mesolithic period, for which traces of buildings in Central Germany have so far only been known in the form of soil discolourations.”
Wooden posts and boards beneath the lake
Among the discoveries is a post measuring approximately 1.6 metres in height that bears apparent felling marks. Researchers have also recovered split boards measuring up to 1.3 metres long.
Initial investigations suggest that the pieces could have belonged to structures constructed by people living around Lake Arendsee approximately 10,500 years ago.
At the time, communities in the region lived by hunting, gathering and fishing rather than agriculture.
Project manager Marcel Weiß said determining exactly what the wooden remains represent could have important implications for archaeologists’ understanding of Mesolithic communities.
“Whether we are looking at the remains of huts or other, previously completely unknown wooden structures is the subject of ongoing and future research,” Weiß said.
If evidence ultimately demonstrates that permanent structures or intensively used living areas existed at Lake Arendsee 10,500 years ago, he added, it could affect current interpretations of hunter-gatherer societies and the development of cultural landscapes.
Such structures would pre-date the arrival of the first farming communities and their longhouses in Central Europe by around 3,000 years.
Geological conditions preserved ancient landscape
The exceptional survival of the wood is linked to the unusual geology of Lake Arendsee in Saxony-Anhalt’s Altmarkkreis Salzwedel district.
Unlike many inland lakes, where sediment gradually accumulates and shorelines change through silting, the bottom of Lake Arendsee has been slowly subsiding as a result of geological processes associated with an underlying salt dome.
This process has helped preserve parts of the ancient shoreline and archaeological material beneath a relatively thin layer of sediment.
The Mesolithic remains now lie at a depth of around 20 metres.
Evidence already indicated that people were present around the shores of Lake Arendsee during the Mesolithic. The period is also associated in the region with the individual known as the Shaman of Bad Dürrenberg, whose grave has provided archaeologists with important evidence about Mesolithic life.
Underwater robot maps prehistoric shoreline
After the site was discovered in spring 2026, archaeologists recovered further samples and individual objects to establish its age and extent.
A second investigation was then carried out with the Fraunhofer IOSB-AST in Ilmenau.
Researchers used a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, equipped with high-resolution sonar to survey the submerged landscape and document the contours of the former shoreline.
By recording the precise position of individual discoveries, archaeologists hope to identify concentrations of material that could indicate archaeological sites and determine where future underwater investigations should take place.
“The support of underwater work with state-of-the-art technologies developed at the Fraunhofer Institute in Ilmenau is invaluable for archaeology,” said Sven Thomas, diving operations manager for the LDA’s work at Lake Arendsee.
Lake has already produced major discoveries
Lake Arendsee has been the subject of underwater archaeological investigations for several years and has already produced finds from several periods.
Previous discoveries include Neolithic fish weirs, a High Medieval flat-bottomed cargo vessel and a Late Medieval dugout canoe.
The latest finds push the archaeological record beneath the lake considerably further back in time and could provide unusually direct evidence of how Mesolithic communities worked with wood.
Researchers are now attempting to establish whether the posts and boards formed part of huts, another type of construction or something not previously identified in the archaeological record.
For archaeologists, the answer could provide a rare glimpse of structures built by hunter-gatherers more than 10 millennia ago — structures that survived beneath Lake Arendsee while most comparable traces on land disappeared.
Sources : State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt
