A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel - Journal of Archaeological Science

[bsbray]

This is a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, apparently to be published the September edition but already available online here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...52409X15300535

A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity

Emanuele Lodoloa, , , Zvi Ben-Avrahamb, c

a Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Trieste, Italy
b Department of Earth Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel
c Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel

Received 26 April 2015, Revised 1 July 2015, Accepted 4 July 2015, Available online 15 July 2015

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.

9350 B.P. (before present) would mean about 7350 BC. Until around that time, Sicily was a much larger island.

The ancient geography of the Mediterranean Basin was profoundly changed by the increase in sea level following the Last Glacial Maximum. This global event has led to the retreat of the coastlines, especially in lowland areas and shallow shelves, such as the Sicilian Channel. The NW sector of this shelf, known as Adventure Plateau, is studded by isolated shoals mostly composed of Late Miocene carbonate rocks and by some volcanic edifices. These shoals, until at least the Early Holocene, formed an archipelago of several islands separated by stretches of extremely shallow sea. One of these submerged features – the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank – located 60 km south of Sicily, has been extensively surveyed using geophysical and geological methods. It is composed of two main shoals, connected seaward by a rectilinear ridge which encloses an embayment. Here we present morphological evidence, underwater observations, and results of petrographic analysis of a man-made, 12 m long monolith resting on the sea-floor of the embayment at a water depth of 40 m. It is broken into two parts, and has three regular holes: one at its end which passes through from part to part, the others in two of its sides. The monolith is composed of calcirudites of Late Pleistocene age, as determined from radiocarbon measurements conducted on several shell fragments extracted from the rock samples. The same age and composition characterize the metre-size blocks forming the rectilinear ridge. The rest of the rocks composing the shoals are mostly Tortonian limestones–sandstones, as revealed by their fossil content. Extrapolating ages from the local sea level curve, we infer that seawater inundated the inner lands at 9350 ± 200 year B.P., the upper limit which can be reasonably taken for the site abandonment. This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region.

I'm not sure exactly how they used the "local sea level curve" to calculate the age of this area but it seems really intriguing. The age of the monoliths and of the flooding are important to nail down pretty exactly because a global cataclysm seems to have caused massive flooding and destruction all of the world, also ending the last ice age, somewhere around 9600-9800 BC, or more generally in the area of 10,000 BC. I think Graham Hancock in his next book puts the date a little earlier at around 10,200 BC but I'm not sure on the exact dates he gives. He also specifies two different impact events, as the comet that struck the Earth left a debris field that we continued to pass through and collect more debris from, and we still pass through it every year. It's the Taurid meteor shower.


Compare these dates with the dates around 10,000 BC on the chronology thread I started here: http://jandeane81.com/threads/7406-H...ead-Chronology


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