Wood from 10,500 years ago worked by Mesolithic hunters found in a German lake

German archaeologists recovered wooden pieces up to 10,500 years old from Lake Arendsee that show clear signs of cutting and modification made by humans. The finding, deemed exceptional, corresponds to the Mesolithic period, when communities in Central Europe lived by hunting, gathering, and fishing, without yet being sedentary farmers.

The remains were uncovered during underwater archaeology campaigns conducted by the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie of Saxony-Anhalt over several years in this body of water in northern Germany. Among the objects, a post about 1.60 meters tall stands out, preserving signs of work, and split planks up to 1.30 meters long, in addition to other fragments that are still being analyzed.

The rarity of the discovery lies in the fact that organic material of such antiquity is almost never preserved. Therefore, these woods offer a rare opportunity to study how Mesolithic groups utilized their surrounding environment.

So far, researchers have not been able to determine with certainty what the pieces were used for. One hypothesis suggests that the post and the planks were part of dwellings or other structures built by hunter-gatherers. They could also correspond to constructions of an unknown function.

A Possible Change in Perspective on the Mesolithic

The distribution of the remains and future studies of the site will be key to establishing what type of activity took place there. Until now, evidence of constructions from this period in Central Europe was much more limited: they were mainly known through marks or alterations preserved in the soil, and not through relatively complete wooden structures.

If investigations confirm that the pieces belonged to permanent constructions or to spaces of intensive use, the finding could change the understanding of the degree of organization of these groups and how they transformed the places where they lived. The temporal difference is also significant: these are structures about 10,500 years old, approximately 3,000 years before the arrival of the first farmers with their longhouses in Central Europe.

The exceptional preservation of the woods is explained by the particular geology of Lake Arendsee. Unlike other lakes that fill with sediments over the millennia, the bottom of this lake slowly sinks due to processes related to a salt dome located beneath it. Areas that were part of the ancient coast more than 10,000 years ago have progressively become submerged and covered by sediments.

Today, the Mesolithic remains are found beneath a thin layer of sediment, about 20 meters deep, where they have been remarkably preserved.

Next Steps in the Research

Work at Arendsee will continue to determine the extent and exact age of the site. In addition to recovering new samples and objects, specialists used a remotely operated vehicle to conduct high-resolution sonar scans. The goal is to reconstruct the relief of the ancient coast and more accurately locate areas that may contain more remains.

This type of finding reinforces the importance of underwater archaeology in reconstructing aspects of the daily life of prehistoric societies that would otherwise remain hidden. The worked woods from Arendsee thus become a privileged material testimony of how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers interacted with their environment thousands of years before the advent of agriculture.

Researchers emphasize that each new piece of data provided by the analysis of the pieces and the environment where they were found will help refine the picture of a still little-known stage in Central Europe. The possibility that more elaborate structures existed than previously thought raises questions about the social organization and mobility of those groups.

Ultimately, the discovery at Lake Arendsee not only provides physical evidence of extreme antiquity but also invites a reevaluation of previous ideas about the capacity of Mesolithic communities to transform the landscape. The visible cutting marks on the post and the planks are, for now, the most direct testimony of that human intervention over ten millennia ago.