An unusual monolith reminiscent of Stonehenge has been discovered in the waters off the coast of Sicily, and the archaeologists responsible for the find believe features carved into the 10,000-year-old pillar indicate that it was almost certainly man made.
According to Discovery News, the 3.2-foot-long monolith has a fairly basic shape and has been broken into two parts. It also featured three holes, each with a similar diameter, and was found at a depth of 131 feet on what had once been an island known as Pantelleria Vecchia Bank.
Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, the website explained, was located two dozen miles north of the island of Pantelleria in the Sicilian Channel. Roughly 9,500 years ago, the island was submerged during a tremendous flood which took place following the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, according to the authors of a recently-published Journal of Archaeological Science paper.
Pillar might be part of a lighthouse or anchoring system
The monolith, which was found by Zvi Ben-Avraham of the Tel Aviv University Department of Earth Science and Emanuele Lodolo of the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Trieste, Italy, is said to weigh approximately 15 tons and was constructed out of a single block of stone that reportedly had to be cut, extracted, transported, and installed.
Lodolo told Discovery News on Thursday that the discovery “reveals the technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants in the Sicilian Channel region,” and that this type of effort “undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering.”
However, he noted that it is unknown what the pillar’s function was, or whether or not it was one part of a larger complex. “Most likely the structure was functional to the settlement,” Lodolo told the website. Since early Mediterranean basin civilizations would fish and trade with neighboring cultures, he noted that it may have been “some sort of a lighthouse” or “anchoring system.”
“Almost everything that we know about prehistoric cultures derives from settlements that are now on land. On the contrary, an extensive archaeological record of early settlings lies on the sea-floor of our continental shelves,” he added. “If we want to trace the origins of civilization in the Mediterranean region, we must focus on the now-submerged shelf areas.”
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Image credit: Emanuele Lodolo
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