Divers working in a lake Northwest of the ancient city of Rome came across a remarkable discovery that could rewrite the seafaring capabilities of the Neolithic inhabitants of the region.
Over three decades ago, archaeologists discovered an underwater village known today as La Marmotta. The small settlement lies around 23 miles from the Mediterranean Sea and dates back to the Neolithic period. Amongst small buildings and other items of interest were five wooden canoes. The boats were constructed by hollowing out tree trunks; some were as long as 32 feet.
While the findings were made some time ago, until recently, the work done at La Marmotta had only been shared in Italian, making it difficult for the news to reach a Western audience. However, a team of international researchers recently visited the unique site and published their work in the journal PLOS One.
The five canoes, dated to around 5500 BCE, are the oldest boats ever discovered in the Mediterranean region. Speaking to LiveScience, Niccolò Mazzucco, the study’s senior author and an archaeologist at the University of Pisa, said, “These artifacts offer further insights into the daily lives, symbolic and technological capabilities of the ancient inhabitants.”
The canoes were made from various kinds of woods, including Oak, beech, poplar, and alder. According to Mazzucco, there are various reasons behind this. “They probably had enough knowledge about wood species and their properties to choose them and to use them on the basis of those properties,” he said. “These people were working wood with the same knowledge as a carpenter today, just with different tools.”
The boats also showed signs of being equipped with what’s considered advanced technology for the era, including reinforcements and towing accessories. Various T-shaped objects, each with two or four drill holes, are thought to have been used to help the boats transport large loads. Such artifacts “are undoubtedly reminiscent of much more recent navigation systems,” wrote the researchers.
“So, these details are really important because they’re actually a testimony of how they could have transported a lot of goods,” says Lasse Sørensen, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark. The remains of foreign items, including pottery, grains, figurines, and tools, all suggest a vibrant trading system existed in the region during the Neolithic period.
According to Juan F. Gibaja, another researcher who worked at the site, “La Marmotta is an exceptional archaeological site.” he continued, “Many things are preserved there that we never find in a terrestrial site: canoes, wooden houses, bows, sickles, etc. I never imagined that those prehistoric societies had the technological capacity to make such large and complex canoes. They were communities with extraordinary knowledge, much more advanced than we had imagined.”
While it’s been suggested that many of the canoes would have been used for fishing trips, others could have been equipped with sails. The complexity of the canoes, alongside the evidence of an extensive trade network, has led researchers to suggest a high level of social organization existed in the region. “In this way, La Marmotta is causing a literal sea change in our view of those first Neolithic farming groups,” the team writes.
