Just off the coast of a little Croatian island called Korčula, something has been hidden from modern eyes for millennia. Researchers were exploring a part of the Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean when they found what remains of an ancient road built in the Stone Age.
The road, which is now under about 15 feet of water, once served as a pathway between an island settlement called Soline that sat on a man-made landmass. It connected it to the main island, and scientists suspect it was built by a Neolithic culture called the Hvar.
Researchers first found the ancient settlement back in 2021, when they were looking at satellite images of the area. They spotted something that was clearly man-made on the sea floor, so they decided they’d go and have a look in person. They found not only the road, but also the walls of what once served as a shelter. Since that particular area of the ocean is well-protected by small islands, the full power of the ocean’s waves and currents was muted enough that the Hvar’s work wasn’t destroyed. The road is made of stacked slabs of stone and is a little over 12-feet wide. It is, as you’d expect, buried under a thick layer of mud.
“By radiocarbon analysis of preserved wood found in the last campaign, the entire settlement dates back to around 4,900 BC,” wrote researchers at Croatia’s University of Zadar. “People walked on this road almost 7,000 years ago.”
But the road into Soline wasn’t the only thing they discovered. On the other side of the island, they found yet another settlement.
“The archeological team diving at the Soline locality carried out an inspection of the central part of Gradina Bay, and to the general delight it was determined that at a depth of four to five meters, the existence of almost identical settlement as in Soline,” the researchers continued. “Neolithic artifacts such as cream blades, stone axes and fragments of sacrifice were found at the site.”
