A “beautifully preserved” sunken landscape, complete with a network of rivers and estuaries, surrounding a 7,000-year-old submerged city has been mapped in 3D.
The scanning effort follows the discovery last year of a nearby Stone Age road 13 feet beneath the Adriatic Sea that once connected the ancient city to the mainland.
The town, known as Soline, was built on an artificial land mass by the ancient Hvar culture, but began to slowly sink off the coast of what is now Croatia as sea levels rose with the melting of glaciers from the last Ice Age, which began around 12,000 BC.
An international team of researchers now hope to use this “amazing” and one-of-a-kind submerged geography to help them better strategize their deeper search for more of the submerged ancient sites and artifacts from the town of Hvar.
A “beautifully preserved” sunken landscape, with a network of rivers and estuaries, has been mapped in 3D off the coast of Croatia, surrounding a 7,000-year-old submerged city. Efforts to map in 3D the geography surrounding this ancient city under the Adriatic Sea began in 2023
“It’s a more diverse and better preserved landscape than we expected,” according to geoarchaeologist Dr Simon Fitch, the lead researcher on the new project. Above, a 3D map from Dr Fitch’s previous project which mapped the submerged landscape of Doggerland in the North Sea
“It’s a more diverse landscape and better preserved than we expected,” said geoarchaeologist Dr Simon Fitch, lead researcher on the new project.
“The results,” he said, “provided much more detail than we expected.”
The underwater landscape that Hvar once walked on was found in the waters near Croatia. the second largest Split, where Dr. Fitch traveled in March 2023 to begin this first-ever scan of the seafloor using state-of-the-art underwater 3D seismic sensors.
“There are beautifully preserved rivers and estuaries buried beneath what is now the seafloor,” Dr Fitch explained.
“The unique environment of the area around Split, which is quite protected, has preserved much of this,” he said.
The port coast of Split opens onto a bay protected from the more unpredictable currents of the Adriatic Sea in general by the islands of Brač and Šolta along the Dalmatian archipelago of Croatia.
The Adriatic, which divides Croatia from Italy, was long an ancient trade route between peoples connected by it and the larger, neighbouring Mediterranean Sea.
Previous explorations of its waters have unearthed Roman artifacts, a 2,200-year-old shipwreck and another Hvar settlement in nearby Gradina Bay, 15 feet below sea level and “almost identical to the Soline settlement,” according to The University of Zadar.
The new project builds on recent efforts by Dr. Fitch using offshore oil mining data created and donated by Petroleum Geo-Services, which compiles 3D geological maps using seismic equipment similar to major earthquake warning data.
Dr Fitch and his team used the company’s data to map an ancient lost island in the North Sea, Doggerland, which once lay between Britain and the Netherlands.
But the new Adriatic project is taking this type of 3D seismic mapping equipment and applying it directly to geological archaeology, it is reported for the first time.
An international team has been collaborating on underwater archaeological excavations at this site off the coast of Split, Croatia. Above, the diving team that discovered the 7,000-year-old road leading to the sunken Neolithic city of Soline last May as part of this parallel 3D mapping project.
The remains of the Stone Age road were discovered beneath a layer of what scientists called “marine silt.”
Dr Fitch, who teaches at the University of Bradford, said his team plans to send another team of divers to survey some of the sites revealed by the new 3D mapping later this year. Above, an example of the 3D mapping data produced by the new Adriatic project
“When we use our high-resolution sensors, we find more rivers, more water in the landscape and more environments,” Dr. Fitch said.
“It’s surprising because it suggests that there were more likely to be people living there.”
Understanding where the rivers were, the researcher noted, will help his team better choose which sites are likely to have been inhabited by people, including more prehistoric settlements of the Hvaric culture, improving the chances of success of their underwater excavations.
“Our ultimate goal is to find human artifacts,” Dr. Fitch said, “and having this new understanding of the landscape makes that more likely.”
“Croatia is the gateway to Europe,” he added, “so if we think about the development of agriculture in Europe, it is and has always been a very important landscape.”
Korčula, part of the Adriatic archipelago, was originally attached to the mainland, but when sea levels began to rise at the end of the last Ice Age in 12,000 BC, flooding led to more or less the present layout of about 8,000 years ago.
The same research team also discovered another underwater settlement on the opposite side of Korčula.
A better understanding of the life of the inhabitants of Hvarič will help to bridge the gap between prehistory and the more well-known and legendary era of the ancient Greeks and Romans along these seas that became famous during their era of antiquity.
It could also help scientists understand how a past human civilization coped with rising sea levels caused by climate change.
“The speed at which the sea lost that landscape is also important,” Fitch said. “It affected people and culture.”
“So by understanding the landscape, we can begin to understand the whole archaeological picture much more clearly.”
Dr Fitch, who teaches at the University of Bradford, said his team plans to send another team of divers to survey some of the sites revealed by the new 3D mapping later this year.
Archaeologist and art historian Vedran Barbarić, associate professor at the University of Split, presented the new findings with Dr. Fitch at A public conference in Split on 10 May 2024 and covered by local media Dalmatia Danas.
Their future work over the next few years will map both the Adriatic and the North Sea as they were between 10,000 and 24,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were about 300 feet lower than today.
Archaeologists began making their surprising discoveries in this part of the Adriatic after analysing satellite images of the water around the submerged site of Soline, which was discovered in 2021 off the coast of the Croatian island of Korčula.
Radiocarbon analysis of preserved wood has indicated that the settlement at Soline dates back to around 4900 BC.
Soline was discovered by archaeologist Mate Parica from the University of Zadar, who together with his colleagues went diving in the area to take a closer look.
According to the University of Zadar, among the Neolithic artifacts found by the people of Hvar are cream-colored swords, stone axes and fragments of sacrifices.