by InTrieste
A new study maps the submerged plains, lagoons and wetlands of the northern Adriatic, offering a rare glimpse into the world of Mesolithic hunters and the region’s first farming communities.
Beneath the waters of the northern Adriatic lies a landscape that once stretched across broad coastal plains, marshes and lagoons — a world inhabited by prehistoric communities thousands of years before rising seas erased it from view.
A new study by researchers at the University of Southampton and Italy’s National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS) reconstructs the evolution of these vanished coastlines between 9000 and 4000 B.C., revealing how dramatic environmental change shaped the lives of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and, later, some of Europe’s earliest farming societies.
During the end of the last Ice Age, global sea levels rose steadily, transforming the northern Adriatic from an expansive lowland into the coastline known today. As the sea advanced, it submerged wetlands, river deltas and coastal barrier systems that had provided abundant food, fresh water and habitable land for prehistoric populations.
To recreate these lost environments, scientists combined existing sediment core records with new high-resolution geophysical surveys collected by OGS. The team identified ancient depositional environments and developed flooding models that traced not only where prehistoric landscapes existed, but also how they evolved over millennia.
The reconstructions reveal successive generations of coastal barriers, back-barrier marshes, lagoons and deltaic systems. These habitats formed during periods when sea-level rise slowed, only to disappear as marine waters advanced once again.
The findings offer important insights into European prehistory. Coastal wetlands of the northern Adriatic would have been especially rich in fish, shellfish, birds and plant resources, making them attractive settlements for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Yet those communities lived within an environment in constant transition, adapting as shorelines shifted and resources were redistributed by rising seas.
The study also places the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic within this changing environmental context. As farming expanded along the Adriatic coast, communities were settling landscapes that were themselves being reshaped by climate-driven sea-level rise, highlighting the close relationship between environmental change and human migration.
“Submerged landscapes are a crucial missing piece in the study of prehistory, especially in the northern Adriatic,” said Samuele Ongaro, the study’s lead author and a doctoral researcher at the University of Southampton. “Our findings allow us to reconstruct these lost environments, understand how they changed through time and assess their importance for prehistoric populations.”
Federica Donda, a marine geologist at OGS and co-author of the study, said the research demonstrates the value of integrating geological and geophysical evidence to investigate territories now hidden beneath the sea.
“A significant portion of the landscapes occupied by ancient populations is underwater today,” she said. “Their history cannot be understood through terrestrial archaeology alone.”
For archaeologists, the submerged Adriatic represents more than a flooded coastline. It is an archaeological frontier that may help answer enduring questions about where prehistoric people settled, how they traveled across the region and how they responded to one of humanity’s earliest experiences of large-scale climate change.
