Dr Penny Spikins was learning to scuba dive in the North sea when she identified carved flints on the seabed and realised that she was sitting on top of possibly the oldest archaeological site in the UK.

The flints were from a Mesolithic settlement - a Stone Age village dating back 10,000 years. At that time, much of the shallower parts of the North Sea were above sea level.

The scuba training was taking place to allow archaeologists from the Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes Project to research possible settlements; noone had expected the results to be quite so speedy or decisive.

"I noticed lots of pieces of flint beneath me on the seabed. To the average person they would seem like ordinary stones you would find on the beach, but to a specialist they were something very exciting indeed," Dr Spikins explained.

The site is in 8m of seawater, close to the mouth of the river Tyne. According to a spokesperson from English Heritage, the find could change our understanding of the earliest occupation of the British Isles. "We know that there is a prehistoric Atlantis beneath the North Sea where once an area equal to the size of Britain attached us to the continent and where prehistoric people and animals roamed. It is potentially an area for exploration and this discovery by the Newcastle University team gives us a stepping stone into this unknown world," commented David Miles, chief archaeologist for English Heritage.


Related website
Newcastle University website


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