Scientists scanning the seafloor discover a long-lost Stone Age 'megastructure'
The more than half mile long wall, called the Blinkerwall, was likely used by Stone Age hunter-gatherers to herd reindeer toward a shooting blind.
In the fall of 2021, Jacob Geersen, a marine geologist now at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, was teaching a one-week field course at the University of Kiel. The class was conducted entirely aboard a research vessel on the Baltic Sea.
Geersen prefers the open-air classroom. "It's quite intense," he says, but for some of the students, "it's maybe the best time during their studies."
During the night shift each evening, students mapped the shape of the seafloor at high resolution. "Usually if we go somewhere and do these measurements," says Geersen, "then we find something interesting." This research cruise proved no exception.
One night, in the Bay of Mecklenburg, off
