Approximately 7,000 years ago, a group of ancient humans built the first-known seawall in an attempt to keep rising tides from inundating their village. It’s the earliest known structure of its type and it shows how Neolithic communities attempted to adjust to the massive sea-level rise kicked off by the ending of the last Ice Age.
The wall is located at Tel Hreiz, a settlement in what is now Israel that existed some 7,000 – 7,500 BP (Before Present). A number of Neolithic settlements have been found submerged off the coasts of various countries — the earliest human settlements were often near both oceans and rivers, and older settlements are found farther off-shore than later ones, illustrating how sea-level rise at the end of the last ice age impacted human settlements. When constructed, the now-submerged village sat nearly 10 feet above the water. This settlement would have been created during a time when sea levels were rising rapidly, with a mean annual change of 2.6mm per year.
Tel Hreiz was identified as an archaeological site in the 1960s but has never been systemically excavated. The area has instead been surveilled for features when storms and tides exposed previously hidden sections of the village, including the highly unusual sea wall, which was exposed by storms and surveyed in both 2012 and 2015. It runs for more than 100 meters with a dog-leg in one section. The northern limit of the wall has been found, but the southern remains under sand, and the wall’s full extent is unknown.
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