So, how do we know it was specifically built to hold back the ocean, rather than for some other purpose? There are multiple clues.
First, when the Pottery Neolithic village stood here, the sea wall sat between the sea and the village. Only one hearth has been found on the seaward side of the wall, and the land between the wall and the sea, known as a swash zone (the turbulent area where waves wash up on the beach after breaking), wouldn’t be good for grazing, animal husbandry, or freshwater supply. The chance that the structure was intended to be a harbor or breakwater is remote; the earliest-known stone-built harbor dates to 4,500 BP, thousands of years after this structure was built. Early harbors were built in areas with natural features like bays, which Tel Hraiz lacked (and still lacks today).
Archaeological finds suggest the village persisted for 300-500 years, that it was initially built well away from the water, and that the rapid sea-level rise occurring all over the world as a result of glacier melt inundated many of these communities. Drowned prehistoric villages are fairly common all over the world, but none so old has ever had a feature like this.
It is not clear why the villagers thickened one section of the wall, but it was built with several different architectural styles. The authors note:
Despite these different building styles, the boulder-built feature is a continuous and unified architectural entity which forms a wall. This is evident in the arrangement, nature and size of the stones; aside from the small dogleg, the boulders are aligned in a consistent and uniform direction and make up a relatively straight and continuous line parallel to the coast. They also follow the same bathymetric depth contour; representing the past topographic contour of the prehistoric coastline. Notably, for its entire length, it is free-standing and with the exception of the apparent stone wall fragments associated with the dogleg and the hearth (see below), the wall is not attached to any domestic structure in the village.
The boulders they used didn’t just come from farther up the shore — the nearest source of these stones would have been the riverbed and river mouth of what we now call the Oren and Galim Rivers, 2.28 miles (3.8km) and 0.96 miles (1.6km) away, respectively. Individual stones have likely shifted and some may have washed away in storms, but the wall remains a contiguous and highly visible feature in the landscape — and very clearly artificially constructed.
Even a mile is a fair distance to walk with stones this large. The visible rocks of the wall are roughly 20-39 inches in diameter (50-100cm), about 39 inches (100cm) tall, and weighed 200-1,000kg. For a small community in the Pottery Neolithic time period, this wall was a huge investment in resources, and it may have been extended one or more times to provide additional protection. There is a second known example of an ancient seawall in the area, though it’s still much younger — there’s a boulder-built seawall dating to 3,100-3,500 BP in Atlit North Bay, some 1.8 miles south of Tel Hreiz.
Comments
Post a Comment