7,000-year-old road found underwater in Korcula Island, Croatia

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News Websites
13 May 19:28

The road is four meters wide and dates back to 7,000 BCE.

A diver from the archaeology team investigating the underwater road off the island of Korcula, Croatia (University of Zadar/Facebook)

The island of Korcula in Croatia, said to be the birthplace of Italian merchant Marco Polo and the oldest part of the world where documents can prove that slavery was abolished, stumbled upon another wonder on Saturday.

A "stacked stone" road was found underwater in deposits of sea mud and connected to an artificial island of a people called the Hvar Culture linked to the island.

The road is four meters wide, and through the use of radiocarbon on the preserved wood from the buildings of the Hvar's settlement, it was discovered that the road dates back to 7,000 BCE.

It was conducted by a Croatian archaeology team from multiple museums and universities, who also found flint tools and stone axes. So far, the confirmed oldest ‘constructed’ road goes back to 4,000 BCE in the world's second-oldest in ancient Sumeria.

Brick roads began appearing in India about 3,000 BCE, which is about the same time for such roads to appear in Greece.

The discovered road was made 1,000 years before them, during a time when agriculture and domesticating animals were still new or considered state-of-the-art technologies.

Archaeologists have scored several wins this year with multiple discoveries all around the world.

Most recently, archaeologists in Peru discovered a more than 1,000-year-old mummy on the outskirts of Peru's modern capital of Lima in the latest discovery dating back to pre-Inca times. The mummy was probably an adolescent and was found in an underground tomb wrapped in a funerary bundle, along with ceramics and rope and bits of skin and hair.

2,000-year-old Roman coins were uncovered by archeologists on the Swedish desert island of Gotska Sandön in March and Egyptian and British archeologists unearthed an ancient tomb in the city of Luxor which is believed to contain the remains of an 18th dynasty royal back in January.