7,000-year old fish traps excavated in Norwegian mountain lake – a race against time as the water is coming in

The four fish traps discovered by mountain hiker Reidar Marstein last summer consist of long poles that have been driven into the seabed. They form the pattern of a fence that has guided the fish into a chamber. From there, Stone Age folks could easily use a fishing net to catch the fish they needed.

Each chamber consisted of around 40-50 poles, and the archaeologists have found remains that are as much as 80 centimetres long. They are so well preserved that they 'might as well have been cut last year', they write enthusiastically on KHM's Facebook page.

In the Norwegian mountains, archaeologists mostly find stone objects and animal bones from the Stone Age. Processed wood from this time period has hardly been found before.

It was known from earlier archaeological finds that building fish trapping chambers in this style to catch fish is an old tradition. The Tesse find is still remarkable, according to the archaeologists, because it is so very old. It is perpahs the oldest fish trapping facility of its kind ever excavated in northern Europe.

Last year, the archaeologists only had one carbon-14 dating, a wooden pole dated to 5,000 years BC. This year, more test results are available, which show that people also fished here in what is called the Neolithic Age, 3,700 years BC.

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Ancient Viking ship discovered buried next to church using breakthrough georadar technology [11/27/2019]
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They are so well preserved that they 'might as well have been cut last year', they write enthusiastically on KHM's Facebook page.

Sometimes Occam's Razor is needed to examine a study.

"Processed" wood that is 7,000 years old, and exposed to the Norwegian climate at that? Even Norway has voracious insects looking for wood to continue the next generation of insects.

I am not accusing them of planting ancient wood in order to discover it, keeping their grant status alive.

But ancient wood is not ancient stone, and we seldom see old carvings without substantial weathering.

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