Archaeologists uncover Europe's oldest stilt village
Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the "Pearl of the Balkans", scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe's earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind ...
A stretch of the Albanian shore of the lake once hosted a settlement of stilt houses some 8,000 years ago, archaeologists believe, making it the oldest lakeside village in Europe discovered to date.
Radiocarbon dating from the site puts it at between 6000 and 5800 BC.
"It is several hundred years older than previously known lake-dwelling sites in the Mediterranean and Alpine regions," said Albert Hafner, a professor of archaeology from Switzerland's University of Bern.
"To our knowledge, it is the oldest in Europe," he told AFP.
The most ancient other such villages were discovered in the Italian Alps and date to around 5000 BC, said the expert in European Neolithic lake dwellings.
Hafner and his team of Swiss and Albanian archaeologists have spent the past four years carrying out excavations at Lin on the Albanian side of Lake Ohrid, which straddles the mountainous border of North Macedonia and Albania.
The settlement is believed to have been home to between 200 and 500, with houses built on stilts above the lake's surface or in areas regularly flooded by rising waters.
A diver scouring an archaeological site at the bottom of Lake Ohrid in Albania, the site of Europe's oldest stilt village.