11,000-year-old Stone-Age settlement discovered under Baltic Sea

Washington: Researchers have found evidence of a Stone-Age settlement that may have been swallowed whole by the Baltic Sea near Sweden.

The site reveals a collection of well preserved artifacts left by nomads some 11,000 years ago, Discovery News reported. Dubbed by the local press "Sweden`s Atlantis" after the fabled island which according to Greek philosopher Plato sank around 9600 BC in the Atlantic Ocean, the newly discovered site was in fact some sort of a dump in which nomadic Swedes discarded objects, according to the Swedish daily The Local. Buried 52 feet below the surface at Hano, a sandy bay off the coast of Skane County in Sweden, the items include wood pieces, flint tools, animal horns, ropes, a harpoon carving made from an animal bone and the bones of an aurochs and an ancient cattle which became extinct in the early 1600s. Amazingly, the artifacts have been perfectly preserved because of the abundant oxygen-consuming "gyttja"-a black, gel-like sediment which is formed when peat begins to decay.