It's dated between 6000 and 10,000 years ago.

Traces of an ancient settlement have been found at the bottom of a lake in Finland.

Charcoal, burned rocks and quartz flakes were found in Lake Kuolimojärvi during a underwater excavations in June.

Researchers say they’ve uncovered evidence of the human occupation of Finland during the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Stone Age – which was between 6000 and 10,000 years ago.

It may not be Atlantis, but it’s still quite an exciting find.

As we learned in a press release from The University of Helsinki, some Finnish lakes had lower water levels in the early Stone Age than they do today.

(Jesse Jokinen/Museovirasto.)

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Water levels rose as a result of uneven land uplift and the tilting of lakes and rivers, drowning evidence of early human settlement.

“This means that there is a huge gap in our archaeological knowledge of this particular area because we have not yet found the earliest Stone Age sites,” lead researcher Satu Koivisto said.

“The western side of the Kammarlahti bay is sheltered from wind and waves and for this reason, the prehistoric dry land areas are best preserved in that part.

“In one of the test pits, we found a distinct layer of burned soil, charcoal and burned rocks.

“Quartz flakes were also found in the surrounding test pits and these remains show that quartz artefacts had been made at the site during the Stone Age.”

(The University of Helsinki)

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It’s a long, gruelling process which requires diving gear and a kind of underwater vacuum cleaner.

But researchers are excited about what this means for Finnish archaeology.

Many of our large lakes… have also gone through similar fluctuations in water levels,” Koivisto said.

“This means that a huge and largely untapped archaeological resource is hidden in Finnish lakes.

“Moreover, extremely old organic materials may also have been preserved in these environments for thousands of years.”