Searching the seas. Artifacts found underwater are often better preserved than relics found on land (Image: Jon Henderson/University of Nottingham)

KITTED out with the latest scuba gear, Garry Momber peers through the murky water to the seabed below. It’s dark – Momber is 11 metres below the water’s surface and the black peat of the seabed absorbs what little light reaches the bottom. Then the tide turns, and as clearer water flows in from the open seas, the decaying remains of an ancient forest emerge from the gloom. Working quickly, he records details of the exposed material before the strengthening current forces him away from the site.

This is all in a day’s work for Momber, who is director of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology in Southampton, UK. His job is to search for clues to a prehistoric world lost beneath the waves in the channel that separates the Isle of Wight from the south coast of England – to be precise, at a location 300 metres off the port of Yarmouth.

Momber’s work is just part of a growing trend for searching the deep for clues to our distant past. The field of underwater archaeology is perhaps best known for unearthing relics from more recent history, like Henry VIII’s ship the Mary Rose, yet the seabed is stuffed with clues to prehistory too – especially a murky period 11,500 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, when early Europeans were slowly changing from being nomadic hunter-gatherers into settled farmers.

Back then, sea levels were 50 metres lower than today, and the vast majority of early …