An ancient village off the coast of Israel used boulders to build a wall thousands of years ago to protect its homes from rising sea levels — the move was unsuccessful, according to a study published Wednesday.
The study is notable in that the settlement, called Tel Hreiz, existed before the modern industry, one of the key drivers of global warming, scientists said.
Researchers behind the study said the discovery of the world’s oldest sea wall shows that humans have long dealt with climate change.
“It’s the world’s oldest sea wall,” Jonathan Benjamin, a marine archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia, told reporters. “It’s the first evidence of that very real problem that we’re dealing with today.” He and his co-authors are behind the archaeological study, published on PLOS One.
Benjamin said Tel Hreiz was dealing with the aftermath of the ice age rather than man-made climate change. “They went to great lengths to protect their home,” he added.
Other researchers remarked about the labor-intensive nature of moving the boulders into position.
“These people understood that they had to put huge boulders down there, not little stones. They were clearly thinking ahead, that they wanted this wall to last,” Marie Jackson, a geology professor at the University of Utah, who did not work on the study.
“This is a really dynamic sea coast. Without these walls, there would have been little protection,” Jackson added. “The size and weight of those boulders are stupendous and speaks to the intent of the builders to make something, to build a wall, that had longevity and usefulness.”
Tel Hreiz was roughly 2.5 meters above sea level at the time of the wall’s construction. The Mediterranean Sea slowly came up the north coast of Israel at about four millimeters per year between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago, according to the researchers. Waves slowly crushed the wall, year after year, they said.
Global average sea level has risen seven inches since 1900, or about the thickness of two pennies every year. Still, some scientists and activists say sea-level rise could be devastating if warm temperatures cause the world’s glaciers and ice sheets to melt.
Former NASA head climate scientist James Hansen, for instance, warned in 1988 that New York City’s West Side Highway would be underwater within two decades.
Hansen, for his part, warned in 2017 that “the planet could become practically ungovernable” from sea level rise due to melting ice forcing millions of people to flee coastal cities.
Read more at Daily Caller
“It’s the first evidence of that very real problem that we’re dealing with today.”
No, d**khead.
Its the evidence that the climate has never been constant and humans are not the cause of it.
I suppose it was heavy industrialization 7,000 years ago that caused the seas to rise? Got it. Makes sense now.
Too many V-8 engines and way too many cruise ships in those days.
Those Jews 7.000 years ago shouldn’t”t be driven those SUVs in their villages.
Former NASA BONE-head climate
scientistBUFFOON and NEVER CORRECT Alarmist James Hansen…..FIFY.Is somebody pulling our leg??
“These people understood that they had to put huge boulders down there, not little stones. They were clearly thinking ahead, that they wanted this wall to last,” Marie Jackson, a geology professor at the University of Utah, who did not work on the study.
Jackson did not work on the study?
Jackson, “This is a really dynamic sea coast. Without these walls, there would have been little protection,” Jackson added. “The size and weight of those boulders are stupendous and speaks to the intent of the builders to make something, to build a wall, that had longevity and usefulness.”
Jackson did not work on the study…
Jackson, “The size and weight of those boulders are stupendous”.
Jackson did not work on the study…
If the size and weight of the “boulders” pictured are stupendous then the original residents of Tel Hreiz were very tiny people. 20cm is barely 8″. There is nary a boulder pictured. Check it out.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0222560
Fig 3. Photographs of finds from the Tel Hreiz settlement.
(a-b) exposure of stone-built features in shallow water. (c) wooden posts dug into the seabed. (d) bifacial flint adze. (e) in situ stone bowl made of sandstone. (f) in situ basalt grounding stone (scale = 20cm); (g) burial 1. (h) suspected stone-built cist grave – view from the east (scale = 20cm). (i) in situ antler of Mesopotamian fallow deer….
The only thing that the climate change movement has is predictions. That is the case with predictions of sea level rise. There have been many such predictions of disaster which haven’t come true.
It is unlikely that the wall of Tel Hreiz was built to protect homes. Looking at the 20 cm reference in the picture, the boulders pictured are not large enough to protect even from large storm waves. There probably was another use. In England there where rock walls that extended into the sea that where a mystery for some time. The best guess is fishing. Fish would come in with the tide, but when the tide went out the water would run through the rocks leaving the fish stranded and they could easily be picked up.