Ancient Roman road discovered at the bottom of the Venice lagoon

3 years ago 492

An past and present submerged roadworthy has been discovered successful the Venice lagoon successful an country that would person been accessible by onshore 2000 years agone during the Roman era.

Fantina Madricardo astatine the Marine Science Institute successful Venice and her colleagues made the find aft mapping the level of an country of the lagoon called the Treporti channel.

“We judge it was portion of the web of Roman roads successful the north-east of the Venice area,” says Madricardo.

In the 1980s, the archaeologist Ernesto Canal projected that determination are past human-made structures submerged successful the Venice lagoon. This proposition prompted decades of debate, but couldn’t beryllium confirmed until present arsenic the antecedently disposable exertion was insufficiently precocious to research specified a challenging environment.

“The country is precise hard to analyse by divers due to the fact that determination are beardown currents and the h2o successful the Venice lagoon is precise turbid,” says Madricardo.

The squad utilized a multibeam echosounder mounted connected a vessel to signifier a representation of what lies underwater. This instrumentality sends retired acoustic waves that bounce disconnected the lagoon floor, allowing the squad to reconstruct images of immoderate structures are down there.

The researchers recovered 12 structures up to 2.7 metres gangly and 52.7 metres agelong that extended on 1140 metres successful a south-west to north-eastern absorption successful the configuration of a road. The beingness and layout of these structures suggest that determination whitethorn person been a colony successful the area. It was past submerged astir 2000 years agone – partially owed to quality enactment that diverted the travel of rivers and starved the country of the sediment that was needed to support it supra water.

“Presumably, the roadworthy is giving entree to this affluent environment. The margins of the onshore and the h2o are afloat of resources that radical mightiness person been exploiting,” says James Gerrard astatine Newcastle University successful the UK. “It’s not mean to find, if you like, ‘drowned’ landscapes oregon beryllium capable to survey them successful this benignant of detail.”

Journal reference: Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-92939-w

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