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      A submerged 7000-year-old village and seawall demonstrate earliest known coastal defence against sea-level rise

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          Abstract

          We report the results of underwater archaeological investigations at the submerged Neolithic settlement of Tel Hreiz (7500 – 7000 BP), off the Carmel coast of Israel. The underwater archaeological site has yielded well-preserved architectural, artefactual, faunal and human remains. We examine and discuss the notable recent discovery of a linear, boulder-built feature >100m long, located seaward of the settlement. Based on archaeological context, mode of construction and radiometric dating, we demonstrate the feature was contemporary with the inundated Neolithic settlement and conclude that it served as a seawall, built to protect the village against Mediterranean Sea-level rise. The seawall is unique for the period and is the oldest known coastal defence worldwide. Its length, use of large non-local boulders and specific arrangement in the landscape reflect the extensive effort invested by the Neolithic villagers in its conception, organisation and construction. However, this distinct social action and display of resilience proved a temporary solution and ultimately the village was inundated and abandoned.

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          Sea-Level Rise from the Late 19th to the Early 21st Century

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            Reassessment of 20th century global mean sea level rise.

            The rate at which global mean sea level (GMSL) rose during the 20th century is uncertain, with little consensus between various reconstructions that indicate rates of rise ranging from 1.3 to 2 mm⋅y(-1) Here we present a 20th-century GMSL reconstruction computed using an area-weighting technique for averaging tide gauge records that both incorporates up-to-date observations of vertical land motion (VLM) and corrections for local geoid changes resulting from ice melting and terrestrial freshwater storage and allows for the identification of possible differences compared with earlier attempts. Our reconstructed GMSL trend of 1.1 ± 0.3 mm⋅y(-1) (1σ) before 1990 falls below previous estimates, whereas our estimate of 3.1 ± 1.4 mm⋅y(-1) from 1993 to 2012 is consistent with independent estimates from satellite altimetry, leading to overall acceleration larger than previously suggested. This feature is geographically dominated by the Indian Ocean-Southern Pacific region, marking a transition from lower-than-average rates before 1990 toward unprecedented high rates in recent decades. We demonstrate that VLM corrections, area weighting, and our use of a common reference datum for tide gauges may explain the lower rates compared with earlier GMSL estimates in approximately equal proportion. The trends and multidecadal variability of our GMSL curve also compare well to the sum of individual contributions obtained from historical outputs of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. This, in turn, increases our confidence in process-based projections presented in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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              Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals

              Numerous studies along the northern Mediterranean borderland have documented the use of shellfish by Neanderthals but none of these finds are prior to Marine Isotopic Stage 3 (MIS 3). In this paper we present evidence that gathering and consumption of mollusks can now be traced back to the lowest level of the archaeological sequence at Bajondillo Cave (Málaga, Spain), dated during the MIS 6. The paper describes the taxonomical and taphonomical features of the mollusk assemblages from this level Bj19 and briefly touches upon those retrieved in levels Bj18 (MIS 5) and Bj17 (MIS 4), evidencing a continuity of the shellfishing activity that reaches to MIS 3. This evidence is substantiated on 29 datings through radiocarbon, thermoluminescence and U series methods. Obtained dates and paleoenvironmental records from the cave include isotopic, pollen, lithostratigraphic and sedimentological analyses and they are fully coherent with paleoclimate conditions expected for the different stages. We conclude that described use of shellfish resources by Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) in Southern Spain started ∼150 ka and were almost contemporaneous to Pinnacle Point (South Africa), when shellfishing is first documented in archaic modern humans.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: ResourcesRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Funding acquisitionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: InvestigationRole: Resources
                Role: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ValidationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: InvestigationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                18 December 2019
                2019
                : 14
                : 12
                : e0222560
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
                [2 ] Maritime Archaeology Program, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
                [3 ] Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel
                [4 ] Independent researcher, Kaplanski St. 26 Petah Tikva, Israel
                [5 ] National Natural History Collections, Faculty of Life Science, The Hebrew University, E. Safra Campus, Jerusalem, Israel
                University at Buffalo - The State University of New York, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9621-4921
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2702-6254
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7449-9508
                Article
                PONE-D-19-14822
                10.1371/journal.pone.0222560
                6919572
                31851675
                9a9eadec-335b-4ee1-a7d0-490ecd6ce666
                © 2019 Galili et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 25 May 2019
                : 19 November 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 1, Pages: 17
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100014223, Honor Frost Foundation;
                Award ID: 2017
                Award Recipient :
                E.G and J.B recieved a grant from the Honor Frost Foundation 2017: Sea level rise and human response in the Neolithic: evidence for coastal defence.
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