‘Extraordinarily rare’: intact 1,200-year-old canoe recovered from Wisconsin lake

A 1,200-year-old, 15-foot (4.5-metre) dugout canoe has been taken from Lake Mendota successful Madison, Wisconsin, aft 2 divers stumbled upon it portion riding underwater scooters.

The vessel was recovered from roughly 27ft of water and brought to enactment this week.

“This is the archetypal clip this happening has been retired of the h2o successful 1,200 years,” said authorities archaeologist Jim Skibo.

Christian Overland, manager and main enforcement of the Wisconsin Historical Society, called the canoe a remarkable artefact, portion archaeologist Amy Rosebrough told Kenosha News it was “extraordinarily rare”.

“We truly don’t person thing similar this from Wisconsin,” Rosebrough said.

Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist, and her person Mallory Dragt went for an underwater joyride connected their scooters successful June. In doing so, they noticed what looked similar a “log sticking retired of the bottommost of the lake”, CNN reported.

When Thomsen investigated further, she realized it was a canoe. Weeks later, c dating revealed the vas to beryllium much than 1,000 years old.

Ancestors of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Native Americans, known arsenic People of the Big Water, built dugout canoes successful the country by burning the wrong of logs and scraping them retired with chromatic tools.

“Consider cutting down a histrion that’s two-and-a-half feet wide with a chromatic instrumentality and past hollowing it retired and making it float,” Skibo said.

“It indispensable person taken hundreds of hours and a large woody of skill. You get a caller appreciation for radical that lived successful a clip erstwhile determination were nary modern-day tools to bash this happening wherever they could bash it quicker.”

Skibo said the canoe was inactive intact partially due to the fact that it had not been exposed to the light.

A conception of the still-intact canoe. Photograph: Wisconsin Historical Society/Youtube

“That’s 1 of the reasons we person to commencement preserving it,” helium said. “There’s surviving organisms connected it that are chewing distant connected it arsenic we speak.”

The vas volition acquisition several years of preservation treatment and whitethorn extremity up successful a projected Wisconsin Historical Society depository successful Madison.

“I’m an archaeologist who tells stories from artefacts,” Skibo said. “And this is simply a large one.”