This amber and a gold earring from burial of a lady close to Stonehenge shows the detailed decoration on other Bronze Age artifacts from the time of Stonehenge. MORE: Stonehenge Intricate Treasures Made by Children 
 
 Although the purpose of the gold lozenge remains a mystery — interpretations have ranged from an elaborate button to an astronomical instrument -- its precise decorations, made of impressed lines, reveals a detailed knowledge of mathematics and geometry. 
 
 On the chest of the Bush Barrow tribal chief there was a beautifully decorated gold lozenge. It was made of sheet gold with finely incised decoration. 
 
 Some of the thousands of studs from the dagger. Each stud is thinner than a human hair. They were set into the wood at a density of over 1,000 per square centimeter to create a zig-zag pattern. 
 
 Produced nearly 4,000 years ago, more than 1,000 years before the invention of any form of magnifying glass, the dagger was decorated with 140,000 tiny studs. The ultra-fine craftwork entailed extremely tiny components such as microscopic gold pins and gold wires. According to optic experts, only children and teenagers, and those adults who had become myopic naturally or due to the nature of their work as children, would have been able to create and manufacture such tiny objects. The eye-stressing work would have blinded most child workers. The image shows how the studs are placed in straight lines and the heads overlap each other like fish scales. 
 
 This watercolor shows the dagger handle as excavated by William Cunnington in 1808. 
 
 Among the buried objects, one of the finest was a dagger with an intricately decorated wooden handle. Today only fragments of the original handle survive. Here fragments of the 4,000-year-old wooden handle is mounted on a modern wood reconstruction. 
 
 Reconstruction of the burial of the Bush Barrow mound. The burial contained the skeleton of a chieftain who lived almost 4,000 years ago. He was laid to rest in regal splendor with objects known today as the Stonehenge treasure. NEWS: Stonehenge Intricate Treasures Made by Children 
 
 Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious Stonehenge-style monolith in the deep sea off the coast of Sicily, shedding new light on the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean basin. 
 
 Broken in two parts, the 3.2-foot-long monolith has a rather regular shape and features three holes of similar diameter. One, which can be found at its end, crosses it completely from part to part, the others appear at two sides of the massive stone. 
 
 Such features leave no doubt that the monolith was man-made some 10,000 years ago. 
 
 “There are no reasonable known natural processes that may produce these elements,” Zvi Ben-Avraham, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University, and Emanuele Lodolo, from the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Trieste, Italy, wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science. 
 
 Small ‘Underwater Pompeii’ Found Off Greek Island 
 
 The monolith was found at a depth of 131 feet, on what was once an island in the Sicilian Channel. Called Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, the island was located some 24 miles north of the volcanic island of Pantelleria and was submerged during a massive flood about 9,500 years ago. 
 
 Indeed, the entire geography of the Mediterranean Basin was radically altered by the increase in sea level following the Last Glacial Maximum. 
 
 “The Sicilian Channel is one of the shallow shelves of the central Mediterranean region where the consequences of changing sea-level were most dramatic and intense,” the researchers wrote. 
 
 Photos: Diving Into a Mediterranean Shipwreck 
 
 During the Last Glacial Maximum, the Adventure Plateau — the shallowest, north-western sector of the Sicilian Channel — was connected to Sicily, forming a broad peninsula that was separated from the North African coastline by about 30 miles. 
 
 “The gradual increase of the sea level caused the flooding of most of the peninsula, with the exception of some morphological highs that, until at least the Early Holocene, formed an archipelago of several islands separated by stretches of extremely shallow sea,” the researchers said. 
 
 One of those islands was the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, where the massive monolith was found and where an ancient civilization thrived. These ancient people possibly colonized and settled the various islands of the archipelago, attracted by a suitable climate and a geographical position between Europe and Africa. 
 
 Everything ended about 9,500 years ago, when, according to the post-glacial curve of sea-level change for the Italian coasts, seawater submerged Pantelleria Vecchia Bank. 
 
 Fossilized Elephant Tusk Found on Seafloor 
 
 “This discovery reveals the technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants in the Sicilian Channel region,” Lodolo told Discovery News. 
 
 He noted that the monolith, which weights about 15 tons, was made of a single, large block that required cutting, extraction, transportation and installation. 
 
 “Such an effort undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering,” Lodolo said. 
 
 It is not known what the monolith’s fuction was or whether it was part of a large complex. 
 
 “Most likely the structure was functional to the settlement. These people were used to fishing and trading with the neighboring islands,” Lodolo said. 
 
 “It could have been some sort of a lighthouse or an anchoring system, for example,” he added. 
 
 Stone Mystery in Sea of Galilee 
 
 The most famous archaeological discovery of Mesolithic age is the monumental temple complex of Göbekli Tepe, in south-eastern Turkey. Excavated by a German team in the 1960s, the site has been dated to about 11,600 years ago and is believed to have been a religious center or sanctuary serving a well-organized settlement. 
 
 “Almost everything that we do know about prehistoric cultures derives from settlements that are now on land. On the contrary, an extensive archaeological record of early settlings lies on the sea-floor of our continental shelves,” Lodolo said. 
 
 “If we want to trace the origins of civilization in the Mediterranean region, we must focus on the now-submerged shelf areas,” he added. 
 
 Images: A: Full view of the monolith; B: monolithic’s end with the hole; C: monolithic’s hole. Credit: Emanuele Lodolo ||||| Ocean scientists have just announced the discovery of a huge prehistoric monolith off the coast of Sicily. The monument is on it’s side now, but would have been around 12 m tall. It’s located about 60 km south of Sicily under 40 meters of water. But that’s not what’s interesting about it. What’s most interesting is the sheer age of the thing, with most indicators pointing to it being ~10,000 years old. This predates farming, writing and civilisation as we know it. 
 
 At this time that area of the sea would have been….well, not sea. Which explains how people got their prehistoric monolith there. The prehistoric monolith appears to have been cut out of nearby rock as one piece and dragged to its current location. And how do we know it was dragged and not simply a natural formation? The discoverers point to the regularity of its shape, along with regular holes carved into the thing at regular intervals. Regularity is the hallmark of humans. We like things to be neat. 
 
 But how do we know this prehistoric monolith really is 10,000 years old? Unfortunately no artefacts were found with the rock that could be dated. Instead the discoverers had to rely on estimating when sea levels would have submerged the site. It had to be at least that old. Or it could be much older. Or our data on sea levels might be imperfect (which it kind of is). As such, you should probably take the date with a pinch of salt. 
 
 Yet even if we assumed it really was that old, why is this significant? Well, it’s because a fairly hefty population would likely be needed to move such a piece of rock. Large populations are rather hard to sustain on a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for extended periods. With farming and cities and all that it’s no issue, but if you’re trying to live off the land it can be a bit tricky. 
 
 So the fact they were able to have all these people living together for however long was needed might suggest they were already shifting towards our modern way of life. And it’s not the only case of hunter-gatherers making this shift. Göbekli Tepe is another prehistoric, pre-civilisation monument that was created by people in this “transitional” period (complete with its own prehistoric monolith). 
 
 Except Göbekli Tepe is located in the Middle East, where farming and all that stuff eventually developed. So it makes sense that proto-farmers might be living in the region at that point. As far as we know nobody invented farming in Sicily. In fact, as far as we can tell when farming did arrive in continental Europe, it did so because it was imported from the people living near Göbekli Tepe. 
 
 So what’s actually interesting about this find is the implication that many different groups were en-route to developing our modern way of life. What was it that was driving so many people, so far apart in the same direction? 
 
 I don’t have an answer for that last question, but I’m ruddy curious. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a clue. 
 
 Reference 
 
 Lodolo, E., & Ben-Avraham, Z. (2015). A submerged prehistoric monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity.Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 3, 398-407.
– Archaeologists have made quite the find off the coast of Sicily: a monolith that dates back about 10,000 years. It's broken in two now and on its side, but the block would have stood nearly 40 feet tall in its heyday, before a massive flood submerged it (along with its home island) some 9,500 years ago. The find is intriguing because of its age, explains a post at Evoanth. It predates "civilization as we know it," but the monolith clearly would have required a large number of people working on it—it weighs an estimated 15 tons—suggesting "they were already shifting towards our modern way of life." Indeed, the researchers write, "The monolith found, made of a single, large block, required a cutting, extraction, transportation, and installation, which undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering." As with Stonehenge, the monolith's purpose is unclear, but archaeologists are certain it's manmade because of the work that went into it—including three holes of similar size, "one at its end which passes through from part to part, the others in two of its sides. ... There are no reasonable known natural processes that may produce these elements," they write in the Journal of Archaeological Science. One of the researchers tells Discovery it might have been part of a lighthouse or an "anchoring system" of some kind. More hunts at similar areas in the Mediterranean could shed more light on the origins of civilization there, he adds. (Another new archaeological find drawing comparisons to Stonehenge is in Britain.)