Digging for Britain reveals secrets of Isle of Wight site

In DNA tests on sea bed sediment, from under the water off Bouldnor, a signal for wheat was picked up - dating two thousand years earlier than the agricultural grain was thought to be in the area.

Scroll down for a link to watch the BBC show...

8,000 years ago, when people were living there, the site used to be dry land.

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Photo by the Maritime Archaeology Trust.

Now, it is covered by 11 metres of water, one kilometre east of Yarmouth, in the Solent Maritime Special Area of Conservation.

Excavations have been underway since it was first identified as a prehistoric forest, in the 1980s.

In 1998, when the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (now the Maritime Archaeology Trust) began investigating, worked flints were found.

A wooden walkway was discovered in 2019.

Now, the newest findings from the Mesolithic site, which dates to the Middle Stone Age, have revealed even more about the people who lived there.

A sediment survey, taken on a dive, has undergone DNA analysis at Warwick University.

Among the findings were a preserved oak leaf, animal remains, plants and twigs.

The most surprising find was that wheat appeared to be present.

Previously, it was thought hunter gatherers did not become farmers until around 2,000 years later.

As a result of the find, investigations continue into what that means for the history of human development.

• Watch the show, presented by Dr Alice Roberts, HERE

​Dr Alice Roberts in a photo by the BBC.

The submerged Mesolithic site is the only one like it in the UK and is one of just seven key archaeological sites identified to be under threat of fast erosion.