Findings in Ohrid have been dated to between 6,000 and 8,000 years old.

Wooden posts discovered in Lake Ohrid, on the Albanian side, are the submerged remains of a prehistoric village dating back 6,000 to 8,000 years the oldest lakeside settlement in Europe.

Swiss and Albanian archaeologists spend hours each day at a depth of three meters, retrieving the wooden piles that once supported the homes.

They also collect bones from domestic and wild animals, bronze objects, and clay vessels engraved with patterns remnants of a community of dozens or even hundreds of inhabitants who hunted and fished but relied mainly on agriculture.

A drone image shows the underwater excavation site (Reuters)

“Because it lies underwater, the organic material is well preserved, which allows us to examine what these people ate and what they cultivated,” Albert Hafner of the University of Bern, a member of the research team, told Reuters.

Previous studies have repeatedly shown that Lake Ohrid which is shared by Albania and North Macedoniais by far the oldest lake in Europe, more than one million years old.

The new findings are at least half a millennium older than prehistoric lakeside settlements in the Alps and the Mediterranean, the archaeologists reported.

A section of a wooden post recovered from the bottom of Lake Ohrid (Reuters)

The wooden remains were dated using carbon-14 analysis and dendrochronology, which is based on measuring tree growth rings.

The settlement is estimated to have covered around 60 acres, but only about 1% has been explored so far. Archaeologists believe that a full investigation will take decades.