Wisconsin historians recently announced the discovery of at least 11 ancient canoes on Badger State lakes, including one vessel that dates back to 2500 B.C.
The findings were announced May 23 in a Wisconsin Historical Society press release.
The canoe was found on Lake Mendota, just outside Madison.
The Wisconsin Historical Society explained that two ancient canoes were discovered in a cache on the lake in 2021 and 2022.
Since then, historians have discovered at least 11 ancient canoes along the ancient coast that appear to have been submerged over time.
Not all canoes are removed from the lake because they are fragile.
In an interview with Fox News Digital on Wednesday, Dr. Amy Rosebrough, an archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society, explained the significance of the discovery.
“Native peoples in Wisconsin and across the United States actively engaged in fishing, traveling and trading on inland lakes and rivers, but their canoes in the Great Lakes region have not been well studied,” she explained.
“In modern terms, it’s like trying to understand life in the Midwest without ever seeing a real pickup truck. Canoes allowed people to fish in deeper lakes, carry goods hundreds of miles away, and travel farther.”
Rosebrough added that he believes there are ruins of an ancient village beneath the lake that have yet to be discovered. Divers have found stone tools in the lake, and experts believe there are many other hidden ruins beneath it.
“But Lake Mendota is a difficult lake to work on,” Rosebrough acknowledged.
“Because visibility times for submersible missions are limited, we are investigating non-destructive remote sensing techniques that may be useful this summer.”
“Even though we didn’t find a village, the discovery of these canoes and a tool found inside the first canoe, a human-made stone tool called a net sinker, reminds us that people have been living and working near the lake for thousands of years.”
Radiocarbon dating has revealed that the oldest canoe dates back to 2500 BC, around the time Stonehenge was built.
The canoe was built over 1,700 years before the first Roman settlement and 2,500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
The canoes all vary in age, with the most recent dating back to 1250AD.
The archaeologists explained that the canoe “may have been deliberately hidden underwater during the winter – a standard practice to protect canoes from freezing and deformation.”
“This practice of storing canoes for the winter may have been carried out in more or less the same place for generations, perhaps because of nearby settlements, or perhaps what we’re seeing is merely a window onto a much larger area that spans much of the lakeshore,” she explained.
Rosebrough added that while Lake Mendota is small compared to the Great Lakes, the south-central Wisconsin lake is huge when it comes to archaeological potential.
“The Great Lakes often get a lot of funding for maritime archaeology, but even smaller lakes like Lake Mendota have their own unique histories and stories to tell us about the people who lived here hundreds and thousands of years ago,” she said.
“We are proud to partner with Wisconsin Native American tribes to discover all we can about Tea-Waksicominack and share these stories now and in the future at the new Wisconsin History Center, scheduled to open in early 2027.”
