Pantelleria Vecchia Bank Monolith
A 12-metre limestone block resting at a depth of about 40 metres on the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank in the Sicilian Channel, roughly 60 km south of Sicily. During the Last Glacial Maximum this bank stood above water as part of a land bridge toward Sicily; rising seas submerged it around 9,300 years ago. In 2015 marine geologists Emanuele Lodolo and Zvi Ben-Avraham reported the block as human-modified — citing its regular elongated shape and three similar circular holes, one passing entirely through the stone — and proposed it was quarried from a nearby ridge and stood upright as a menhir before the area drowned. Archaeologist Sebastiano Tusa challenged that reading the same year, and a 2024 study (Galili et al., Journal of Marine Science and Engineering) argued for a natural origin: beachrock detached and displaced by coastal erosion and storms, with the holes formed by bioerosion and weathering. No artifacts have been recovered from the surrounding seabed, so the case currently rests on the shapes of the features themselves. The debate over whether Mesolithic people raised it remains unresolved.
Walkthrough videos (1)
Submerged Monolith · Sicilian ChannelMegalithHunter