Divers found stone tools off Western Australia that were drowned at least 9,000 years ago

Scientific divers working off the coast of Murujuga in north-western Australia have documented stone tools lying on the seabed at two sites that went under water at least 9,000 years ago, and the artifacts themselves may be considerably older. The sites, one built around a freshwater spring and another tied to a rocky hill beside an ancient river channel, were dry land when people used them.

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Flinders University led the work with partners that include the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and its Rangers, who took part in the dives and co-wrote the paper. The research adds to evidence that the landscape Aboriginal people lived on extended far beyond today’s shoreline.

Two drowned sites: a spring and a river-channel hill

The findings appear in a paper in Quaternary Science Reviews published Oct. 14, 2026, titled “Underwater archaeological discoveries demonstrate raw material selection and transport of stone artefacts: new evidence from the submerged cultural landscape of Murujuga, Western Australia”. According to the Flinders University release, the team documented two distinct sites. One centers on a freshwater spring that would have drawn people to gather there; the other is linked to a rocky hill overlooking an ancient river channel.

Stone artifacts are associated with the ancient spring. The release says the sites were submerged at least 9,000 years ago and that the artifacts could be considerably older, a distinction that matters because the date marks when the sea covered the ground, not when people last used it. The release does not give water depths, a total count of artifacts or a more precise age, so those details remain for the published paper.

Stone from Rosemary Island and the people who carried it

The tools also carry a story about movement. Some artifacts were made from stone sourced around Rosemary Island, about 23 kilometers from where they were found, which indicates that people selected particular raw material and carried it across the landscape. The paper’s title refers to exactly this: raw material selection and transport of stone artifacts. Rangers and archaeologists worked together at the submerged sites, and the link between a drowned find and a named island source is the evidence for transport. That connection is what makes the discovery more than a list of objects on the seabed: it shows people choosing stone, moving it across the landscape and using it at a place that the sea later covered.

Jonathan Benjamin, a professor at Flinders University and the lead researcher, is a marine archaeology specialist, and he said the collaboration shows the value of working beside trained Indigenous Rangers. Malik Churnside and Richard Variakojis of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation Rangers are co-authors who carried out scientific diver surveys and made some of the underwater discoveries.

Vincent Adams, director of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, said the cultural landscape extends far beyond the shoreline into Sea Country. He noted that the Ngarda-Ngarli people have cared for Murujuga for at least 50,000 years. The Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation’s World Heritage page says the landscape was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2025 and that the listing includes surrounding submerged landscapes and sea country, which makes the new underwater evidence part of the protected area’s story.

More than two million square kilometers lost to the sea

The scale of what disappeared is large. The release notes that more than 2 million square kilometers of Australia’s continental shelf was submerged as sea levels rose after the last Ice Age. Archaeologists have only begun to survey that former land. Finding stone tools in place beneath the sea shows that material from these early landscapes can survive, and it gives researchers a reason to look in other drowned places.

Earlier discoveries made the same point. The study builds on finds reported in 2020 and 2023 by the Deep History of Sea Country project. A 2020 report in PLOS ONE, as summarized by Popular Archaeology, described Cape Bruguieres, where 269 artifacts were mapped in shallow water down to 2.4 meters below modern sea level, and Flying Foam Passage, which includes a freshwater spring 14 meters below sea level, with ages of at least 7,000 and 8,500 years respectively. The latest work reaches back further, to sites submerged at least 9,000 years ago, and it moves from simply locating drowned camps to reading how people chose and moved their stone. Updates on the wider effort are posted on the Deep History of Sea Country project website, which tracks the surveys that produced these discoveries.

The research was funded by the Australian Research Council through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, and the authors declared no competing interests. Partner institutions include the University of Western Australia, James Cook University and the University of York in Britain, an international group that reflects how much of the work depends on divers, geologists and traditional custodians sharing one set of questions.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.