The researchers who raised two ancient dugout canoes submerged in Madison's Lake Mendota announced Thursday they had discovered fragments or chunks of at least eight more canoes in the lake, an astonishing finding that promised to shed light on millennia of Native history in Wisconsin.

The oldest is from approximately 4,500 years ago, the oldest ever discovered in the Great Lakes region. The prior two canoes, lifted from the lake in 2021 and 2022, were 1,200 years old and 3,000 years old. The latter was previously touted as the oldest in the region.

The canoes are buried along what archaeologists believe was an ancient shoreline where people stored their canoes. The discoveries also lend credence to their theory that artifacts of an entire flooded village could lie at the bottom of the lake.

Maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen of the Wisconsin Historical Society discovered the first canoe accidentally while scuba diving. When she found the second, researchers began to suspect more canoes could be buried. Divers discovered a third canoe resting beneath the second one, state archaeologist Amy Rosebrough said.

Researchers began looking more closely; divers scanned the bottom of the lake frequently.

"It was becoming clear that we weren't just looking at one canoe that had sunk, or two canoes — that we had an assemblage, and they might not all be the same," Rosebrough said.

In fact, it was an entire archaeological site that is offering new insights into ancient people's lives, especially from the oldest canoes, dated to the Late Archaic period.

"We had guessed that people were traveling by dugout throughout this period, but this is absolute proof of it," she said.

The 10 canoes may actually be 11. Carbon dating tests offer a margin of error for the age of an artifact, and three fragments found near each other, all made of white oak, returned similar results. They could be part of one canoe or from two canoes from the same time period, Rosebrough said.

Researchers are awaiting further analysis of wood fragments to determine a final count.

Carbon dating shows a huge range in time between the other canoes. The oldest, made of elm, dates to 2500 B.C. The most recent, of red oak, dates to A.D. 1250, which is a little less than 800 years ago.

Archaeologists believe that communities would have deliberately sunk their canoes in shallow water just offshore in the fall to preserve them through the winter, returning to them in spring. They were likely buried deeper over time as the shoreline was changed by drought and floods.

The canoes span millennia of human progress and give clues to shifts in the environment. The four oldest canoes — the ones from the Late Archaic period — were used when nomadic hunter-gatherers lived in seasonal communities and southern Wisconsin was covered in savanna and prairie. The oldest canoe being made of elm aligns with the prairie ecosystem of the time, Rosebrough said.

Rosebrough put the oldest canoe in striking context: "You are 2,000 years before farming. There's no gardening; it's 2,000 years in the future. They're 2,000 years before the first burial mound is built."

Two are from the Middle Woodland period. Early farming communities, pottery and burial mounds had already been established, and trade networks were expanding. Some communities were staying in the area long-term. Pockets of forest began to regrow after periods of severe drought. Canoes made of oak signify a closed-canopy forest.

Three — possibly four — canoes are from the Late Woodland period, when corn farming and effigy mounds were prevalent. The most recent, from the Oneota period, is marked by the establishment of permanent farming towns.

Life then was markedly different from 2500 B.C., but people were canoeing on the same lake in much the same way they had been, Rosebrough said.

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