ROME, March 21: Italian archaeologists announced on Thursday the “extraordinary discovery” of a “Bronze Age Venice” in southern Italy full of canals and huts built on stilts that was wiped out by a flood 3,500 years ago.

“There are many elements that make it unique,” Professor Renato Peroni said at a news conference. “For one, it is the first finding of a swamp community, with the discovery of stilt houses and a drainage system.”

Some 700 people were thought to live in the “important river port village” between 1500 BC and 600 BC when a flood swept over the town. Studies indicate that the survivors likely founded the ancient Roman city of Pompeii a few kilometres away.

Pottery, amber carvings and wooden beams from huts were just a few of the finds uncovered in the village.

At most sites around Europe, all that is left of Bronze Age villages are holes in the ground where huts used to stand, making the discovery of wooden beams especially significant.

Other Bronze Age villages have also been discovered in the area, including a community that was preserved in volcanic ash many centuries before Pompeii suffered the same fate, earning it the name “Bronze Age Pompeii”.

But the discovery that this village, on a muddy riverbank near the present-day town of Poggiomarino, south of Naples, was built on a swamp using sophisticated drainage and building techniques sets it apart.

“This shows that already in the late Bronze Age the inhabitants of Poggiomarino were aware of these sophisticated construction techniques,” Peroni said.

Nearby Pompeii, one of Italy’s top tourist destinations, was destroyed centuries later by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, killing an estimated 2,000 people and freezing the once-bustling commercial town under a sea of ash.—AFP