Long-Lost City of Drunkenness, Wealth and Impiety Hidden Under the Sea

The long-lost city of Rungholt, said to have been buried beneath the waves as punishment for its hedonistic ways, has now been mapped by archaeologists.

The ancient city, sometimes called the "Atlantis of the North Sea," was found off the north coast of Germany by researchers, having been submerged around the year A.D. 1362.

So the legend goes, Rungholt was notorious for its abundance of pleasures, leading its inhabitants to sinful ways, including drunkenness, impiety, and the flaunting of wealth, the Times reports. These sins came to a head one Christmas, when a group of drunk youths tried to make a priest give a pig the last sacrament at a local inn. The priest prayed to God, asking for the youths to be punished, and per the stories, the very next day, a storm arrived and wiped Rungholt from the map.

The existence of Rungholt has long been debated, but researchers from Kiel University, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, and the State Archaeology Department of Schleswig-Holstein, recently found remains of a church—thought to have been originally in the center of the lost city—within mudflats in the North Frisian Wadden Sea.

"We discovered the church during one week of fieldwork this May, when we were following a row of terps (hidden beneath recent tidal flat sediments) by geophysical prospection," Hannah Hadler, an archaeologist with the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz's Institute of Geography and part of the Rungholt research team, told Newsweek.

A terp is an artificial dwelling mound found in northern Europe and used to provide safe ground during storm surges, high tides and flooding.

"The church was on one of the newly discovered terps, but there were no other buildings around it," Hadler said. "This is not surprising, as other churches in North Frisia are also placed on a terp of their own. We knew that we found the remains of a church by its characteristic foundation with an angular structure in the west, where the tower was probably located, and a round structure in the east (the apse)."

"Compared to other large churches in the region, we saw that our remains were also of the right dimension. We then confirmed our assumption by coring and small excavations that—among others—revealed brick fragments," she said.

Prior to this discovery, there was no solid evidence that previous findings in the area were related to Rungholt. Now, the church and other discoveries point strongly towards this area being the location of the lost hedonistic city.

"What we can say is that all so far known settlement remains—terps, dikes, tidal gates—are of enormous size and the archaeological finds from the tidal flats show a wealthy and certainly important settlement involved in international maritime trade," Hadler previously told Newsweek.

She said: "Our new results—the new 2-kilometer [1.2-mile] row of terps and the central large church—further emphasize the importance but certainly also [the] wealth of the settlement. So, from our point of view, it is highly likely that the settlement is Rungholt."

As with many traces of the past, there are a number of threats facing the preservation of the remains.

"So far, the remains are covered by tidal flat sediment and protected against further erosion," Hadler said. "However, the geophysical image of the terp already shows strong signs of erosion and it is probably sheer luck that this site actually survived more than 600 years in the tidal flats."

"From nearby sites we see that everyday tidal dynamics, i.e. waves, tides, storms, meandering tidal inlets, may cause severe erosion within a few decades or even years. It is thus nearly impossible to prevent the remains from long-term erosion, which increases the need for a detailed investigation of the site."

Do you have a science story to share with Newsweek? Do you have a question about Rungholt? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.