Divers are still excavating at the
site at the bottom of the Solent
The Isle of Wight was then the highest point of a chalk ridge stretching out along the south coast with valleys
on either sides.
After the ice cap - which had covered most of northern Europe - melted, the sea levels started to rise and the settlement was swamped and buried under the sea.
In the process, silt formed on top and preserved both tools, such as flint knives and scrapers, as well as charcoal, worked pieces of wood, nuts and other organic material, which would have disappeared on land.
"It's called the Stone Age because, on land, we find stones from this period but under water a whole lot more survives," Mr Momber said.
"I believe these people were far more sophisticated than we give them credit for."
Among the discoveries are wooden poles and structures believed to have been used to build houses and canoes.
"The reason so little is known about the lives of the Mesolithic people, is because most of the sites where they settled are now on the seabed," Mr Momber added.
A wooded pole with a flint knife
embedded in it was found in 2004
"The whole of the North Sea could be covered in sites like this one.
"If we want to understand the Mesolithic people - how they went from hunter-gatherers to farming - we need
to look under the water."
