The early history of Stone Age settlement and salt mining in the Alpine region is still not yet fully understood. Also, there is a lack of reliable observational data on past environmental and climatic conditions, and frequencies and impacts of meteorological and geological extreme events of that time, that are needed to holistically understand past environmental-human-environmental interactions. A team of researchers from the University of Innsbruck, the Natural History Museum Vienna, the GFZ - German Research Centre for Geosciences and the University of Bern has now, for the first time, used an innovative hydraulic coring system to recover over 50 long sediment cores from Lake Hallstatt, gaining unprecedented scientific samples, that will provide unique insights into the early development of one of the oldest cultural landscapes in the world. The 6-week drilling campaign was successfully completed today.