Off the coast of the village of Atlit lies Atlit Yam, a submerged Neolithic settlement located off the Atlit coast in present-day Israel.

The site, which dates between 6900 and 6300 BC, is approximately 10 meters below current sea level and covers an area of 40,000 square meters.

Tectonic tilting and climatic changes caused swamps along the Israeli coastal plain to dry up at the start of the Holocene. The reclaimed land along the retreating shoreline was settled by Neolithic peoples during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNB) and later Pottery Neolithic Periods, until a eustatic rise in ocean sea levels submerged the ancient settlements to a depth of 8-12 meters beneath the surface.

Atlit Yam was settled around 6900 BC, with the inhabitants surviving on agro-pastoral-marine subsistence.

Scientists believe that Atlit-Yam was abandoned abruptly as a result of a tsunami that hit the region, most likely caused by a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean area.

Archaeologists were particularly interested in the discovery of two skeletons, one of a woman and one of a child, which revealed the earliest known cases of tuberculosis.