'Reconstruction' begins of stone age lands lost to North Sea

'Reconstruction' begins of stone age lands lost to North Sea(theguardian.com)

38 points by antigizmo 7 years ago | 6 comments

gumby 7 years ago |

This is pretty interesting!

Presumably the sea level rose slowly, so nobody lost their lives. Yes, technically “catastrophic”, in the sense of comprehensively wiping everything out, but not rapid onset.

I was told by a geologist that the SF Bay Area coastline used to be a few hundred meters further west than it is now, and was also inhabited. However that region sank beneath the waves in an earthquake so likely that was a rapid catastrophe

8bitsrule 7 years ago | |

In another model, the inundation of Doggerland began with the'catastrophic release of water from a North American glacial lake'. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/

(In which case, the flooding might have been relatively fast.)

TheOtherHobbes 7 years ago | |

The area may have been inundated by one of the Storegga Slides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide

It's also a big patch of territory. It's not obvious how it worked politically, and how open surrounding areas would have been to exiles/refugees.

amayne 7 years ago |

Doggerland is one of my favorite historical subjects. It's really worth a deep dive if you're unfamiliar with it.

The TL:DR is that eight thousand years ago the UK and continental Europe were connected by land (now under the North Sea) that was probably inhabited by humans for thousands of years.

A lot of the ancient history of Europe could be under there. It's exciting to see it getting more attention.

dreen 7 years ago | |

Maybe the English custom of Dogging is a remote echo of Doggerlander traditions woven into the local culture. They must have all moved to UK to escape the flood.

Wildgoose 7 years ago |

It's also interesting that Eastern England, Frisia (coastal Netherlands), Denmark, etc. all surround Doggerland and Eastern England was probably occupied by related Germanic speakers at that time - the Frisian language is still the closest related language to English on the continent.

The Roman description of "The Saxon Shore" may simply because it was already inhabited by Angles and Saxons - the seas being the ancient world's highways.