I thought I knew the story of the "lost world" off the east coast of Britain, inhabited by Mesolithic people until rising sea waters engulfed it around 8,000 years ago...
But I didn't know about the *tsunami*.
Holy hell.
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(Image: bigissue.com/opinion/discov…)
What follows is my imperfect grasp of things. Imperfect because I'm just an enthusiast who likes science - and also imperfect because, excitingly, *the work is happening right now*, in one of the greatest prehistoric archaeological investigations in history.
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One September night in 1931, the British vessel Colinda hauled up its nets 25 miles off the Norfolk coast - and found something beautiful & deadly.
Embedded in a lump of peat was this 8.5 inch prehistoric harpoon, carved from bone or antler...
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The harpoon was radiocarbon dated in 1988 to around 11,950–11,300 BC.
Pollen from samples dredged up by the same trawler suggested ancient mixed woodland.
At one time, there was land down there - and it seemed to be inhabited.
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(Pics: heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details…)
This lost landmass is now called Doggerland, after the Dogger sandbank, 60 miles off the English coast.
"Dogger," btw, is from a type of 17thC Dutch vessel that trawled there - & not from...the subject of that famous sketch in Peter Kay's "Car Share".
Let's move on.
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At its height (depth? one or the other), Doggerland was enormous - stretching from England to Norway.
Worth considering: the modern UK is the uplands of Doggerland. Where do people tend to live? In the lowlands, where food's easier to get.
(Image: bigissue.com/opinion/discov…)
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The Mesolithic people of Doggerland were hunter-gatherers. But that's maybe a deceptive term.
The extraordinary North Yorkshire site of Star Carr seems to be a Mesolithic seasonal settlement: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Carr
What other settlements existed? How many?
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The people to ask are the Lost Frontiers team (@LostFrontiersBD) based out of Bradford.
They've been mapping the traces of lost rivers, coastlines, plains and estuaries of Doggerland, all still down there under the sediment:
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I'm also making an attempt to write about all of this soon, in my own clumsy & pathetically excitable way.
Sign up for free here if you want in!
everythingisamazing.substack.com
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Doggerland must have seemed like a paradise compared to the starker uplands: food from the coast, food from rivers, deer, wild boar, berries, birds, otters, beavers...
Sure, the sea seemed to be creeping inland a bit more ever year, but hey - let future folk sort it out!
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Generation after generation, Doggerland was nibbled away by the rising North Sea.
Did Mesolithic people have stories about times when life was easier? Who knows.
But there certainly wasn't any ignoring what happened next.
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(Image: bbc.com/news/science-e…)
One terrible day, the edge of Norway's continential shelf collapsed, creating a 180-mile-long underwater landslide.
Hundreds of cubic miles of moving debris pushed against the sea, sending colossal waves in all directions...
And one descended on the remnants of Doggerland.
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The name of this event is the STOREGGA SLIDE.
And yes, that is *another* epic name for a band, just like this one:
Geology may literally be rock, but it's clearly metal as well.
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After the slow ravages of rising seas, was anyone still living in the now-islands of Doggerland on this day?
Unclear! cambridge.org/core/journals/…
But it's a safe bet there were many people along coastlines, perhaps in settlements like Star Carr.
Very, very bad news for them.
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It seems in places the tsunami swept up to *25 miles* inland, pounding down river valleys and across plains...
theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/d…
It must have seemed like the end of the world.
And for many Mesolithic people, I'm sure it was.
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Eventually the floodwaters receded. This wasn't rapid sea-level rise. What really did in Doggerland was the creep of climate change - and it took thousands of years.
But if you were living here at this time, the tsunami must have been horrifying beyond belief. Words fail.
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Now Doggerland is faced with a different threat: the race for clean energy (newly accelerated by certain geopolitical factors).
Necessary and important work! Bring it on. But - do it *carefully*:
theguardian.com/science/2022/m…
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I'll wrap up this thread for the basest of reasons: I don't want to miss my window to go pick up fish'n'chips. #unprofessional #honest
But I'll be attempting to write all this up soon in my newsletter. Subscribe here:
everythingisamazing.substack.com
Thanks for reading!
And of course, this story is timely in ways it really shouldn't be. As we look back, we're also looking forward - to one of the great global challenges of the 21st Century & beyond.
(Via nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerlan…)
And if this whole flooded-archaeology thing makes your heart beat faster, please enjoy this taster on the lost (but perhaps *just* about to be rediscovered) medieval port of Ravenser Odd, courtesy of @FlorenceHRScott:
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