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Cantre'r Gwaelod (Cantref y Gwaelod)

Evidence at last?

The Welsh legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, a lost land sunken below Cardigan Bay, has persisted for almost a millennium.

First written about in the mid-13th Century, it is likely the myths and legends surrounding the Welsh Atlantis date from long before that.
Yet there has never been any definitive geographical evidence for the mythical land… until now, perhaps.
A medieval map has been uncovered which depicts two islands off the Ceredigion coast - now lost to history.
Simon Haslett, honorary professor of physical geography at Swansea University, went in search of lost islands in Cardigan Bay while he was a visiting fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.
Along with David Willis, Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford, they have presented evidence of two islands depicted on a medieval map, each about a quarter the size of Anglesey.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-62605682

GoughMap.jpg


The Gough Map:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Map

Site dedicated to the Gough Map (digital & searchable):

http://www.goughmap.org/

maximus otter
 
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The coast line 26000 years ago would have been a lot further out. I remember seing a documentary on the 'Red Lady of Paviland' with graphics illustrating this. This all seems like a very long folk memory that kept on getting embellished, as they do.

From our friend wiki :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lady_of_Paviland

Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 110 km (70 miles) inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago, it was thought the "Red Lady" lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period, in the British Isles called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present-day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, −20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived during a warmer period.


Certainly, around Borth and Ynyslas, remains of ancient tree stumps are visible at extreme low tide,

I have a piece of it in my possession. :) I lived in the area for many year and one day was lucky enough to find a piece that had broken off and would only have been rolled back into the sea so I nabbed it!
 
Cantrer Gwaelod plays a huge part in The Silver on the Tree, the last in The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. That story retells the myth, and the two boys, Will and Bran enter the kingdom.

There are tales like this about lost lands (and mystery bells ringing) from all around the British Isles. We even tell similar stories about land lost to reservoir building, so maybe there's a part of our psyche that needs to remember these lost places?
 
Evidence at last?
The Welsh legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, a lost land sunken below Cardigan Bay, has persisted for almost a millennium. ...

Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published research report. The full research report (PDF format) is accessible at the link below.


Haslett, S. K., & Willis, D. (2022).
The ‘lost’ islands of Cardigan Bay, Wales, UK: insights into the post-glacial evolution of some Celtic coasts of northwest Europe.
Atlantic Geoscience, 58, 131–146.
https://doi.org/10.4138/atlgeo.2022.005

Abstract

A 13th –14th-century map held in the Bodleian Library (the Gough Map and the oldest map of Great Britain) shows two ‘lost’ islands in Cardigan Bay offshore west Wales, United Kingdom. This study investigates historical sources, alongside geological and bathymetric evidence, and proposes a model of post-glacial coastal evolution that provides an explanation for the ‘lost’ islands and a hypothetical framework for future research: (1) during the Pleistocene, Irish Sea ice occupied the area from the north and west, and Welsh ice from the east, (2) a landscape of unconsolidated Pleistocene deposits developed seaward of a relict pre-Quaternary cliffline with a land surface up to ca. 30 m above present sea-level, (3) erosion proceeded along the lines of a template provided by a retreating shoreline affected by Holocene sea-level rise, shore-normal rivers, and surface run-off from the relict cliffline and interfluves, (4) dissection established islands occupying cores of the depositional landscape, and (5) continued down-wearing, marginal erosion and marine inundation(s) removed the two remaining islands by the 16th century. Literary evidence and folklore traditions provide support in that Cardigan Bay is associated with the ‘lost’ lowland of Cantre’r Gwaelod. The model offers potential for further understanding post-glacial evolution of similar lowlands along northwest European coastlines.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/ag/article/view/32596
 
This new Live Science article covers much the same as the ones cited earlier. However, it also includes comments from relevant scholars about the possibility the Gough Map indeed illustrates the locations of the legendary lost islands.

Medieval map of Britain may reveal evidence of mythological islands
https://www.livescience.com/lost-islands-mythical-landscape-wales
 
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