• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Sunken Antiquity: Ancient Sites Flooded By Rising Sea Levels

rynner said:
Lost world warning from North Sea
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education

Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea.
This lost landscape, where hunter-gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6584011.stm

Hidden Doggerland underworld uncovered in North Sea

A huge area of land which was swallowed up into the North Sea thousands of years ago has been recreated and put on display by scientists.
Doggerland was an area between Northern Scotland, Denmark and the Channel Islands.
It was believed to have been home to tens of thousands of people before it disappeared underwater.

Now its history has been pieced together by artefacts recovered from the seabed and displayed in London.
The 15-year-project has involved St Andrews, Dundee and Aberdeen universities.
The results are on display at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London until 8 July.

The story behind Doggerland, a land that was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC, has been organised by Dr Richard Bates at St Andrews University.
Dr Bates, a geophysicist, said "Doggerland was the real heartland of Europe until sea levels rose to give us the UK coastline of today.
"We have speculated for years on the lost land's existence from bones dredged by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it's only since working with oil companies in the last few years that we have been able to re-create what this lost land looked like.

"When the data was first being processed, I thought it unlikely to give us any useful information, however as more area was covered it revealed a vast and complex landscape.
"We have now been able to model its flora and fauna, build up a picture of the ancient people that lived there and begin to understand some of the dramatic events that subsequently changed the land, including the sea rising and a devastating tsunami."

The scientists have made an interactive video where visitors can view how the land might have looked.
Ancient tree stumps, flint used by humans and the fossilised remains of a mammoth helped form a picture of how the landscape may have looked.
Researchers also used geophysical modelling of data from oil and gas companies.

Findings suggest a picture of a land with hills and valleys, large swamps and lakes with major rivers dissecting a convoluted coastline.
As the sea rose the hills would have become an isolated archipelago of low islands.

By examining the fossil record (such as pollen grains, microfauna and macrofauna) the researchers could tell what kind of vegetation grew in Doggerland and what animals roamed there.
Using this information, they were able to build up a model of the "carrying capacity" of the land and work out roughly how many humans could have lived there.

The research team is currently investigating more evidence of human behaviour, including possible human burial sites, intriguing standing stones and a mass mammoth grave.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-e ... e-18687504
 
Why 'Doggerland'?
Is it because Britain is noted for its dogging?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Why 'Doggerland'?

From the shallow Dogger Bank in the North Sea (which would have been one of the last places to sink beneath the waves).

It's best known now for the Shipping Forecast sea area - "Dogger, Fisher, German Bight..."
 
Check a book called Atlantis Of The North by Jurgen Spanuth published in 1979.
 
Lost city of Heracleion gives up its secrets
A lost ancient Egyptian city submerged beneath the sea 1,200 years ago is starting to reveal what life was like in the legendary port of Thonis-Heracleion.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
7:20AM BST 28 Apr 2013

For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned in Homer, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea.
In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs.

The city, also called Thonis, disappeared beneath the Mediterranean around 1,200 years ago and was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade.
Now its life at the heart of trade routes in classical times are becoming clear, with researchers forming the view that the city was the main customs hub through which all trade from Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean entered Egypt.

They have discovered the remains of more than 64 ships buried in the thick clay and sand that now covers the sea bed. Gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone have also been found, hinting at the trade that went on.
Giant 16 foot statues have been uncovered and brought to the surface while archaeologists have found hundreds of smaller statues of minor gods on the sea floor.
Slabs of stone inscribed in both ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian have also been brought to the surface.

Dozens of small limestone sarcophagi were also recently uncovered by divers and are believed to have once contained mummified animals, put there to appease the gods.

Dr Damian Robinson, director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford, who is part of the team working on the site, said: “It is a major city we are excavating.
“The site has amazing preservation. We are now starting to look at some of the more interesting areas within it to try to understand life there.
“We are getting a rich picture of things like the trade that was going on there and the nature of the maritime economy in the Egyptian late period. There were things were coming in from Greece and the Phoenicians.
“We have hundreds of small statues of gods and we are trying to find where the temples to these gods were in the city.
“The ships are really interesting as it is the biggest number of ancient ships found in one place and we have found over 700 ancient anchors so far.”

The researchers, working with German TV documentary makers, have also created a three dimensional reconstruction of the city.
At its heart was a huge temple to the god Amun-Gereb, the supreme god of the Egyptians at the time.
From this stretched a vast network of canals and channels, which allowed the city to become the most important port in the Mediterranean at the time.

Last month archaeologists from around the world gathered at the University of Oxford to discuss the discoveries starting to emerge from the treasures found in Heracleion, named for Hercules, who legend claimed had been there.
It was also mentioned fleetingly in ancient texts.

Dr Robinson said: “It was the major international trading port for Egypt at this time. It is where taxation was taken on import and export duties. All of this was run by the main temple.”

Submerged under 150 feet of water, the site sits in what is now the Bay of Aboukir. In the 8th Century BC, when the city is thought to have been built, it would have sat at the mouth of the River Nile delta as it opened up into the Mediterranean.

Scientists still have little idea what caused the city to slip into the water nearly 1,000 years later, but it is thought that gradual sea level rise combined with a sudden collapse of the unstable sediment the city was built on caused the area to drop by around 12 feet.
Over time the city faded from memory and its existence, along with other lost settlements along the coast, was only known from a few ancient texts.

French underwater archaeologist Dr Franck Goddio was the first to rediscover the city while doing surveying of the area while looking for French warships that sank there in the 18 century battle of the Nile.
When divers began sifting down through the thick layers of sand and mud, they could barely believe what they found.

The archaeological evidence is simply overwhelming,” said Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford has also been taking part in the excavation.
“By lying untouched and protected by sand on the sea floor for centuries they are brilliantly preserved.”
The researchers now also hope that they may even find some sarcophagi used to bury humans in some of the outlying areas around the sunken city.

“The discoveries enhance the importance of the specific location of the city standing at the 'Mouth of the Sea of the Greek’,” said Dr Goddio, who has led the excavation.
“We are just at the beginning of our research. We will probably have to continue working for the next 200 years for Thonis-Heracleion to be fully revealed and understood.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... crets.html

Several photos on page, and German TV listing!
 
Exhibition explores 4,000 year old Penzance fossil forest uncovered by storms
7:00am Thursday 27th March 2014 in News .

The Penlee Gallery and Museum will be featuring an exhibition about Penzance’s 4,000 year old fossil forest.
The exhibition is part of Penzance 400: A Celebration of the History of Penzance and its Charter of Incorporation in May 1614.

Supported by Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the Cornwall Geoconservation Group it also coincides with the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall in Penzance in 1814 which published early descriptions of the Mount’s Bay ‘submerged forest’.

The relentless storms of January and February uncovered evidence of the most extensive submerged forest in Cornwall.
On the beaches around Penzance between Long Rock and Wherry Town, well-preserved 4000 year old sub-fossil tree trunks, rooted stumps and branches were uncovered by the waves, and pine cones and hazel nuts washed out of peat beds.

From medieval times onwards the occasional exposure of the remains of this submerged forest has fueled local mythology, notably tales connected with the lost land of Lyonesse.
The Cornish name for nearby St Michaels Mount, Karrek Loos y’n Koos, meaning “grey rock in the forest”, has been considered to refer to folk memory recounting the time when forests extended across Mount’s Bay, or perhaps [it was] conceived during medieval times to explain the drowned forest remains seen around Penzance.

Frank Howie, chairman of the Cornwall Geocorservation Group said: "The fossil forest exhibit was planned early this year as part of the PZ 400 celebration – before the severe winter storms re-exposed long-buried peat beds, tree stump and trunks on Wherry Town and Chyandour beaches – and newly collected specimens have been used to help explain the origin of this spectacular site’’.

"This new exhibition covers the history of the discovery of the forest, the part it has played in local culture and its importance as both a geological and archaeological site. A number of sub-fossil specimens and archaeological artefacts are on display."

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/11 ... ms/?ref=la
 
When I used to work in Penzance, we would often find pieces of ancient peat bog washed up on the beach. Everybody knew of the submerged forest, if not its true extent. It might even tie in with the legends of lost, Lyonesse.
 
Prehistoric North Sea 'Atlantis' hit by 5m tsunami
By Paul Rincon, Science editor, BBC News website

A prehistoric "Atlantis" in the North Sea may have been abandoned after being hit by a 5m tsunami 8,200 years ago.
The wave was generated by a catastrophic subsea landslide off the coast of Norway.
Analysis suggests the tsunami over-ran Doggerland, a low-lying landmass that has since vanished beneath the waves.
"It was abandoned by Mesolithic tribes about 8,000 years ago, which is when the Storegga slide happened," said Dr Jon Hill from Imperial College London.
The wave could have wiped out the last people to occupy this island.
The research has been submitted to the journal Ocean Modelling and is being presented at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna this week.

Dr Hill and his Imperial-based colleagues Gareth Collins, Alexandros Avdis, Stephan Kramer and Matthew Piggott used computer simulations to explore the likely effects of the Norwegian landslide.
He told BBC News: "We were the first ever group to model the Storegga tsunami with Doggerland in place. Previous studies have used the modern bathymetry (ocean depth)."
As such, the study gives the most detailed insight yet into the likely impacts of the huge landslip and its associated tsunami wave on this lost landmass.
[video]

During the last Ice Age, sea levels were much lower; at its maximum extent Doggerland connected Britain to mainland Europe.
It was possible for human hunters to walk from what is now northern Germany across to East Anglia.
But from 20,000 years ago, sea levels began to rise, gradually flooding the vast landscape.
By around 10,000 years ago, the area would still have been one of the richest areas for hunting, fishing and fowling (bird catching) in Europe.
A large freshwater basin occupied the centre of Doggerland, fed by the River Thames from the west and by the Rhine in the east. Its lagoons, marshes and mudflats would have been a haven for wildlife.
"In Mesolithic times, this was paradise," explained Bernhard Weninger, from the University of Cologne in Germany, who was not involved with the present study.
But 2,000 years later, Doggerland had become a low-lying, marshy island covering an area about the size of Wales.

The nets of North Sea fishing boats have pulled up a wealth of prehistoric bones belonging to the animals that once roamed this prehistoric "Garden of Eden".
But the waters have also given up a smaller cache of ancient human remains and artefacts from which scientists have been able to obtain radiocarbon dates.
And they show that none of these relics of Mesolithic habitation on Doggerland occur later than the time of the tsunami.

The Storegga slide involved the collapse of some 3,000 cubic km of sediment.
"If you took that sediment and laid it over Scotland, it would cover it to a depth of 8m," said Dr Hill.
Given that the majority of Doggerland was by this time less than 5m in height, it would have experienced widespread flooding.
"It is therefore plausible that the Storegga slide was indeed the cause of the abandonment of Doggerland in the Mesolithic," the team writes in their Ocean Modelling paper.
Dr Hill told BBC News: "The impact on anyone who was living on Doggerland at the time would have been massive - comparable to the Japanese tsunami of 2011."

But Bernhard Weninger suspects that Doggerland had already been vacated by the time of the Storegga slide.
"There may have been a few people coming with boats to fish, but I doubt it was continuously settled," he explained.
"I think it was so wet by this time that the good days of Doggerland were already gone."

Prof Vince Gaffney, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham, said: "I think they (the researchers) are probably right, because the tsunami would have been a catastrophic event."

But he stressed that the archaeological record was sparse, and explained that two axes from the Neolithic period (after Storegga) had been retrieved from the North Sea's Brown Banks area.
It is possible these were dropped from a boat - accidentally or as a ritual offering - but it is also unclear precisely when Doggerland finally succumbed to the waves.
"Even after major volcanic eruptions, people go back, sometimes because they can't afford not to but also because the resources are there," said Prof Gaffney, who has authored a book, Europe's Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland.

The tsunami would also have affected what is now Scotland and the eastern coast of England, as well as the northern coast of continental Europe.
The wave that hit the north-east coast of Scotland is estimated to have been some 14m high, though it is unclear whether this area was inhabited at the time.
But waves measuring some 5m in height would have hit the eastern coast of England, and there is good evidence humans were in this area 8,000 years ago.

Much of this region would also have been low-lying, suggesting the impact on Mesolithic people who depended substantially on coastal resources such as shellfish, would have been significant here, too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27224243
 
But different from the usual sort of story on this thread but given the city involved dates back to the 12th Century I think it belongs here.

Drowned city emerges from Russian reservoir

Stalin ordered the flooding of the historic city of Mologa to make way for a giant reservoir in 1935, but now the 'Russian Atlantis' has risen from its watery grave - to the delight of its former inhabitants.

The city on the River Volga dates back to the 12th Century, and was a major trading post between the Baltic Sea and Asia. But the Soviets decided Mologa had to go to make way for the Rybinsk Reservoir and hydroelectric power station. The 130,000 townspeople were forced out, and the city gradually disappeared beneath the waters in the 1940s. Nearly 300 people refused to go and were left to drown, Soviet secret police files have confirmed.

The former inhabitants and their descendants sail to the site every year to pray and cast wreaths on the water. But a mild winter and hot summer have seen water levels drop dramatically, exposing remnants of the former Cathedral of the Epiphany and surrounding streets. The reservoir authorities allowed Nikolai Novotelnov, who had to leave Mologa when he was 17, to walk on his native turf again, Russia's TV Tsentr reports.

There is little to see beyond the cathedral foundations and the outlines of the streets, but Mr Novotelnov described the pre-war scene to television reporters. "Here was the inn, over there was the Voikov school and the flour store. Communist Street ran that way, towards the district administration building, the chemists, and my house," he told reporters. He laid flowers at the metal navigation marker that stands on the cathedral site and gathered brick fragments for his fellow Mologans.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from ... e-28789836
 
Swallowed by the Sea: Ancient Egypt's Greatest Lost City
Today on BBC2 from 9:00pm to 10:00pm

Documentary following a team of maritime archaeologists as they uncover the remarkable city of Heracleion, lost to the sea and forgotten for over 2,000 years. In the fading days of the pharaohs, the port city of Heracleion was the gateway to Egypt. An opulent and prosperous place adorned with statues, it was a city of religious significance and home to the temple of Amun.

In the 2nd century BC it was wiped off the face of the earth in a mysterious subsidence. The coastline dropped by over 20ft, and Heracleion was consumed by the sea. In 2000, archaeologists made an incredible find. Using ancient texts, they discovered the city's remains off the Egyptian coast and only 10 metres underwater. Pristinely preserved, it is an ancient Egyptian city frozen in time. The temples, statues, houses and boats lie perfectly preserved.

But many mysteries remain. What caused this sacred city to plunge into the sea? And why did its inhabitants deliberately sink over 65 ancient warships?
 
Bouldnor Cliff was mentioned a few times on this thread in 2007.

Solent's Stone Age village 'washing away'

In 1999, a team of divers off the Isle of Wight came across a lobster busily digging out its burrow. To their surprise they found it was kicking out flints from the Stone Age. However, archaeologists now fear artefacts dating back more than 8,000 years are simply being "washed away".

Bouldnor Cliff is a submerged Stone Age settlement off the coast of Yarmouth which was covered in silt as great sheets of ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age.
It is an important site because the muddy conditions have helped preserve organic materials from the distant past that do not normally survive on dry land.

The materials date back to a time when the Isle of Wight did not exist and it was possible to walk from Britain to what is now France.
"This is an element of our history that is being lost from a unique site. It can add new insights into our human journey from nomad to settler," said Garry Momber, director of the Maritime Archaeology Trust.

Hazelnuts, perfectly preserved leaves and a piece of string which dates to 8,000BP (6,000BC) have been found in the multi-layered sandwich of peat and silt.
Hundreds of flint tools have also been found - some still sharper than razor blades - which would have been used as "the disposable knife and fork of the day," Mr Momber added.
Other discoveries include a hearth with oak charcoal and flints, which it is thought would have been heated and dropped into water for cooking.
The trust says pieces of timber found also show some of the earliest evidence of wood-working.

But Mr Momber, who has concerns for the site which was once dubbed "Stone Age Atlantis", said time was running out to excavate the area as storms - together with powerful undercurrents - were "ripping it apart" with artefacts just washing out of the layers of mud.

"It's an untapped treasure chest - but artefacts are literally falling out of the cliff," he said.
"In some areas the erosion is up to 50cm (20ins) per year. If this continues in the sensitive sites we might only have a few years left before sites are completely lost," he said.
The trust said measurements had shown up to 3m (9ft 10ins) had eroded from the site in the past 10 years.

A full excavation of the landscape to record the remains before they are lost for good is estimated will cost in excess of £200,000.
About £20,000 would enable rescue excavations to be carried out to save the elements of the site that are most at risk.

Mr Momber said: "All it would take to help recover answers from this drowned and forgotten world is a single weekly fee for a Premier League football player. There will be another match. There will not be another Bouldnor Cliff."

The site, which is older than the pyramids, which are about 3,000 years old, and Stonehenge, built around 5,000 years ago, shows evidence of people living in a sheltered valley surrounded by trees around a lake and river.
The site shows the possibility that Mesolithic man, who was thought to be nomadic, may have lived and worked in the area.
Mr Momber said: "There appears to be evidence of a boat building yard and tools more advanced than anything we've found on land - on a level of 2,000 years ahead all preserved perfectly in the silt underwater."
"The sea level would have fluctuated and then at a certain point they have had to leave."

Boxes of gathered material from the site are being held at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, with some interconnecting timbers from a possible long boat or structure being preserved at the Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth.

Source: The Maritime Archaeology Trust

Divers from the trust have been working on the underwater cliff since 1999
The site is 36ft (11m) below the surface and about 820ft (250m) offshore
Items found date to 8,000 years ago - long before Stonehenge
The settlement would have been flooded at about the time the English channel was created, as sea levels rose in about 6,500BC
Little is known about the lives of the Mesolithic people because most of the sites where they settled are now on the seabed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-29610179
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doc
A Telegraph article on the Bouldnor Cliff site
http://tinyurl.com/yv7o2l
doesn't add much to the Beeb report, but does have a map showing the location.

27 February 2015 Last updated at 03:23
Scientists find evidence of wheat in UK 8,000 years ago
By Helen Briggs Environment Correspondent, BBC News

Wheat was present in Britain 8,000 years ago, according to new archaeological evidence.
Fragments of wheat DNA recovered from an ancient peat bog suggests the grain was traded or exchanged long before it was grown by the first British farmers.
The research, published in Science, suggests there was a sophisticated network of cultural links across Europe.
The grain was found at what is now a submerged cliff off the Isle of Wight.

Agriculture first appeared in the Near East and then spread along two main routes into Europe.
The accepted date of arrival on the British mainland is around 6,000 years ago, as ancient hunter gatherers began to grow crops such as wheat and barley.
The DNA of the wheat - known as einkorn - was collected from sediment that was once a peat bog next to a river.

Scientists think traders arrived in Britain with the wheat, where they encountered a less advanced hunter gatherer society.
The wheat may have been made into flour to supplement the diet, but a search for pollen and other clues revealed no signs that the crop was grown in Britain until much later.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31648990
 
27 February 2015 Last updated at 03:23
Scientists find evidence of wheat in UK 8,000 years ago
By Helen Briggs Environment Correspondent, BBC News

Wheat was present in Britain 8,000 years ago, according to new archaeological evidence.
Fragments of wheat DNA recovered from an ancient peat bog suggests the grain was traded or exchanged long before it was grown by the first British farmers.
The research, published in Science, suggests there was a sophisticated network of cultural links across Europe.
The grain was found at what is now a submerged cliff [Bouldnor Cliff] off the Isle of Wight.
...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31648990

This story was repeated with documentary detail in last night's Horizon.

Horizon - 2014-2015: 15. First Britons

Horizon reveals how new archaeological discoveries are painting a different picture of the very first native Britons. For centuries it's been thought that these hunter-gatherers lived a brutal, hand-to-mouth existence. But extraordinary new evidence has forced scientists to rethink who these people were, where they came from and what impact they had on our early history.

Now, our impression is of a hardy, sophisticated people who withstood centuries of extreme climate change and a devastating tsunami that was to give birth to the island nation of Britain. Their way of life may even have survived beyond its greatest ever threat - the farming revolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0675hcv/horizon-20142015-15-first-britons

The programme also covered Doggerland and associated topics mentioned earlier in this thread.

New to me (I think!) is that Doggerland did not just gradually disappear as sea levels rose, but was wiped out finally by a Tsunami which had its origins in north America and Norway. (This sudden flood strengthens the link with the sinking of Atlantis, but Horizon did not mention the A-word! ;))
 
This story was repeated with documentary detail in last night's Horizon.

Horizon - 2014-2015: 15. First Britons

Horizon reveals how new archaeological discoveries are painting a different picture of the very first native Britons. For centuries it's been thought that these hunter-gatherers lived a brutal, hand-to-mouth existence. But extraordinary new evidence has forced scientists to rethink who these people were, where they came from and what impact they had on our early history.

Now, our impression is of a hardy, sophisticated people who withstood centuries of extreme climate change and a devastating tsunami that was to give birth to the island nation of Britain. Their way of life may even have survived beyond its greatest ever threat - the farming revolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0675hcv/horizon-20142015-15-first-britons

The programme also covered Doggerland and associated topics mentioned earlier in this thread.

New to me (I think!) is that Doggerland did not just gradually disappear as sea levels rose, but was wiped out finally by a Tsunami which had its origins in north America and Norway. (This sudden flood strengthens the link with the sinking of Atlantis, but Horizon did not mention the A-word! ;))

Its repeated tonight: BBC2 11.35 pm.
 
Britain's Atlantis: Scientific study beneath North Sea could revolutionise how we see the past
David Keys Archaeology Correspondent
Tuesday 01 September 2015

Archaeologists are searching for the lost tribes of prehistoric Britain – at the bottom of the North Sea.
In a unique and ground-breaking operation, scientists plan to search for evidence of Stone Age human activity on Britain’s very own ‘Atlantis’ – a vast prehistoric land, once located between England and southern Scandinavia, which was engulfed by rising sea levels some 7500 years ago.

The archaeologists hope to find evidence of flint tool manufacture, plant pollen and the DNA of plant and animal species used by the long-lost land’s ancient inhabitants. Due to be launched later this month, the multi-million pound project is the largest of its kind ever attempted anywhere in the world and will lead to the development by British scientists of an entire range of new scientific techniques and capabilities.

Past survey work in the southern part of the North Sea has identified some of the vanished territory’s original river valleys – and it is two of those now-long-drowned valleys that the scientists will target in their search.

They plan to recover ancient pollen, insects and plant and animal DNA and to use high definition survey techniques to accurately rediscover what the lost Stone Age landscape looked like, what vegetation flourished there and how humans impacted on and used the environment.

The project will reveal, for the very first time, the culture and lifestyle of the dozens of generations of prehistoric Brits who flourished there for 6000 years until it finally disappeared beneath the waves in the mid sixth millennium BC.

This real British Atlantis originally covered some 100,000 square miles of what is now the North Sea (a long-lost territory around the size of modern Britain). However, following the end of the Ice Age, thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started to melt and sea levels began to rise worldwide. The major period of ice melt and consequent sea level rise, that specifically affected the southern part of the North Sea region, occurred between 8000 BC and 6000BC.

During that period of sea level rise, what were then coastal zones became increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic flooding. It is likely that massive storm surges – some up to 15 foot high - would have devastated large areas, probably on average around four times a century.

Due to the concentration of human hunter-gatherer activity in food-rich coastal and estuarine areas, such surges would have almost certainly drowned hundreds of people each time.


etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...volutionise-how-we-see-the-past-10480279.html

At last, someone's using the A-word! ;)

(Long article)
 
They never mentioned that in Geography!

Mind you, I would just have sniggered at Dogger Island and the Dogger Hills.

I'm too old for that now. Plus I don't want my number-plate taken. :p
 
75 per cent of Cornwall's population killed in megaflood
By West Briton | Posted: January 09, 2016

A STAGGERING 75 per cent of the Cornish population was wiped out in an ancient megaflood, a researcher has claimed.
In his latest book Philip Runggaldier, who is a scholar of ancient archaeology and mythology, explores the theory that a megadeluge struck Britain and Ireland 14,700 years ago.
He claims the deluge was Britain's worst natural disaster and the source of the Biblical flood.

In Atlantis and the Biblical Flood: The evidence at last?, Runggaldier suggests a huge glacial lake formed within the Irish Sea Basin during the last Ice Age.
It was known as Llyn Llion, which means the lake of floods.
Runggaldier suggests that when the ice gave way, around 14,700 years ago, it produced a megaflood that swamped most of Cornwall as well as destroying populations in Devon, coastal Wales and southeast Ireland.

That same deluge destroyed the Celtic Plain (the once dry land lying between Ireland and Cornwall), he claims.
Runggaldier says that reconstruction of the area reveals a landscape that matches the physical description of Plato's Atlantis to "a remarkable degree".

The book, which costs £4.99, is available to buy online at philiprunggaldier.co.uk.

http://www.cornishman.co.uk/75-cent...ed-megaflood/story-28485461-detail/story.html
 
Some more evidence for author Philip Runggaldier to relish!
Strong winds and waves uncover ancient forest on Portreath Beach
By wbchris | Posted: January 18, 2016

The ancient petrified wood and chunks from a submerged forest have been exposed after the winds and waves shifted the sand on Portreath's beach.

[Picture Gallery with 18 photos]

Hundreds of people were milling around the beach at the weekend, studying the remains of the forest which is thought to have stood for thousands of years before it was submerged.

An "abnormally low tide" revealed the forest for the first time in 1983 and again in 2014.
A similar submerged forest also exists in Mount's Bay which is thought to date back up to 6,000 years

Pictures by Colin Higgs

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/picture...forest/pictures-28547691-detail/pictures.html
 
Britain's Atlantis: Scientific study beneath North Sea could revolutionise how we see the past
David Keys Archaeology Correspondent
Tuesday 01 September 2015

Archaeologists are searching for the lost tribes of prehistoric Britain – at the bottom of the North Sea.
In a unique and ground-breaking operation, scientists plan to search for evidence of Stone Age human activity on Britain’s very own ‘Atlantis’ – a vast prehistoric land, once located between England and southern Scandinavia, which was engulfed by rising sea levels some 7500 years ago.

The archaeologists hope to find evidence of flint tool manufacture, plant pollen and the DNA of plant and animal species used by the long-lost land’s ancient inhabitants. Due to be launched later this month, the multi-million pound project is the largest of its kind ever attempted anywhere in the world and will lead to the development by British scientists of an entire range of new scientific techniques and capabilities.

Past survey work in the southern part of the North Sea has identified some of the vanished territory’s original river valleys – and it is two of those now-long-drowned valleys that the scientists will target in their search.

They plan to recover ancient pollen, insects and plant and animal DNA and to use high definition survey techniques to accurately rediscover what the lost Stone Age landscape looked like, what vegetation flourished there and how humans impacted on and used the environment.

The project will reveal, for the very first time, the culture and lifestyle of the dozens of generations of prehistoric Brits who flourished there for 6000 years until it finally disappeared beneath the waves in the mid sixth millennium BC.

This real British Atlantis originally covered some 100,000 square miles of what is now the North Sea (a long-lost territory around the size of modern Britain). However, following the end of the Ice Age, thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started to melt and sea levels began to rise worldwide. The major period of ice melt and consequent sea level rise, that specifically affected the southern part of the North Sea region, occurred between 8000 BC and 6000BC.

During that period of sea level rise, what were then coastal zones became increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic flooding. It is likely that massive storm surges – some up to 15 foot high - would have devastated large areas, probably on average around four times a century.

Due to the concentration of human hunter-gatherer activity in food-rich coastal and estuarine areas, such surges would have almost certainly drowned hundreds of people each time.


etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...volutionise-how-we-see-the-past-10480279.html

At last, someone's using the A-word! ;)

(Long article)
I could be wrong but I thought the last Ice age ended at ~ 9600 BC as per DR Karl Schock? He seems to indicate this was a world wide phenomena and that the melting occurred rather quickly in geological terms.
 
I could be wrong but I thought the last Ice age ended at ~ 9600 BC as per DR Karl Schock? He seems to indicate this was a world wide phenomena and that the melting occurred rather quickly in geological terms.
Other posts on this thread (don't have time to search now) show that 'The End of the Ice Age' was not a one-off event, but covered a series of sea-level rises, with pauses in between. The flooding of Doggerland was one of the later events in this series.
 
That being the case, i.e.: a stepped melt off response for the last ice age. And with Gobeki Tepe (proven) and the Sphinx (likely) going back (12 to 11.5) thousand years. And with Jericho and Damascus going back at least 10 thousand years. Then perhaps not all the earliest cultures were not in the ME.
If the early Brits or whoever was farming back then, they were in the direction of another early civilization. I realize their are other sites in the world up for consideration, but they are contested. I like when scientist of numerous disciplines can agree on a site say: geologist, archeologist. climatology, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ice
Similar as when an engineer decided to take a closer look at volcanoes and the long period events just prior an eruption. The long period event is detectable on a seismograph when the volcano pressurizing. Often difficult to see in the A-waves and B-waves when the magma is breaking rocks.

The scientific community is pretty good to deal with, but it has one major weakness. It is very conservative, the scientific methods shall be used all the time without biases, but the scientific community doesn't work that way.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jim
Other posts on this thread (don't have time to search now) show that 'The End of the Ice Age' was not a one-off event, but covered a series of sea-level rises, with pauses in between. The flooding of Doggerland was one of the later events in this series.

Wasn't Doggerland finally finished off by the Storegga (sp?) Slide?
 
Dunwich: The storms that destroyed 'lost town'
By David Whiteley Presenter, BBC Inside Out East

Evidence of violent storms that destroyed a lost town known as Britain's Atlantis has been uncovered.
The finds were uncovered off the coast of Dunwich, Suffolk - a small village which in the 11th Century was one of the largest towns in England.
The town was hit by a succession of storms in the 13th and 14th centuries and is now largely below the sea.

Researchers said sediment gathered from the cliffs independently corroborated the historical record.
Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, said Dunwich was hit by huge storms on an annual basis.
"[They were] like the south coast storms of 2013-14, at least once a year for decades," he said.

The three-year research off Dunwich has been funded by Touching the Tide, a £900,000 Heritage Lottery Fund scheme to explore the changing Suffolk coast.
A diver used ultrasound to "illuminate" finds on the seabed, and the marshes and eroding cliffs were surveyed.
"It offers a marvellous history of climate change and coastal erosion," said Prof Sear with regards to the findings.

In the 11th Century, Dunwich was the 10th largest town in England, but now has about 120 residents.
Two great storms in 1286 and 1326 resulted in the loss of its harbour and started its decline.
Prof Sear said pollen analysis revealed how "people gave up on Dunwich" after 1338, when another great storm silted up the port for good, and food production declined.
Sediment gathered from the cliffs, he said, "independently confirmed the sequences of storms recorded in the historical record".

Dating of the old defensive town ditch produced a result which surprised the researchers - suggesting the town's origins date back to the Iron Age.
The underwater research has been carried out using acoustic imaging technology, and has unearthed a series of buildings.
"We use sound to create a video image of the seabed and the reason we do that is because when you dive at Dunwich it's pitch black," Prof Sear said.
"We found the ruins of about four churches and we've also found ruins of what we think was a toll house. But we've also found shipwrecks for example, and there's some we've found with this Touching the Tide project, which no-one's known before."

The shipwreck was found on the seabed just north of the village.
The ribs of the 32m (105ft) ship are covered in a thin sheet of copper, dating it from after 1750.
Prof Sear, who has been researching Dunwich since 2008, said he did not yet know "the identity or type of wreck", but was working with local museums to source this information.

A dig in 2015 discovered evidence of Dunwich's prehistoric origins, as well as evidence it was "a substantial Saxon port, prior to its rapid growth following the Norman invasion".
Bill Jenman, from Touching the Tide, said: "We found loads of pottery, a lot more than we've found before, so sort of High Medieval - the peak of the affluence of Dunwich.

"We can push the story of Dunwich certainly back to the Iron Age, and we know people were here back into the Stone Age. We know it was a fairly major town in the Anglo-Saxon period."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-35549952
 
Fascinating video about a little-known feature between India and Sri Lanka:


Some fairly out-there claims about dates, but much food for thought about the origins of our species.
 
Fascinating video about a little-known feature between India and Sri Lanka:
I can't say that anything in that video impressed me very much.

But the bridge is largely natural. In a post glacial time of rising sea levels, the waters would encroach over the low-lying land between India and Sri Lanka from both north and south, until only a narrow strip remained. The people living thereabouts may have tried to protect this natural connection by building a causeway on top of it, which would explain any man-made structures that are found there, but as the seas continued to rise the causeway too would become submerged...

But the video is a hodge-podge of ideas that don't join up very well. Would not a fleet of ships be even more versatile than a fixed bridge? Not enough timber to build them? Well, how about using the famous flying ships, the Vimanas instead?

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam's_Bridge

(There's probably more on this thread already.)
 
I know, I know...the feature itself just interested me, that's all. :D
 
Cornwall Council publishes study showing impact of 12,000 years of sea level rises on Scillies
By WBtgainey | Posted: August 20, 2016

A legendary lost island which was said to have extended westwards from Land's End to the Isles of Scilly and reported to have had fair-sized towns and 140 churches before being engulfed by the sea has inspired a new tidal study.

The Lyonesse Project, which studies of the impact of sea level rise on the Isles of Scilly over the last 12,000 years, has been formally published by Cornwall Council, marking a culmination of seven years of work.

Since the mid-eighteenth century archaeological remains including stone walls have been discovered below high water in the Isles of Scilly – which were one large island 9,000 years ago and commonly associated with the enigmatic lost land of Lyonesse.

"The new data shows that the 500-year period between 2500 and 2000 BC saw the most rapid loss of land at any time in the history of Scilly — equivalent to losing two-thirds of the entire modern area of the islands" said Charlie Johns, archaeology projects officer from Cornwall Archaeological Unit.
"After this the rate of change slowed significantly so that by circa 1500 BC the pattern of islands was approaching that of today, but with the dramatic difference of a vast intertidal area of saltmarsh in what is now the islands' inner lagoon.
"Much of this would have remained useful land, especially for grazing animal stock and would have been passable with ease almost all of the time."

He added that it was not until there was an open channel north of St Mary's during most states of the tide that the saltmarsh began to erode rapidly and that radiocarbon dates propose this is likely to have occurred in the early medieval period.
The timing and nature of the changing land area and the separation of the islands has been the subject of much debate and influenced Professor Charles Thomas's classic book: 'Exploration of a Drowned Landscape'. [Recomended by rynner]

The Project was commissioned by Historic England after a local diver, Todd Stevens, discovered a submerged forest in St. Mary's Road.
The aim of the project was to recreate the evolution of the physical environment of Scilly during the Holocene, examine the progressive occupation of this changing coastal landscape by early peoples, explore past and present climate change and sea-level.
The team also aimed to promote better understanding of the islands' historic environment, encourage community engagement with the historic environment and improve time management.

Inspector of ancient monuments for Historic England in the South West, Daniel Ratcliffe, said: "Historic England is very pleased to have funded this ground breaking research.
"Our understanding of the internationally important archaeological heritage of Scilly, is fundamentally bound up in our understanding of environmental change.
"This new cutting edge research will be instrumental in refining our knowledge of how Scilly's populations have responded to the ever present challenges of living within an evolving coastline throughout history."

The project was carried out between 2009 and 2013 by the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, part of Cornwall Council, with a team of experts from Oxford, Exeter, Plymouth, Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Glasgow Universities as well as Historic England's Scientific Dating Team.
Experts and volunteers from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archaeological Society and the Islands Maritime Archaeology Group were also involved in the project.

The teams analysed samples of pollen and peat recovered from a variety of sites during the project, including the submerged forest and beaches, to gain a unique insight into the development of the landscape through the Holocene period, set against the backdrop of changing sea levels.

Cornwall Council published 'The Lyonese Project: a study of the historic coastal and marine environment of the Isles of Scilly' by Dan J. Charman, Charles Johns, Kevin Camidge, Peter Marshall, Steve Mills, Jacqui Mulville, Helen M Roberts and Todd Stevens at the end of July.

http://www.cornishman.co.uk/cornwal...-on-scillies/story-29622208-detail/story.html
 
Back
Top