Lost Continent Found, Doggerland Slowly Sank 18000 BC To 5500 BC, Cradle Of Europe, Videos

The only lands on Earth that have not been extensively explored are those that have been lost to the oceans. After the end of the last Ice Age extensive landscapes that had once been home to thousands of people were inundated by the sea. Although scientists predicted their existence for many years, exploration has only recently become a reality.

A virtual visualisation of an Agent Based model of life in the Mesolithic on the Doggerbank. 

 Credit: Dr. Eugene Ch’ng, University of Birmingham

This exhibit explores those drowned landscapes around the UK and shows how they are being rediscovered through pioneering scientific research. It reveals their human story through the artefacts left by the people – a story of a dramatic past that featured lost lands, devastating tsunamis and massive climate change. These were the challenges that our ancestors met and that we face once more today.

How it works

Current climate change and associated sea level rise are at the forefront of social and scientific discussion, but research shows that dramatic changes in the environment have occurred numerous times in the past.

One of the most significant landscapes lost to sea level rise is the European world of Doggerland. Occupying much of the North Sea basin, this inundated landscape, bigger than many modern European countries, was slowly submerged between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC. Archaeologists now consider Doggerland to have been the heartland of human occupation within Northern Europe at that time, but understanding it depends on being able to locate and visualise the landscape.

Perhaps many people don’t realise but until about 6000 years ago, 6-7000 years ago, the current area of the southern North Sea was actually dry land. It was inhabited by hunter gatherers who roamed across pretty much the whole of the area between Yorkshire and Denmark, says Gaffney

However, of course, global warming, the end of the Ice Age, rising sea levels, meant that this landscape was actually swallowed up by the sea over time and it was pretty much lost to knowledge. About 6/7 years ago, we started a project using oil data – data collected by the oil industry from seismic actually – to start mapping this lost landscape and the results have actually been wonderful.

Currently we’ve mapped rivers, hills, lakes, marshes, over an area of about 23000 square kilometres. That’s an entirely new prehistoric country in fact and we’re now starting to try and use that information to model where hunter gatherers may have lived with the idea that we’ll eventually go back to sea and use modern coring techniques to see if we can find traces of settlement,  says Gaffney.

That’s a first and we’re very excited that we’ve been able to carry out that sort of innovative exploration at Birmingham. But we are recognised as innovators within digital archaeology and remote sensing and this probably has been one of the most important and largest projects of its kind in this country or indeed the world. 

Scientists have taken a new approach to this by coupling geophysical survey techniques developed by the oil industry with 3D visualisation technologies developed by the computer modelling industry. These innovative methodologies allow the recreation of these once inhabited landscapes, mapping rivers, lakes, hills, coastlines and estuaries, and the modelling of the flora and fauna associated with them. These models bring back to life the homeland of these Mesolithic populations, tantalisingly hinted at by artefacts recovered from the seabed. They also allow scientists to explore the effects of sea level rise upon the landscape and its populations in new and more immersive ways that may help the past provide solutions for the present.

How Birmingham archaeologists rediscovered Europe’s Lost World

The past is sometimes said to be a foreign country, but less than 12,000 years ago Europe was a very different and almost unrecognisable place where Britain did not exist as a separate land. Over thousands of years the climate changed, sea levels rose and the entire coast of Europe morphed into the familiar shape we know today. Britain, formerly a range of hills on the edge of a great plain, gradually separated from continental Europe. This lost country, known as Doggerland, was not empty but inhabited by communities of hunter-gatherers who roamed, hunting and gathering resources, just as they did in many other areas of northern Europe.

Using the latest technologies we can now describe this amazing landscape in detail for the first time and reveal the valleys, hills, rivers and plains which lie beneath the North Sea and which were home to unique cultures, tribes and, perhaps, thousands of people. This lecture by Vince Gaffney presents the results of a remarkable programme of archaeological research by the University of Birmingham to rediscover Doggerland, the enigmatic country which once linked the Yorkshire coast with a stretch of Continental Europe from Denmark to Normandy but which now lies beneath the North Sea. to rediscover Doggerland, the enigmatic country which once linked the Yorkshire coast with a stretch of Continental Europe from Denmark to Normandy but which now lies beneath the North Sea.

Further information on the exhibit.

Drowned Landscapes is on display at The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2012 from 3 – 8 July at the Royal Society in London.