Atlantis Arisen
March 28, 2024, 05:45:49 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Corals May Have Defense Against Global Warming
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071004-fossil-coral.html
 
  Home Help Search Arcade Links Staff List Login Register  

Doggerland

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Doggerland  (Read 674 times)
0 Members and 8 Guests are viewing this topic.
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« on: June 15, 2010, 01:16:21 pm »

Doggerland

Doggerland is a name given by archaeologists and geologists to the former landmass in the southern North Sea that connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age. Geological surveys have suggested that Doggerland was a large area of dry land that stretched from Britain's east coast across to the present coast of the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and Denmark.[2] The land was likely a rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period.[3]

The archaeological potential of the area had first been discussed in the early 20th Century, but interest intensified in 1931 when a commercial trawler operating near the sandbank and shipping hazard known as the Dogger Bank (from dogge, an old Dutch word for fishing boat), dragged up an elegant, barbed antler point that dated to a time when the area was a tundra. Later vessels have dragged up mammoth and lion remains, among other remains of land animals, as well as small numbers of prehistoric tools and weapons which were used by the region's inhabitants.

Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2010, 01:18:13 pm »



An image of the area known as Doggerland which connected the British Isles and the European continent. Loosely based on two images, found here and here, however drawing work was all done in Illustrator by myself. Norway has been excluded from the map.
Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2010, 01:18:44 pm »

^Map showing hypothetical extent of Doggerland (c. 8,000BC), which provided a land bridge between Great Britain and continental Europe
Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2010, 01:19:46 pm »



The red line marks Dogger Bank, which is most likely a moraine formed in the Pleistocene.[1]
Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2010, 01:19:58 pm »

Before the first glacial period of the current Pleistocene-Holocene Ice Age the Rhine river flowed northwards through the North Sea bed at a time when the North Sea was dry. It is thought that a Cenozoic silt deposit in East Anglia is the bed of an old course of the Rhine. The Weald was twice as long as it is now and stretched across the present Strait of Dover; the modern Boulonnais is a remnant of its east end.

With glaciation, when Scandinavian and Scottish ice first met and formed a giant ice dam, a large proglacial lake then formed behind it, which received the river drainage and ice melt from much of northern Europe and Baltic drainage through the Baltic River System. The impounded water eventually overflowed over the Weald into the English Channel and cut a deep gap which sea erosion later widened gradually into the Strait of Dover.

During the most recent glaciation, the Devensian glaciation which occurred around 10,000 years ago, the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with glacial ice and the sea level was about 120 metres (390 ft) lower than it is today. Much of the North Sea and English Channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra, extending around 12,000BC as far as the modern northern point of Scotland.[4]

Evidence including the contours of the present seabed shows that after the first main Ice Age the watershed between North Sea drainage and English Channel drainage extended east from East Anglia then southeast to the Hook of Holland, not across the Strait of Dover, and that the Thames, Meuse, Scheldt and Rhine rivers joined and flowed along the English Channel dry bed as a wide slow river which at times flowed far before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.[4][3] At about 8,000BC, the north-facing coastal area, now called Doggerland, had a coastline of lagoons, marshes, mudflats, and beaches. It may have been the richest hunting, fowling and fishing ground in Europe available to the Mesolithic culture of the time.[3][5]

Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2010, 01:20:18 pm »

Disappearance

It is generally thought that as sea levels gradually rose after the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, Doggerland became submerged beneath the North Sea, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500BC.[4] The Dogger Bank, which had been an upland area of Doggerland, is believed to have remained as an island until at least 5000BC.[4]

A more recent hypothesis is that much of the land was inundated by a tsunami around 8200BP (6200BC), caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway known as the Storegga Slide. This theory suggests "that the Storegga Slide tsunami would have had a catastrophic impact on the contemporary coastal Mesolithic population... Following the Storegga Slide tsunami, it appears, Britain finally became separated from the continent and, in cultural terms, the Mesolithic there goes its own way."[6]

Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2010, 01:20:45 pm »

Discovery and investigation by archaeologists

The remains of plants brought to the surface from Dogger Bank had been studied as early as 1913 by palaeobiologist Clement Reid and the remains of animals and worked flints from the Neolithic period had been found around the fringes of the area.[7] In his book The Antiquity of Man, published in 1915, anatomist Sir Arthur Keith had discussed the archaeological potential of the area.[7] Then, in 1931, the trawler Colinda hauled up a lump of peat whilst fishing near the Ower Bank, 25 miles (40 km) east of Norfolk. The peat was found to contain a barbed antler point, possibly used as a harpoon or fish spear, 8.5 inches (220 mm) long, later identified to date from between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago, when the area was tundra.[3][5] The tool was exhibited in the Castle Museum in Norwich.[5]

Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #7 on: June 15, 2010, 01:21:16 pm »

Interest in the area was reinvigorated in the 1990s by the work of Prof. Bryony Coles, who named the area "Doggerland" ("after the great banks in the southern North Sea"[5]) and produced a series of speculative maps of the area.[5][8] Although she recognised that the current relief of the southern North Sea seabed is not a sound guide to the topography of Doggerland,[8] the topography of the area has more recently begun to be reconstructed more authoritatively using seismic survey data obtained through petrochemical exploration surveys.[9][10]

A skull fragment of a Neanderthal, dated at over 40,000 years old, was recovered from material dredged from the Middeldiep, a region of the North Sea located some 10 miles (16 km) off the coast of Zeeland, and was exhibited in Leiden in 2009.[11]

In March 2010 it was reported that recognition of the potential archaeological importance of the area could affect the future development of offshore wind farms in the North Sea.[12]

Report Spam   Logged
Kara
Atlantean
**
Posts: 15



View Profile
« Reply #8 on: June 15, 2010, 01:21:30 pm »

In popular culture
The "Mammoth Journey" episode of the BBC television programme Walking with Beasts is partly set on the dry bed of the southern North Sea.
The area also featured in the "Britain's Drowned World" episode of the Channel 4 Time Team documentary. [13]
The first chapter of Edward Rutherfurd's novel Sarum describes the flooding of Doggerland.
The legend "The Cormorants of Utrøst"[14] describes a sunken land in the Norwegian Sea (not in the North Sea).
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum

Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy