Doggerland

It’s quite hard to imagine that only a few thousand years ago, there were lands on which people lived that have now completely disappeared into the ocean. But, this is exactly what happened to the area known as ‘Doggerland’.

Up until around 8500-8200 years ago, Doggerland was a large stretch of dry land that linked the European mainland to where the British Isles are today. Here’s a picture to show where it was, compared with what the area looks like today:

This is where Doggerland used to be in Europe. Credit: Max Naylor

The same area today, minus Doggerland

So, what happened to Doggerland, and how do we know about it?

Archaeologists first started to think that the area may have originally been above sea level in the early 1900’s, when fishing boats in the area would occasionally dredge up the remains of animals that had lived in Europe in prehistoric times, including mammoths and lions (yes, Europe used to have lions!). Plant remains were also brought up and studied by paleobiologists, who found them to be peat from when the land was above sea level and mostly tundra.

Credit: Mauricio Antón (http://www.plosbiology.org/article/slideshow.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060099&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060099.g001,)

To add further interest, prehistoric tools and weapons used by ancient peoples were also found. Archaeologists now believe that Doggerland was occupied by humans during the Mesolithic period (this period started around 10,000 years ago), up until it started to disappear underwater. In fact, some think that it may have been one of the richest hunting and fishing environments available to European humans at the time.

Whilst surveying the area for petroleum, oil-company geologists produced seismic surveys of the land beneath the waves, and in 2012, the Royal Academy of London presented the results of the surveys along with all the artefacts that have been found so far. The seismic surveys allow researchers to see what the land looked like while it was still above sea level, and even Doggerland’s ancient river systems have been mapped in 3D. The largest of these rivers is known as the ‘Shotton River’.

In regards to the disappearance of Doggerland, researchers believe that at the end of the last glacial period, sea levels began to rise dramatically as the climate warmed up. Due to this, Doggerland was eventually submerged under the North Sea, and the British Isles were separated from the European mainland. This probably all happened around 8500 years ago.

Another recent theory claims that after already losing some land to rising sea levels, Doggerland may have become completely submerged as the result of a tsunami that hit the area 8200 years ago. This tsunami was caused by an event known as the ‘Storegga Slide’. It is named this because the event was a massive underwater landslide, occurring off the coast of Norway. The resulting tsunami would have been devastating to Mesolithic people who still lived on Dogger Bank, and after this event, British Mesolithic populations would have been totally separated from the rest.

The yellow numbers represent the height (in meters) of the tsunami waves from the Storegga Slide. Credit: Lamiot

One part of Doggerland actually remained for quite a while longer. An island known as ‘Dogger Bank’ emerged when the rest went underwater. Dogger Bank was an upland hill area of the original Doggerland, so the sea levels didn’t rise high enough to cover it. Eventually, however, Dogger Bank also disappeared into the ocean, and this probably happened around 7000 years ago. Here is a map that shows us where Dogger Bank is now:

The red line marks where Dogger Bank used to be. Credit: NASA

It is fascinating to think that once-populated lands are now totally underwater. Geologists and archaeologists really have the most interesting jobs sometimes!