Exploring Doggerland
An ambitious expedition is about to start, with a mission to map the undersea area known as Doggerland, and in particular to take samples to see if any trace of human habitation can be found.
I’ve written about Doggerland before. It’s a large landmass that used to connect the British Isles to the mainland of Europe during the most recent Ice Age’s low sea levels, and it was submerged when the ice melted as the Ice Age ended. Speculation is that the area was settled, and that the humans there left evidence of their habitation that might be discovered, although it’s a longshot:
Using seabed mapping data the team plans to produce a 3D chart revealing the rivers, lakes, hills and coastlines of the country. Specialist survey ships will take core sediment samples from selected areas to extract millions of fragments of DNA from the buried plants and animals.
Prof Vincent Gaffney, from the University of Bradford’s school of archaeological and forensic sciences, said: “If this is successful it will be the first time anybody will have produced such evidence for settlements in the deep waters of the North Sea. This will be a real first. That would be new knowledge of what is really a lost continent.”
Theories abound as to what has caused the periodic ice ages of earth’s past, but it certainly wasn’t humankind’s carbon footprint. One wonders about whether ubiquitous flooding legends are connected to some of this melting and subsequent flooding. And when I say “ubiquitous,” I mean it:
The flood myth motif is found among many cultures as seen in the Mesopotamian flood stories, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, Pralaya in Hinduism, the Gun-Yu in Chinese mythology, Bergelmir in Norse mythology, in the lore of the K’iche’ and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native Americans in North America, the Muisca, and Cañari Confederation, in South America, Africa, and the Aboriginal tribes in southern Australia.
That Wiki entry I just linked goes into quite a bit of detail about theories about the origins of these myths. Suffice to say that theories vary. The flooding that submerged Doggerland didn’t all happen in a day, or even forty days, but it seems to have been a result of both gradual and sudden processes [emphasis mine]:
As ice melted at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, sea levels rose and the land began to tilt in an isostatic adjustment as the huge weight of ice lessened. Doggerland eventually became submerged, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BC. The Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 5000 BC. Key stages are now believed to have included the gradual evolution of a large tidal bay between eastern England and Dogger Bank by 9000 BC and a rapid sea-level rise thereafter, leading to Dogger Bank becoming an island and Great Britain becoming physically disconnected from the continent.
A recent hypothesis postulates that much of the remaining coastal land was flooded by a megatsunami around 6200 BC, caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway known as the Storegga Slide. This suggests: “that the Storegga Slide tsunami would have had a catastrophic impact on the contemporary coastal Mesolithic population…. Britain finally became separated from the continent and in cultural terms, the Mesolithic there goes its own way.” A study published in 2014 suggested that the only remaining parts of Doggerland at the time of the Storegga Slide were low-lying islands, but supported the view that the area had been abandoned at about the same time as the tsunamis.
Another view speculates that the Storegga tsunami devastated Doggerland but then ebbed back into the sea, and that later Lake Agassiz (in North America) burst releasing so much fresh water that sea levels over about two years rose to flood much of Doggerland and make Britain an island.
All of this without apparent human intervention. It drives home the point that, whatever is happening now with global warming and climate change, enormous such events have periodically occurred in the past through some sort of natural non-anthropogenic process.
As for Lake Agassiz, here you go [emphasis mine]:
Around 13,000 years ago, [a lake formed from glacial melt] came to cover much of what are now Manitoba, northwestern Ontario, northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and Saskatchewan. At its greatest extent, it may have covered as much as 440,000 km2 (170,000 sq mi), larger than any currently existing lake in the world (including the Caspian Sea) and approximately the area of the Black Sea…
The ice returned to the south for a time, but as it again retreated north of the present Canada–United States border around 10,000 years ago, Lake Agassiz refilled. The last major shift in drainage occurred around 8,200 years ago. The melting of remaining Hudson Bay ice caused Lake Agassiz to drain nearly completely. This final drainage of Lake Agassiz has been associated with an estimated 0.8 to 2.8 m (2.6 to 9.2 ft) rise in global sea levels.
Lake Agassiz’s major drainage reorganization events were of such magnitudes that they had significant impact on climate, sea level and possibly early human civilization. The lake’s enormous freshwater release into the Arctic Ocean has been postulated to have disrupted oceanic circulation and caused temporary cooling. The draining of 13,000 years ago may be the cause of the Younger Dryas stadial. Although disputed, the draining at 9,900–10,000 years ago may be the cause of the 8,200 yr climate event. A recent study by Turney and Brown links the 8,500-years ago drainage to the expansion of agriculture from east to west across Europe; they suggest that this may also account for various flood myths of prehistoric cultures, including the Biblical flood narrative.
What’s especially interesting is that the changes in a lake in the middle of North America would have such an effect on sea levels. That, in turn, has affected human history—and yet how many of us ever learned about Lake Agassiz in our history classes (or even our science classes, if we didn’t take geology)? Not me. How about you?
Never before heard of Lake Agassiz, and I went to high school on the bank of one of the Great Lakes!
I’m wondering about the biological consequences of the fairly rapid dilution of sea water by this fresh water dumping. Since salt water is denser than fresh, the top few feet of the Atlantic ocean must have been diluted, and that fresh water perhaps layered out for a time.
Out here in Eastern Washington its remains and evidence the lake Missoula floods (10,000 to 13,000 years ago); Channeled Scablands, Columbia Gorge, Dry Falls that are visible. I wasn’t much aware of the global impacts of lake Agassiz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods
Many ancient legends have bases in facts. For example, there are myths of a great flood that covered the whole world. Jews and Christians are familiar with the Noah story, while Babylonian legends of Hammurabi are substantial similar. Ditto some of the earliest legends of ancient Egypt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burckle_Crater
If the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean represents a meteoric impact, the tsunami generated by the strike would have washed all the coastlines of the Indian Ocean, including Australia. Curiously, there are Dreamtime lgends of a flood…. As the tsunami rolled into the Arabian Gulf, the waters would have been funneled into the Red Sea as a wall of water carrying everything away before it, perhaps reaching the Mediterranean.
Archaeologists have been investigating the site, called Tall el-Hamman in Jordan, just northeast of the Dead Sea. It was a thriving Bronze Age city about 3700 years ago. Some of the pottery shards excavated show signs of intense heat; enough to turn one side of the shards to glass. The area may have been destroyed by the explosion of a meteorite, with the equivalent energy of a 10 megaton nuclear explosion.
https://www.universetoday.com/140752/a-meteor-may-have-exploded-in-the-air-3700-years-ago-obliterating-communities-near-the-dead-sea/
You’ve probably heard of it; a little place called Sodom.
Many archaeologists intensely dislike astronomical phenomena as impacting the ancient Earth, but happens over and over. The Younger Dryas was almost certainly caused by a meteoric impact about 15K years ago.
Open Google Earth, and wander the world looking for circular mountains. There are two, and only two, mechanisms that create circular mountain formations. These are volcanoes and impacts.
“What’s especially interesting is that the changes in a lake in the middle of North America would have such an effect on sea levels.”
Agree. On the surface it is hard to conceive of a lake so large and so deep that its release (how might that h appen) can increase GLOBAL levels to that degree. Earth is, after all, a water planet. I’d like to see the actual proposed figures to the guesstimate but off hand I’d say it seems about as significant to sea level rise as emptying a water glass into a swimming pool.
This is fascinating. I did take a year of geology, and still didn’t hear about Lake Agassiz, but I was made aware of the enormous geological changes which have happened on our continent.
I’ve seen ancient pottery and other items in the Egyptian Museum from about 5,000-6,000 BC, before the great dynasties, left by the peoples who moved into the Nile Valley from what had been fertile ground in the Western Desert and Libya.
Atlantis?
Passing strange, before this morning around 10:00, I’d never heard of Doggerland.
Then I watched a YouTube video about the prehistory of the British isles, circa 1 million BC to 8,000 BC. There, this very morning (did I mention how odd it is to find this post today afternoon?) I was told of Doggerland, its convenient land bridge effect for the traveling homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthal to move into and out of England and Scotland territory as the ice ages ebbed and flowed.
[ https://youtu.be/kk5-ynRPfss ]
Lake Agassiz, on the other hand, I’d heard of five or six years back.
I had to go to the Wikipedia link to answer my most burning question:
“Doggerland was named in the 1990s, after the Dogger Bank, which in turn was named after the 17th century Dutch fishing boats called doggers.”
As to whether long-distant geological events can persist in tribal memory —
The Irish legend of the Giant’s Causeway tells of a path between Ireland and Scotland that enabled giant heroes to fight each other.
http://www.irelandsmythsandlegends.com/the-giant-s-causeway
The Wikipedia entry for “Giant’s Causeway” says the basalt columns or “steps” formed millions of years ago, which is much more boring than the legend, and way to early for prehistoric homo saps to remember, even speaking Jungianly.
Wikipedia’s “Doggerland” has a map suggesting a wider connectivity that included Ireland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doggerland3er_en.png
..but this has been disputed (note that a “controversial new theory” implies the prior existence of a non-controversial old theory):
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland-never-linked-to-scotland-1.1156874?mode=amp
However, even if Ireland was never connected to Britain directly with an anglo-gaelic Doggerland, there might be something to the memory of a causeway of some kind, as implied at the end of that article:
If Elk can use islands for stepping-stones, so can people, swimming or boating.
The Beeb had a story in 2011, with some more information and speculation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12244964
Ken: thanks for the meteor article; I hadn’t seen that before, and it was very interesting.
I strongly suspect they will find “human remains” (80%). I had heard of the ice bound lake around the Hudson Bay, but not that it’s name was Agassiz (or don’t remember the name). Additional sea rise from global warming will be due to more ice melting, especially off Greenland and the Antarctic ice glaciers. The multiple flood myths means there likely was a huge sea change in history.
We know the Earth has had Ice Ages, and has warmed up after.
For now, I believe we’re about to enter around 2 decades, 20 years or so, of new global cooling, due to minimum sunspots. Predicted to start in 2020; longer cool weather this year might be an early start, or just another variation.
The increase in CO2 from about 270 ppm way way up to 400 ppm, almost 100% increase, has been good for growing plants who can breathe, but so far most warming has been in computer models, not so clearly world temps. Every 2001 UN global warming model has been wrong — their science is insufficient. We don’t yet understand cloud formation and cloud net effects on temperature, not enough to accurately, i.e. scientifically, predict future climate.
I have long thought “giants” and giant legends were related to early encounters with Neanderthals, including Beowulf.
Earliest human cultural “memory” is a very interesting next topic to follow earliest personal memory.
Most artifacts of this epoch, except megalithic structures like Stonehenge, were small stone tools that can not be found from mapping or sonar imagery.
We know too little about ancient seafaring, but it seems now it was much more efficient and capable than we now imagine. The history of settling of many islands and archipelagos in Oceania indicate not accidental, but purposeful going into open sea to find new lands. There were expeditions of settlers, commands of young people with women and girls on the board with explicit goal to found new settlements.
Almost all the sea level rise after the last Ice Age came not from Antarctica or Greenland ice sheets (they are still with us, with little ice lost), but from huge land glaciers like the one that covered most of the Northern America and was 2 miles thick. After it melted, a huge lake emerged which was called Lake Agassiz. It filled a deep depression in the Earth crust resulted from its bending under the weight of the glacier. Today Great Lakes are relatively small remnants of this lake that were formed when the crust rebounded after glacier melted.