Though the UK is physically- and now politically- separate from the EU, that wasn’t always the case. Ten thousand years ago, as the land was taking shape after the last major ice age, it was like Europe’s overgrown back mole, connected by a strip of Earth we now call Doggerland.
Then shit heated up.
Today’s Moment of Science… the demise of Doggerland, the birth of Britain.
The face of our planet has shifted and changed continuously since we were quantum’ed into existence. You’re probably familiar with Pangea, the supercontinent that broke apart to form the continents we have today. We witness the ground beneath us budging a nearly imperceptible distance in a lifetime, with continental plates moving at a pace rivaling a particularly lazy sloth. The Earth being about 4.5 billion years old, all those lifetimes have added up. Evidence points to there having been seven supercontinents. The chunk of land you’re standing on today has been places.
We’re seeing the lines on the maps change now due to effects of climate change. Though anthropogenic climate change is speeding up the process, we’ve seen the effects of the Earth’s natural climate cycle before. Growth and recession of the glaciers is powerful enough to carve up continents.
So, Doggerland.
(It does not accept a popular meme based currency).
The name comes from a type of Dutch fishing boat, the dogger, popular in the 17th century for fishing at the likewise namesake Dogger Bank. A huge swath of land in all directions around the UK was above sea level in 16,000BC. What we think of as England wasn’t an island, and in fact, the UK as a whole was a bit inland. The entire landmass at its peak was connected to modern day France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
By 8,000 years ago, temperatures from the most recent ice age warmed significantly. Glaciers receded, sea levels rose, and Doggerland ceded territory to the seas around it.
There are a few main hypotheses on how Doggerland ultimately met its end in a watery grave. One involves a tsunami, the other involves an American lake fucking shit up. The third explanation is unsatisfying but probably true.
An underwater landslide, the Storegga Slide, that fell from Norway’s continental shelf caused a tsunami that may have ended the UK’s status as a peninsula. It would have been a disastrously large tsunami, with estimates putting it as high as 30 feet. Based on carbon dating, schmutz from Storegga was re-deposited in Scotland and all over northwest Europe around 6,200BC, which is around when Doggerland became mermaid territory.
Behind door number two is Lake Agassiz, a lake larger than all the great lakes combined that the glaciers dumped in the middle of North America. So when it experienced some breakthrough bleeding into the Atlantic Ocean, theory goes that it took a few years but eventually it contributed to the rising sea levels that wiped out Doggerland.
The most likely theory though? Some combination of the above but it was mostly just that Earth got warmer. As the glaciers melted, the land experienced post-glacial rebound, with some areas of the country rising and some areas sinking. For the most part, Scotland and northern England are rising while the south continues to sink. Glaciers melting in your area are a good way to fuck up absolutely everything. Inevitably, sea levels rise, and areas you think of as ‘land’ will sink to become ocean floor.
It’s likely that both of the acute events contributed to the coastline as we know it today. But by the time they occurred, the glaciers melting had already set into motion a chain of events that would cause the original Brexit. The immediate devastation of the tsunami on life in the area was beyond anything that the glacier waters had done. However, as we witness with tsunamis, it wouldn’t have been unusual for the water to recede, and for the area to continue to be flushed with water from glacial melt.
It’s been suggested that people had largely abandoned living in Doggerland by the time of the tsunami. Conversely, some argue this is what finally made people pack up and say “I’m gonna sell my home to fucking Aquaman.” Scientists are still trying to find out when people left, but more importantly what life was like there. Beginning in 2020, a two year investigation into Doggerland using some traditional and some new archaeo-geophysics techniques was launched, hoping to find new information about how people lived in a land lost to time.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, wondering how different absolutely everything would have been if Doggerland had remained above sea level.
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