ATLANTIS OF THE NORTH
Doggerland, mentioned previously in this column, and often tagged as ‘Britain’s Atlantis’, is a submerged landmass
beneath what is today’s North Sea. It was drowned circa 6,000 BC due to sea level rise caused by ice melt after the last Ice Age. Fishermen, oil and gas companies, have from time to time brought up random bits and pieces showing that there was land there in the deep, then more formal sediment samples have provided pollen and other environmental evidence that suggest that the now submerged areas would have once been great landscapes of plants (especially woodland) and animals. If animals, then the question has been, did humans ever roam this land prior to its inundation?
Now, since May this year, teams from English and Belgian universities are making more organised studies of the lost land using the latest sound wave technology. And it is already bearing results. Homing in on what may have been a human habitation site 25 miles (40km) out to sea from England’s east coast, alongside a former riverbed (dubbed ‘South River’) in Doggerland, the researchers have recovered a sediment sample containing artefacts: a large worked hammerstone used for making stone tools, and a shard of flint sliced off from a stone tool during manufacture. Such items may not seem much to the untrained eye, but they tell archaeologists that these are proof of human activity in the Mesolithic era, possibly dating back to 8,000 BC or earlier. The samples were recovered from near what seems to be a flint deposit, and researchers think they have identified two tool-making bases on either side of the South River. The next stage of the survey will involve an unmanned mini-submarine, and, eventually, divers. BBC News, New York Post, 12 June 2019.