Evidence shows that Neolithic Orcadians drowned in tsunami
was twenty times the size of Scotland and is believed to have swept over a land bridge which linked Britain to Europe, ensuring the country would become an island nation.
Researchers have now suggested that a tsunami which followed the world’s largest ever landslide around 8,000 years ago devastated villages in Orkney as it surged across the Atlantic to Greenland.
The academic paper claims that it is possible neolithic mass burial sites in Orkney and Shetland contain the bodies of tsunami victims swept up in the Storegga slide which occurred off the Norwegian coast.
Now, the authors say that archaeologists should test remains to see if the bones show the distinctive signs of drowning in sea water.
Professor James Goff, from the University of New South Wales, said there were sites in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu where there are “known tsunamis that have happened in prehistory at the times that these mass burials date to”.
He added: “We then looked for areas where there’s not a lot of activity from earthquakes, or anything like that. And so Shetland and Orkney obviously come to mind because of the much earlier event, which was huge, the Storegga landslide.”
The so-called mega-slide occurred more than 8,000 years ago off western Norway, and caused a tsunami which has left traces from that country to Greenland, western Scotland and Denmark.
Based on carbon dating of plant material recovered from sediment deposited by the tsunami, the latest incident occurred around 6225 BC.
The three Storegga Slides are considered to be amongst the largest known landslides and happened under water, at the edge of Norway’s continental shelf in the Norwegian Sea
The collapse involved an estimated 180 miles of coastal shelf with a total volume of 840 cubic miles of debris – equivalent to an area the size of Iceland – and caused a very large tsunami in the North Atlantic Ocean.
At the time of the last Storegga Slide, a land bridge known to archaeologists and geologists as “Doggerland” existed which linked the area of Great Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands across what is now the southern North Sea.
Although Doggerland was permanently submerged through a gradual rise in sea level, it has been suggested that coastal areas of both Britain and mainland Europe would have been temporarily inundated by a tsunami triggered by the Storegga Slide.
In Scotland, traces of the subsequent tsunami have been recorded, with deposited sediment being discovered in Montrose Basin, the Firth of Forth, and up to 50 miles inland. But until now there has been little evidence trace of human victims until the studies in the Polynesian islands.
The researchers claim that many neolithic burial ground victims have specific injuries which suggest they died during a war.
Now they want more research done on skeletons that show no obvious signs of injury to see if there is evidence of mass casualties during a major event, such as a tsunami.
Mr Goff said: “When it comes around to more recent events, somewhere around just over 5,000 years ago, there’s a sudden burst of mass burial sites being created.
“The question is, is it at all possible that even a single body in there might have drowned?
“And, if so, when did that drowning possible? And is it indeed possible that it is indeed linked to the Garth tsunami?”
Sand left by that event has been discovered in peat layers at Garth Loch, in Shetland, where sea levels appear to have risen by around 33ft (10m).
Mr Goff added: “Even if one, or two, or three victims are found to have been the result of drownings from the sea then, of course, we’re going to be asking the question, ‘Was that just someone who fell out of a boat and drowned? Or was it someone who was killed in a storm? Or do we have indications here of a tsunami?”