Doggerland 7/7

Doggerland is a name given by archaeologists and geologists to the former landmass in the southern North Sea that connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age. Geological surveys have suggested that Doggerland was a large area of dry land that stretched from Britain’s east coast across to the present coast of the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and Denmark. The land was likely a rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period. The archaeological potential of the area was first discovered in 1931, when a commercial trawler operating near the sandbank and shipping hazard known as the Dogger Bank (from dogge, an old Dutch word for fishing boat) dragged up an antler used as a harpoon. Later vessels have dragged up mammoth and lion remains, among other remains of land animals, as well as small numbers of prehistoric tools and weapons which were used by the region’s inhabitants. During the Devensian glaciation around 10000 years ago, when the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with glacial ice, the sea level was about 120 metres (390 ft) lower than it is today. Much of the North Sea and English Channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra, extending around 12000 BCE as far as the modern northern point of Scotland. Evidence including the contours of the present seabed shows that after the first main Ice Age the watershed between North Sea drainage and English Channel drainage extended …

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