In a unique and ground-breaking operation, scientists plan to search
for evidence of Stone Age human activity on Britain’s very own
‘Atlantis’ – a vast prehistoric land, once located between England and
southern Scandinavia, which was engulfed by rising sea levels some 7500
years ago.
The archaeologists hope to find evidence of flint tool
manufacture, plant pollen and the DNA of plant and animal species used
by the long-lost land’s ancient inhabitants. Due to be launched later
this month, the multi-million pound project is the largest of its kind
ever attempted anywhere in the world and will lead to the development by
British scientists of an entire range of new scientific techniques and
capabilities.
Past survey work in the southern part of the North
Sea has identified some of the vanished territory’s original river
valleys – and it is two of those now-long-drowned valleys that the
scientists will target in their search.
They plan to recover
ancient pollen, insects and plant and animal DNA and to use high
definition survey techniques to accurately rediscover what the lost
Stone Age landscape looked like, what vegetation flourished there and
how humans impacted on and used the environment.
The project will
reveal, for the very first time, the culture and lifestyle of the dozens
of generations of prehistoric Brits who flourished there for 6000 years
until it finally disappeared beneath the waves in the mid sixth
millennium BC.
This real British Atlantis originally covered some
100,000 square miles of what is now the North Sea (a long-lost
territory around the size of modern Britain). However, following the
end of the Ice Age, thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started
to melt and sea levels began to rise worldwide. The major period of ice
melt and consequent sea level rise, that specifically affected the
southern part of the North Sea region, occurred between 8000 BC and
6000BC.
During that period of sea level rise, what were then
coastal zones became increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic flooding.
It is likely that massive storm surges – some up to 15 foot high - would
have devastated large areas, probably on average around four times a
century.
Due to the concentration of human hunter-gatherer activity in
food-rich coastal and estuarine areas, such surges would have almost
certainly drowned hundreds of people each time.
Gradually, most of
the 100,000 square miles became permanently inundated – and by 6500 BC,
the remnants of the dwindling North Sea territory had become a 140 mile
long, approximately 100 mile wide island covering thousands of square
miles (partly where the North Sea’s Dogger Bank is today). But, over the
centuries, it gradually shrank and was finally overwhelmed by the
waves in around 5500 BC. It is conceivable that at least some of its
last inhabitants would not have been able to escape.
Now, almost
eight millennia after the death of Britain’s North Sea Atlantis,
archaeologists are about to re-discover its secrets.
It’s hoped that their research will reveal where the inhabitants lived, what they ate and what their environment looked like.
The
expedition also hopes to discover whether they were culturally more
advanced than previously believed. Plant DNA, recently obtained from
another ‘drowned’ landscape (the Solent, between the Isle of Wight and
mainland England) suggests that Stone Age people in that area were
eating (and therefore importing or possibly growing) wheat some 2000
years earlier than previously thought.
Now the scientists plan to
systematically search for similar wheat or other domesticated species
DNA evidence in what was once dry land under the North Sea.
Within
the next few weeks the scientists will start sinking bore holes into
the drowned Stone Age land surfaces in order to extract samples of
ancient earth.
Hundreds of such samples will be taken to the
laboratories at the universities of Bradford, Warwick, Lampeter, St.
Andrews and Birmingham where scientists will separate out seeds, pollen,
potential DNA material and tiny fragments of broken flint (the
tale-tale evidence of flint tool manufacture).
Using sonar and
high definition seismic equipment, the archaeologists will also produce
more refined 3D maps of the original landscape and its topography. It’s
conceivable that they may even locate man-made Stone Age structures,
potentially the remains of any timbers used for ritual monuments or
hunting drive-ways.
The research is likely to transform the
academic world’s understanding of pre-agricultural British society. That
is because the vast majority of pre-agricultural Britons almost
certainly lived in now-long-drowned coastal environments – and very few
such areas have ever been systematically investigated.
The project
may also revolutionize the world’s understanding of the spread of
agriculture. Until very recently all the available evidence suggested
that once agricultural knowledge had reached an area, it quickly
triggered rapid economic and social change. But the recent very early
wheat DNA evidence from the Solent, if confirmed in the upcoming ‘North
Sea Atlantis’ investigation, would totally contradict that understanding
of the process. Instead, it may be that agricultural knowledge spread
widely at least 2000 years earlier than previously thought but had no
significant economic or social impact for scores of generations.
The
research will also, for the first time, reveal how humans and other
animal and plant species adapted to the sea level rise catastrophe which
hit many areas of the world after a natural version of ‘global warming’
brought the last Ice Age to an end.
Bradford
and Nottingham universities are now developing new computer software
that will enable them to accurately model how plants, animals and
ultimately humans recolonized much of Britain (including Britain’s North
Sea Atlantis) after the extreme cold of the Ice Age – and how species
then tried to adapt to rising sea levels and periodic salt water
infiltration and flooding that increasingly resulted from it.
The
archaeologist leading the entire North Sea investigation, Professor
Vince Gaffney of the University of Bradford, believes that the project
will transform the academic world’s understanding of how northern Europe
was re-colonized by humanity when climatic conditions became warmer
some 12,000 years ago.
“As conditions got warmer, there was a
period of just a few thousand years when large areas of Europe’s
continental shelf were recolonized by Stone Age humans," said Professor
Gaffney.
“Warmer temperatures melted vast quantities of ice which
caused very substantial sea level rise which in turn gradually drowned
the most populated parts of the newly recolonized land.
“Because these areas of continental shelf became sea, they have been inaccessible to archaeologists until now.
“However,
this project will access new data at a scale never previously
attempted. Novel mapping, DNA extraction and computer modelling
representing people, animals and even individual plants will generate a
4 dimensional model of how Doggerland was colonised and eventually lost
to the sea.
“A dramatic, and previously lost, period of human
prehistory will begin to emerge from the seismic traces, fragments of
DNA and snippets of computer code that will form the primary data of
this innovative archaeological project.”
The project, regarded by
scientists across Europe as an important and unique operation, is being
funded over the next five years to the tune of 2.5 million Euros by the
European Union's European Research Council.
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