Doggerland is a name given by geologists to the former landmass in the southern North Sea that connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during the last ice age. Geological surveys have suggested that Doggerland was a large dry land area that stretched from Britain's east coast across to the present coast of the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and Denmark. ^[1] The land was likely a rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period. ^[2] Commercial trawlers in the North Sea 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 likely used by the region's inhabitants.

Formation

Before the first of the current Pleistocene Ice Age the Rhine river flowed northwards through the North Sea bed at a time when the North Sea was dry. It is thought that a Cenozoic silt deposit in East Anglia is the bed of an old course of the Rhine. The Weald was twice as long as it is now and stretched across the present Strait of Dover; the modern Boulonnais is a remnant of its east end.

With glaciation, when Scandinavian and Scottish ice first met and formed a giant ice dam, a large proglacial lake then formed behind it, which received the river drainage and ice melt from much of northern Europe and western Russia. The impounded water then overflowed over the Weald into the English Channel and cut a deep gap which sea erosion later widened gradually into the Strait of Dover.

During the Devensian glaciation? the most recent glaciation? around 10,000 years ago, when the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with glacial ice, the sea level was about 120 m lower than it is today., Much of the North Sea and English Channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra.

It is thought that after the first main Ice Age the watershed between North Sea drainage and English Channel drainage extended west from East Anglia then southeast to the Hook of Holland, not across the Strait of Dover, and that the Thames, Seine and Rhine rivers joined and flowed along the English Channel dry bed as a wide slow river which at times flowed far before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

Disappearance

After the end of the last ice age, Doggerland became submerged beneath the North Sea, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland. The Dogger Bank was an upland area of Doggerland. However, several reports warn that the current relief of the southern North Sea seabed is not a sound guide to the topography of Doggerland. ^[3]

In popular culture

The "Mammoth Journey" episode of the BBC television programme Walking with Beasts is partly set on the dry bed of the southern North Sea. The area also featured in the "Britain's Drowned World" episode of the Channel 4 Time Team documentary. ^[4]

See also

• Location hypotheses of Atlantis

Notes

References

• Doggerland: a Speculative Survey, by B.J.Coles, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 64 1998 pp 45-81.
• Mapping Doggerland: The Mesolithic Landscapes of the Southern North Sea, V. Gaffney, K. Thomson and S. Fitch (editors), 2007, Archaeopress.

External links

• (University of Birmingham) North Sea Paleolandscapes website
• Doggerland on Zinken
• Laura Spinney, "The lost world: Doggerland"
• 

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