The research vessel RV Belgica moved in the last few days between the East coast of England and the Netherlands in his circles. All the attention was given to the bottom of the sea. An international Team of scientists were doing in there, in the South of the North sea, according to the traces of the sunken land of Dogger land, an Atlantis of the North. However, in contrast to the legendary island state, it is undisputed that Doggerland would be, in fact, was once found on the map of Europe would have been in front of 10’000 years ago, someone maps of the continent drawn.
During the last ice age the Northern shores of Europe were up to 120Meter lower than it is today. Europe had at that time, the researchers estimate up to four million square kilometres more land mass, a considerable part of which was in the North sea and was in great part covered with ice. As the glaciers began to melt after the end of the ice age, in front of 12’000 years, slowly gained the people’s habitable land masses that flooded the sea with the further melting of the ice piece at a time.
The researchers estimate that the sea level rose about one to two meters per century. For at least 2000 years, there was probably a land bridge between today’s Britain and Scandinavia. Helgoland stood out as a highly visible, bright red Sandstone rocks from a grass landscape. Perhaps it was for the Dogger countries, a similarly impressive Monument as it is today, the Ayers Rock in Australia, scientists believe. The last remnants of doggerland as the North sea about 8,000 years ago.
During its heyday, the lost Land was more than 100’000 square kilometers, with lush green hills, wide plains, lakes and extensive rivers. The hunters and gatherers of the middle stone age of oxen as they went on big-game hunting, hunted deer, mammoth, and Auer and ate of what the fertile alluvial landscape blazes.
That the sea holds some of the archaeological treasure, was already more than a hundred years, as a fisherman, with Weights dam peak values pulled nets across the sea bottom of the North sea. From time to time, horns or bones of aurochs landed in the nets. In the 1980s, fishing hobby archaeologists and even a human jaw from the water. An age determination showed that it was 9500 years old.
researchers found the Remains of a stone age picnic
Since 2002, there is research to submerged Dogger land. The Team of the British landscape, archaeologist Vincent Gaffney of the University of Bradford have been analyzed drill cores from the sea floor of the Region, revealing the stone-age Vegetation in the North sea level. In those 10’000 year old layer the archaeologists hazelnut shells and plum kernels, perhaps the Remains of a stone found plants time picnics, traces of moss and nightshade, and various beetles.
Pollen remains found in the cores also make it possible to reconstruct the Vegetation of Dogger land. In front of 10’000 years ago, a greener landscape replaced the end of the ice age, the dominant steppe-tundra. Birch, pine and aspen forests spread out, later also deciduous forests with elm, oak and Linden. Instead of Reindeer browsed now deer, aurochs and wild boar.
the task of The RV Belgica Crew is demanding. By using a gripping instrument, the researchers found in soil samples. Your search focus in the Moment on a 30-kilometre-long sandbank called the “Brown Bank”. The sea is there, in some Places, only about 13 meters deep. A Meter per dive can capture in an area that large is about the same as the present-day Netherlands.
Still, they hope for a large Fund. “You should actually find evidence of a settlement, it would be a breakthrough,” says Gaffney. “The landscape with the wandering herds for groups of hunters and gatherers attractive.”
In the framework of the research project “Europe’s Lost Frontiers” have been recorded by scientists already in the surface structure of the sea floor and an approximate map of Doggerland created. The Brown-Bank stakeholders of the Belgian researchers believe that in the seismic data of a river system and a lake, discovered, on the shores, there could be settlement remains.
the Thames and the Rhine, United pulled a huge power
in the 1930s a fisherman in the Region had a 21 inch long antler tip with a lateral series of notches that looked like a barb, from its network. Archaeologists have estimated her age to be around 11’000 years, probably the object was a stone-age inhabitants of doggerland as a harpoon tip.
the rivers of Europe in that time, other histories. They made their way in vast valleys, the river Elbe, for example, still flowed in front of 12’000 years ago in the far North of the Scottish Lowlands into the North sea. The river Thames ended in the English channel, but was United with the Rhine to a giant stream that flowed to the West at the height of Brittany in the Atlantic ocean.
As the sea-level rise, pushed brackish water into the country, first watt, have created. Just between the English coast and the Dogger land, the sea penetrated further and further. Doggerland was finally for a long time an island, until it came 8000 years ago to the dramatic Storegga landslide, in which all that was left, sank into the sea. On a length of a few Hundred kilometers, about 3000 cubic kilometres of mud came off the coast of Norway to Slip and crashed down the steep submarine slopes down. Up to 20-Meter-high tidal waves spread in the direction of Greenland, five to ten metre-high waves reached the Dogger land. Therefore, the research project has not only a historical perspective. It is also important to understand a very current process better: What happens if the sea level to rise and flood coastal areas threaten?
The Dogger countries had to learn how your habitat is reduced rapidly. “The sea rose so fast that the people knew probably, that the water had engulfed the Land of their ancestors,” says Gaffney. This Engrained was important, and that is probably the source of legends.
at the same time, it is important as a warning for today. Such a destruction of a whole land nourish doubt as to whether the port could cities and low-lying coastal regions with powerful dikes against the rising sea level to protect it. “The people of doggerland once had to flee from the rising sea,” says Gaffney. “And we have to ask ourselves: Where will people live in the present-day Bangladesh in a hundred years?”
employees: Hubert Filser
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Created: 19.05.2019, 00:22 Uhr
