Giant Tsunami Destroyed Europe's Lost Land

I caught this one off Dienekes' Anthropology Blog a couple days ago, a report of geological evidence that a giant tsunami triggered by a submarine landslide off of Norway probably destroyed whatever human habitation existed on Doggerland, a submerged area in the North Sea that used to be a flat wetland between France, Germany, Scandinavia  and the Netherlands approximately 8,000 years ago:

I hope someone is studying ancient DNA from these two Mesolithic ladies from Brittany. The caption reads:

These two young Mesolithic women from Teviec, Brittany, were brutally murdered. As sea levels rose there may have been increased competition for resources.

Homotherium with Mesolithic Miss

Prehistoric North Sea 'Atlantis' hit by 5m tsunami

The wave was generated by a catastrophic subsea landslide off the coast of Norway. Analysis suggests the tsunami over-ran Doggerland, a low-lying landmass that has since vanished beneath the waves.

"It was abandoned by Mesolithic tribes about 8,200 years ago, which is when the Storegga slide happened," said Dr Jon Hill from Imperial College London.

As recently as 8000 years ago, Doggerland could have been habitat to a wide variety of ancient European animals now gone, including the sabre toothed cat Homotherium, European Lions, Brown Bears, and just possibly Mammoths (although the European Mammoth is reported to have died out around 10,000 years ago on mainland Europe).

The wave could have wiped out the last people to occupy this island.

The research has been submitted to the journal Ocean Modelling and is being presented at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna this week.

Dr Hill and his Imperial-based colleagues Gareth Collins, Alexandros Avdis, Stephan Kramer and Matthew Piggott used computer simulations to explore the likely effects of the Norwegian landslide.

He told BBC News: "We were the first ever group to model the Storegga tsunami with Doggerland in place. Previous studies have used the modern bathymetry (ocean depth)."
As such, the study gives the most detailed insight yet into the likely impacts of the huge landslip and its associated tsunami wave on this lost landmass.

From the BBC report:

By around 10,000 years ago, the area would still have been one of the richest areas for hunting, fishing and fowling (bird catching) in Europe.

A large freshwater basin occupied the centre of Doggerland, fed by the River Thames from the west and by the Rhine in the east. Its lagoons, marshes and mudflats would have been a haven for wildlife.

"In Mesolithic times, this was paradise," explained Bernhard Weninger, from the University of Cologne in Germany, who was not involved with the present study.
But 2,000 years later, Doggerland had become a low-lying, marshy island covering an area about the size of Wales.

I first reported on Doggerland back in 2012, when I first saw reports of it.  It is a bit sobering to realize that the earth we live on is constantly under flux, and that we are not living in "privileged" period of ideal climate or even sea level height.  Climate, sea level, and even the very shape of the lands and continents is constantly in flux.

And Gaia doesn't give a shit about us.

Wombat-socho is either a week behind or on time with this weeks massive two weeks worth "Rule 5 Sunday: The Portland Double-Dip Edition."

Britain's Lost Atlantis Re-Explored

France's, the Benelux's, and Denmark's, too

'Britain's Atlantis' - a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea - has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews. Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC.

Divers from oil companies have found remains of a 'drowned world' with a population of tens of thousands - which might once have been the 'real heartland' of Europe. A team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies - and revealed the full extent of a 'lost land' once roamed by mammoths.

Sonar image of a drowned river

Bad, bad oil companies, trying to steal that land from the ancient inhabitants of Europe.

The research suggests that the populations of these drowned lands could have been tens of thousands, living in an area that stretched from Northern Scotland across to Denmark and down the English Channel as far as the Channel Islands.The area was once the ‘real heartland’ of Europe and was hit by ‘a devastating tsunami', the researchers claim. The wave was part of a larger process that submerged the low-lying area over the course of thousands of years.

We have much the same situation on the East Coast of the United States.  With an extremely wide, flat continental shelf, the ocean retreated many miles out to sea during the glaciations, and the human population of North America, just getting started at the time, almost certainly made use of that region.  The Chesapeake Bay was dry at the time, a valley with the Susquehanna at the bottom, and other rivers running down into it.

That's the first I've heard of a tsunami having such an effect there, but I suppose it's not shocking.  There are several possible sources for large tsunamis in the Atlantic, volcanoes in Iceland, collapsing island in the canaries, not to mention the possibility of a large meteor strike anywhere.

'People seem to think rising sea levels are a new thing - but it’s a cycle of Earth history that has happened many many times.'

It must have been "interesting" times living in a low country, being swallowed by the ocean at a significant rate. Sea level rise was much faster after the end of the last ice excursion. Sea level rise at a few mm a year is barely noticeable to us, but to people living in Doggerland, it must have seemed as if the ocean were literally chasing them back.