Doggerland, the landmass that once connected Britain to the European continent has just been reconstructed in the research of a team of archaeologists.
More than 8200 years ago a huge landmass was engulfed by a tsunami. It connected what is now Great Britain to the rest of the European continent in a single stretch of land. Its name is Doggerland, and a team of archaeologists surveying the area along the Dutch coast has collected enough data to reconstruct its appearance.
Doggerland, a lost Atlantis
According to a report by The Guardian, archaeologists have discovered more than 200 Doggerland objects. Objects of a different nature, which included things like a deer bone with an embedded arrowhead, fossils, mammoth molars, and fragments of a young Neanderthal's skull.
Today, united by the history reconstructed by researchers, these finds are part of a beautiful exhibition called "Doggerland, the lost world in the North Sea" at National Museum of Antiquities of Leiden, South Holland.
Dr. Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof he is assistant curator of the exhibition. He said: “We have a wonderful community of amateur archaeologists who walk these beaches almost daily and look for fossils and artefacts. We have been working with them for some time to analyze and study them.”
The heart of Europe
There was a time when Doggerland was a dry and incredibly rich land, a wonderful place for hunter-gatherers. It was not a land border, or a land bridge to the United Kingdom. Doggerland was simply the heart of Europe. Its story shows how destructive climate change can be. The dire human-caused effects we see today could be just as devastating as the changes seen so many years ago.
Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof
If you want to take a "remote" tour of the exhibition, you can take a look at the Museum's Youtube Channel, find here a taste.
