WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Sunken Lands, Part 2 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.240 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.960 name is Joe McCormick. Rob and I are out this week, 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:15.680 so we are going to be continuing our vault series 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:20.119 which began last Saturday on the Sunken Lands. So today's 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.119 episode is going to be part two of that series. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.119 This originally published November thirtieth, twenty twenty three. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:32.839 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:42.280 of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:43.400 My name is Robert. 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.159 Land, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:50.360 part two in our series called the Sunken Lands, about 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:55.120 places where what was relatively recently dry land has now 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.600 vanished beneath the waters. Now, in the last episode, we 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:03.840 talked about the history of fascination with the idea of lands, 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:08.160 and especially human civilizations occupied lands that were swallowed by 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:10.760 the sea, the most famous of these stories, of course 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:17.319 being Atlantis, a probably originally fictional island civilization described by 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.280 Plato in some of his dialogues that was, according to 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.760 the story, punished for its hubris by being drowned in 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.560 the ocean. And even though most experts on the original 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.160 sources think this story probably did not refer to a 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.600 place existing in reality. There are still people all the 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.440 time who love to hunt for remains of Atlantis and 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:41.840 similar drowned empires, or to interpret any strange underwater imagery 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:46.399 or other phenomena or artifacts as evidence of such. Here's 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.240 a weird looking artifact from under the water. Maybe it's 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:49.960 from Atlantis. 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:54.560 Yeah, and in many cases it's harmless. But you know, 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:57.400 as we've been discussing, these kind of ideas can bleed 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:05.280 into pseudoscience, pseudo archaeology, and pseudo geology, and in some 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.160 of these areas are perhaps harmless as well, but they 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:13.200 can become increasingly less harmless depending on what form they 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.600 end up taking within a given culture. I guess I 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:17.480 would just drive home that there's kind of an amorphous 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:20.200 nature to a lot of the concepts that we've been 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:24.080 discussing with the idea of lost islands, and there's going 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.520 to continue to be this kind of a morphous quality 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:28.760 to it as we proceed. 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:33.120 Right. So, despite the fact that hunting for a literal, 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.600 physical Atlantis is probably the wrong track to be on, 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:40.760 there are absolutely examples of real places on Earth where 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:45.560 land has relatively recently become covered in water and the 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.200 main real world example we talked about in the last 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:52.160 episode was what has come to be known as dogger Land, 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:57.360 a vast plain stretching mostly east of Great Britain and 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.040 north of the coastlines of Continental Europe, off the north 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.560 coastlines of what is today France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.400 occupying much of the area that is now filled in 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.520 with the North Sea. Now, last time we talked about 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.799 some of the fascinating early hints, early pieces of evidence 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.760 that pointed to the existence of a past Doggerland, such 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.360 as observations going back centuries. Actually that sometimes low tide 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.200 on the British coast would reveal the remains of apparently 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:31.880 ancient trees and trunks, still rooted in their original soil, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:35.200 but now underneath the ocean. How's that possible? As well 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.440 as the discovery of terrestrial animal remains and even human 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:44.200 artifacts like the Kolinda Harpoon, a Stone Age spear tip 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.440 dragged up from the bottom in a fishing net about 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.840 twenty five miles off the coast of Great Britain in 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.040 the nineteen thirties. In nineteen thirty one, so today we're 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.640 back to talk more about the sunken lands, and I 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.880 wanted to kick off this episode by exploring Dogland in 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:05.040 more depth. So Doggerland used to be land. Now it's 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.960 covered in sea. What happened to it? Well, I'm going 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:10.440 to lay out a rough timeline here, and I just 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.560 want to mention at the top here a couple of 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:17.200 really good articles about the archaeology of Doggerland that I 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.760 was reading. One was called Europe's Lost Frontier. This was 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.800 a feature published in the journal Science by Andrew Curry 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:28.960 in January twenty twenty. Another is called Mapping a Vanished Landscape. 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.840 This was in Archaeology Magazine by Jason Urbanas in the 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.440 March April twenty twenty two edition. So the Doggerland timeline 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.520 goes like this. During the Late Pleistocene, the last part 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.320 of the most recent ice age, between about one hundred 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.000 and twenty five thousand and twelve thousand years ago, much 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.960 of the world's water was locked in glaciers and the 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.880 North Sea was much lower than it is today. It 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.359 was about four hundred and fifty feet lower than the 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:01.120 present average. So at this time during the Late Pleistocene, 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:08.920 Doggerland was a cold, dry place, a freezing grassland step 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:14.240 occupied mostly by megafauna like wooly mammoths or wooly rhinoceroses, 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:18.760 but other large large animals that can withstand cold environments, 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:23.479 like reindeer and the aurux, the ancestor of modern cattle. 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:29.480 Then after the conclusion of the Pleistocene, we transition into 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.200 the geological epic known as the Holocene, which extends up 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.800 until today. This is the warming period after the most 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.520 recent ice age. So this period is characterized by a 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:45.040 steady increase in temperatures which caused glaciers to begin to melt. 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.600 So for thousands of years, you know, to think back 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.160 roughly ten thousand years ago or so, for thousands of years, 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:56.920 doggerland was still above sea level, but the warming climate 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:01.640 and the melting glaciers transformed it from a cold, arid 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:07.480 step a tundra like landscape into an increasingly lush land 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:12.560 of forests and then marshes, rivers and lakes, and many 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.640 sources describe this post glacial landscape as a kind of 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:20.600 hunter gatherer paradise. So who were these hunter gatherers? Well, 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:22.920 there were multiple waves of them. In fact, there's some 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:28.359 indication that the human relat the ancient human relative Homo 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:33.240 antecessor had existed in Doggerland going way back during the 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:38.600 cold arid Step period, the Neanderthals occupied Doggerland. It would 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.479 have been a harsh existence. This would be a very 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.920 cold and dry place where people would have survived by 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.239 hunting large animals. But Neanderthals did occupy the dog Land Step. 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.960 We know that through evidence of artifacts axeheads and other 0:06:55.560 --> 0:07:00.840 flint artifacts that have in some cases been clearly subjected 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.920 to a type of birch bark tar that the Neanderthals 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:08.720 would use that they manufactured. And then after the Neanderthals 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.200 during the Holocene, when the area was warming up, it 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:16.440 was clearly inhabited by Middle Stone Age Homo sapiens. And 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.480 the article in Archaeology Magazine that I mentioned a minute 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:23.080 ago quotes a curator of prehistoric collections at the National 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:27.640 Museum of Antiquities in Leyden named Luke Amkroutz, who says 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:32.400 quote during the Holocene, Doggerland was a wooded environment, but 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:36.960 with really extensive coastlines and enormous wetlands. These were the 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:41.360 richest areas to live in. There were forest resources, deer, 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:46.360 wild boar, and berries, but also fish, migrating birds, otters, 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.280 and beavers. It was a Garden of Eden for them, 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.680 a wetland wonderland. So if you were a hunter gatherer 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:57.800 in Mesolithic Europe, especially after the glaciers began to melt 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.560 and the climate began to warm, dog ker Land was awesome. 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.480 Jason Urbanis, writing this article, says that it is quote 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:11.240 by any estimation, the most attractive landscape in northwestern Europe 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.480 for Mesolithic hunter gatherers, and perhaps the continent's most densely 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:19.760 populated region at the time. So sometimes when you think 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.560 about a previously exposed piece of land that is in 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.559 many sources referred to as quote a land bridge, because 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:32.040 it is what bridged the mainland continental Europe with Great Britain, 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.600 you think of a kind of transitional place, you know 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.000 that people just walked across. But no, it's not just 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.840 a transitional place that allowed people to get from one 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:45.720 highland to another. This was apparently about the best place 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.280 you could be in this area of Europe at the time. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:50.280 It was full of resources. 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:55.000 This is also amazing that he directly compares it to 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:57.800 the Garden of Eden. That he compares it to not 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.080 only a land of plenty but a utope which lines 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.760 up with so many of these ideas of a lost 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:10.000 and or sunken land, of a land from which people 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:12.640 came but can no longer return to or may one 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.360 day return to. But in this case it does seem 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.760 to line up with the idea of it actually being 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:22.160 a land of plenty, actually being a place where resources 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:23.800 were abundant, but. 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.600 Much like the Garden of Eden, it couldn't last forever. 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:28.720 Though in this case it apparently has nothing to do 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:31.280 with a snake. It has to do with in fact, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.280 the exact same forces that made it a land of 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:38.000 plenty in abundance in the beginning ended up dooming it. 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:42.200 So a warming climate and melting glaciers first changed dogger 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:46.400 Land from an arid tundra into a lush paradise, and 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.440 then the same trends transformed it to the drowned Stone 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.120 Age graveyard it is today. 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:53.480 Oh wow. 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.080 So from the end of the Last Ice Age, the 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.200 level of the North Sea steadily rose. Ice is melting, 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:03.520 the world is warm, the sea levels arising, and Urbanis 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.199 writes in the Archaeology article that for a period of 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:11.520 roughly three thousand years, the sea rose six feet every 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:15.320 hundred years and then adding to the steady creep up 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.000 of the water line, there was a sudden cataclysmic event 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:24.080 that would have horribly affected the Mesolithic populations living in 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.839 the remaining coastal areas of that region, towards the end 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.080 of that warming period, so more than eight thousand years ago, 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:36.000 around sixty two hundred BCE. Again, at this point, much 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.640 of Doggerland had already been submerged, but what was left 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.560 above the water line was hit with a catastrophic tsunami 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.760 caused by an underwater landslide off the coast of Norway. 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.200 It was actually one of a series of these underwater 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:55.280 land slide events known as the Storega slides str GGA. 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.120 And I've seen different estimates for the exact height and 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.280 power of the tsunami wave. That article I mentioned in 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.640 Science by Andrew Curry cites an estimate of at least 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:09.720 ten meters high for the wave that hit Doggerland, but 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.000 a twenty twenty one study of its effects on the 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.720 eastern coast of Scotland, so this is looking at Scotland 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.800 analyzed soil deposits to estimate that the water might have 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.240 come as far as eighteen miles inland. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.360 Wow. Well, I mean even just looking at the like 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:27.920 the ten meter high, that would be almost thirty three 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:28.520 feet high. 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:30.839 Right, So, if you are in range of the tsunami, 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.880 catastrophic event also may have had some effect in like 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:39.000 moving around sediments and possibly washing out some existing areas 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:39.480 of land. 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.280 Right. Right, that again we're already exposed due to the 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:45.640 rising the sea levels. 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.520 Right. And actually one of the last pieces of land 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:55.960 remaining above water from Doggerland was the now submerged Dogger 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.760 Bank from which Doggerland gets its name. It remained as 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.760 an island for a while, so Doggerland came to be 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.880 known as Doggerland when the name was given to it 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.040 by an archaeologist named Briany Coles. And it was named 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.679 after the sand bank in the North Sea known as 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:15.679 the Dogger Bank, which got its name because it was 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.240 a popular fishing spot used by these Dutch boats called doggers. 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.800 So the dogger boats go out, they fish around the 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:27.319 sand bank. There's good catch there, and those doggers give 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.199 their name to the area. And apparently that that sand 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.520 bank was once an island, that was one of the 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:37.120 last parts of it left. Now, there's an interesting contradiction 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.240 which is that we know that it was probably one 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:44.280 of the most densely populated places in Stone Age Europe. 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.000 It was full of abundant resources. There were lots of 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.560 humans living there in the Middle Stone Age. But it's 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:55.520 hard to study archaeologically for obvious reasons. You can't just 0:12:55.559 --> 0:13:00.360 go dig. It's underwater, and also the water is deep 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.280 and cold and murky and stormy. It's just a difficult 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:07.920 place to explore, even with divers. So how can archaeologists 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.680 learn things about Doggerland other than just waiting for the 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:16.280 occasional artifact to get dredged up in a trawling net 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.800 like we talked about with the Colinda Harpoon. Well, actually, 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.360 this is one of the main subjects of that article 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.400 in Archaeology magazine Mapping a Vanished Landscape by Jason Arbanis, 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:30.079 and it talks about some interesting ways that scholars have 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.480 come up with or come across by accident to study 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:36.960 Doggerland and see what we can learn about it. So 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.800 one effort described in this article is associated with a 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:46.160 University of Bradford archaeologist named Vince Gaffney and colleagues. Gaffney 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.559 is quoted extensively in this article and he talks about 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:56.119 how he and colleagues used data from seismic reflections surveys 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.320 originally done by offshore oil and gas companies to find 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:04.120 mineral deposits. So the way this works is that you 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.080 have a ship, it goes out in the water. It 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.880 emits sound waves into the water which bounce off of 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.640 the seafloor and then are picked up by ship based detectors. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.440 And the physical features of the seafloor affect how the 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.120 sound is altered when it bounces back, and then this 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.400 information can be used to map shapes and contours and 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.360 anomalies deep under the water. Now they figured out that 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.760 that same seismic data, which was again proprietary, it was 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.840 owned by these energy companies, how that could be used 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:37.440 by archaeologists to assemble an approximate picture of what Doggerland 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.920 was like before it flooded, to study the hidden landscape. 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.520 And the archaeologists were actually able to get data from 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.200 I think multiple companies, at least one company called Petroleum 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.840 Geoservices or PGS, And they talk about how they use 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.960 data from this company to map a patch of sea 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:00.520 roughly twenty three hundred square miles in size, and when 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.320 they assembled the map, they realized they were looking at 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.400 a place where a large river had once cut through 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:09.560 what is now the submerged dogg Or Bank. So imagine 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.600 that you're like looking at this seismic reflection data and 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:17.240 then you realize it's showing you a map of what 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.320 the land looked like before the water covered it, and 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.200 you can see the river bed and all that. 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:23.240 Wow. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:25.720 And at the time of this article, their maps had 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.200 expanded to cover more than seventeen thousand square miles, so 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:33.960 they know a lot more about the landscape of Doggerland 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.640 than we did in the past. They have maps depicting 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:40.800 a lost landscape of lakes, rivers, hills and valleys. So 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.440 that's one way of understanding Doggerland is with this mapping project. 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.000 But there's another interesting thing this mentioned in both of 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.920 these articles, which is that, of course, many more Mesolithic 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.240 artifacts from Doggerland have been found since the Colinda Harpoon. 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.280 There are lots of them now, especially a lot of 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:02.160 these spear tips and sharp points, and a lot of 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:07.120 them have been found as an accidental byproduct of beach 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:11.640 fill efforts that are used to help, in one sense, 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.480 to protect the coastlines of places like the Netherlands from 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:19.840 rising sea levels, but also to counteract coastal erosion. So 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.960 basically you have these big boats that go out and 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.480 dredge up gigantic amounts of sand from the sea bottom 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:29.600 miles off shore, and then they come back and they 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.960 dump it at the water's edge to expand the existing 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:36.440 land footprint, maybe to build more harbor infrastructure or something, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.800 or to fix roading coastline, or to build up a 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:45.320 sand barrier to help protect the inland areas from rising seawater. 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.400 And it just so happens that when they do this, 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.520 when these boats dredge up the seafloor for Beachville, they 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.960 often end up depositing previously buried artifacts of Doggerland on 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.960 the beaches where they can be picked up by collectors. 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.639 And these articles describe archaeologists who are like in contact 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.400 with these sort of beach walking artifact collectors and they're 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.760 just getting artifacts from Doggerland all the time. Now people 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.679 are writing them to say, oh, here they've got arrowheads, axes, 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.679 barbed spear tips made from antler or bone, much like 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.520 the Kolinda harpoon. Remember that was made from the antler 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.240 of a red deer, and there's a lot we can 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:28.080 learn from this stuff because the low oxygen soil deposits 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:30.880 at the bottom of the North Sea tend to preserve 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.200 organic materials very well. So the researchers have been able 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.119 to do a lot of analysis on these organic remains, 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:42.320 including skeletal remains of the humans from these periods, and 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.200 this includes DNA analysis, so we know a lot more 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.640 than we used to. The downside, of course, is that 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:53.160 if you are just finding like artifacts or human remains 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.560 that have been scooped up in this haphazard process where 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:59.200 they're dredged from the ocean floor and then spit out 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:01.720 on a beach somewhere, where you know nothing about the 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.840 context really. I mean, you might have some rough ideas 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.520 about where it comes from, but archaeologists want not just 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.560 an artifact, but they want to understand the context of 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.400 the artifact, what soil did it come from, where exactly 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.800 was that located, what was the situation in which this 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.400 artifact would have originally been deposited. 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.120 So we're kind of like robbing future archaeologists who might 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.080 have clearer maps and therefore a little better idea about 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.439 where to search for such artifacts in these sunken lands, 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:40.040 and also better means of actually investigating these sites and 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:44.480 exploring them in a way that retains some level of 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:46.040 context about the remains. 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.320 That's right, and so the archaeologists described in these articles 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:55.640 have actually in some cases been able to identify artifacts 0:18:55.720 --> 0:19:00.320 in their original context. So one question it asks is, Okay, 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.639 so we know that Doggerland was probably a very desirable 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.600 location during this warming period, for the few thousand years 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:11.360 that it was warming and wet but not yet submerged. 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:16.400 So when people lived there, where did they live? Finding 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:20.360 the location of settlements as obviously difficult underwater, but they 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.959 say that generally the people of Mesolithic Europe were nomadic, 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.159 but if there was a sheet with you know, if 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.359 there was a great abundance of resources, they might create 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:34.240 semi permanent settlements. And the places you would look for 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.320 those semi permanent settlements might be things might be on 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.199 like high ground, close to wetland areas. So the wetlands 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.880 would have resources that you would want, but you would 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.720 want an elevated area above that. Now I'm going to 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.480 read a brief passage from this article in Archaeology Magazine 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:56.479 describing efforts by Vince Gaffney and colleagues to identify an 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.360 underwater site with the help of this mapping, and then 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:03.720 extract artifacts from the underwater site so you'd understand more 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.919 about the original context. One of these sites, quote was 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:11.440 a shallow, fifteen mile long seafloor ridge known as Brown Bank, 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.200 where a wealth of archaeological objects, including a thirteen thousand 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.760 year old engraved aurex bone, had been snared by fishing 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.760 trawlers in the past. The other was an area along 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:25.720 a now submerged river channel and estuary off the Norfolk 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:29.600 Coast known as the Southern River. Although the weather did 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.880 not fully cooperate, cutting the team's time at sea short, 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:35.800 they were able to scoop up sediment deposits from the 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.240 Southern River estuary site. When they examined the material, they 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.639 were stunned to find it contained a fragment of a 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.800 stone tool known as a hammerstone. So I was pretty 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:49.760 amazed by that. The idea that they could use these 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.080 maps to find sites at the bottom of the North 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:58.040 Sea where they would expect humans to have lived because 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:00.879 of the value of those sites compared to the natural 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:04.200 resources around them, and then go scoop up sediment from 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:07.240 under the water and actually find human artifacts where they 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.359 expected to look for them. That is impressive, And so 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.280 the article goes on to say that while this individual 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:18.399 find of the hammerstone might not be incredibly significant, the 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.560 fact that this technique generally works for could or generally 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.320 could work for finding artifacts of this type could teach 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.680 us a lot more about the societies of ancient Doggerland. 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.760 Now another archaeological note that I wanted to mention this 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:44.760 is from that article in Science by Andrew Curry from 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.920 January twenty twenty, and just as a funny side note, 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:50.520 the dateline on this report is from a place in 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:55.120 the Netherlands called Monster. I don't know if I'm pronouncing 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.600 it right, but that is a town in South Holland, Monster, 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.320 which is near a beach that had been constructed via 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:03.480 the sand motor process that I was talking about. So 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.560 a lot of Doggerland artifacts and human remains could be 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:08.760 found on the beach there and are found by people 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:13.800 walking around looking for artifacts. So this article covers a 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:15.560 lot of the same ground as the other one I 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.879 was talking about. But one interesting question it asks is, Okay, 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:23.280 we've got a good amount now of physical evidence available 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:27.200 from Doggerland, does it reveal anything about what ancient people 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:32.360 did in response to these steadily rising sea levels, And 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:35.080 there actually has been some research on this that they 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.320 of course know that the rising water gradually transformed Doggerland 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:43.680 from a land of rivers and forests into a wetland 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:46.800 with marshes and estuaries in the lower lying areas and 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:51.480 then scattered highlands which stayed drier. And analysis of human 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:56.520 bones recovered from across this transition period shows changes in 0:22:56.560 --> 0:22:59.960 what people ate. So as the landscape changed, people apparent 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:06.160 currently shifted their diet from land based animals to freshwater fish. 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.880 And then one last little fact I wanted to mention 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:11.920 that I came across. This was in an article by 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:15.480 Johannis Decker at All published in the Journal of Archaeological 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:19.000 Science Reports in twenty twenty one called human and servid 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:24.280 osseous materials used for barbed point manufacture in Mesolithic Doggarland. 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:26.840 The fact was sort of contained in the title there. 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:29.200 We have already talked about how a lot of these 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:31.760 sharp spear points that have been recovered from the people 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.879 who lived here were made of antler and bone. These 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:37.119 are primarily animal bones. Of course, you know, so they 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:39.960 might be using parts of a deer carcass or something 0:23:40.040 --> 0:23:42.840 like that to make a lot of these weapons. But 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.320 apparently the authors of this study report at least two 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:50.520 barbed points like spear or harpoon tips that were made 0:23:50.560 --> 0:23:51.840 out of human bone. 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:56.520 That's fascinating and it makes one wonder, you know, what 0:23:57.400 --> 0:23:59.439 could have been the context for that. Was it a 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.879 matter of of some sort of a supply shortage with 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:07.879 you know, deer or elkbones. Was it maybe something that 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:10.800 was ritualistic, Was this, you know, the way to honor 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:13.000 ancestors or you know, or was it just hey, we 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:15.840 need more bone and we have some human bones on hand. 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:19.120 Were these enemies? Were these friends? So many questions. 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:22.360 Yeah, the mind always races when you get a detail 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:24.840 like that. You think like, is this was this a 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:27.240 question of efficiency or question of choice? 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.879 Yeah? Well, this whole discussion of Doggerland has been fascinating. 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:33.520 I really wasn't familiar with this this topic at all. 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:37.199 Yeah, I was not really either. I mean reading about Doggerland, 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:39.720 including some of the articles I've talked about today, is 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:42.879