History Forum / General / Archaeology / April 2007

Hunter-gatherer culture beneath the waves. Drawings and maps at cite.

Lost world warning from North Sea
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education

Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden
below the North Sea.

This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was
swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.

University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings
as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe".

This large plain had disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years
ago.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have been using oil
exploration technology to build a map of the once-inhabited area that
now lies below the North Sea - stretching from the east coast of
Britain up to the Shetland Islands and across to Scandinavia.

'Terrifying'

"It's like finding another country," says Professor Vince Gaffney,
chair in Landscape Archaeology and Geomatics.

It also serves as a warning for the scale of impact that climate
change can cause, says Professor Gaffney.

Human communities would have lost their homelands as the rising water
began to encroach upon the wide, low-lying plains.

"At times this change would have been insidious and slow - but at
times it could have been terrifyingly fast. It would have been very
traumatic for these people," he says.

"It would be a mistake to think that these people were unsophisticated
or without culture... they would have had names for the rivers and
hills and spiritual associations - it would have been a catastrophic
loss," says Professor Gaffney.

As the temperature rose and glaciers retreated and water levels rose,
the inhabitants would have been pushed off their hunting grounds and
forced towards higher land - including to what is now modern-day
Britain.

"In 10,000 BC hunter gatherers were living on the land in the middle
of the North Sea. By 6,000 BC, Britain was an island. The area we have
mapped was wiped out in the space of 4,000 years," says Professor
Gaffney.

So far the team has examined a 23,000 square kilometre area of the sea
bed - mapping out coastlines, rivers, hills, sandbanks and salt
marshes as they would have appeared about 12,000 years ago.

And once the physical features have been established, Professor
Gaffney says it will be possible to narrow the search for sites that
could yield more evidence of how these prehistoric people lived.

These inhabitants would have lived in family groups in huts and hunted
animals such as deer.

The mapping of this landscape could also raise questions about its
preservation, says Professor Gaffney - and how it can be protected
from activities such as pipe-laying and the building of wind farms.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/6584011.stm