'Reconstruction' begins of stone age lands lost to North Sea [View all]
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/08/mapping-begins-of-lands-lost-to-north-sea-during-the-stone-age
'Reconstruction' begins of stone age lands lost to North Sea
Nazia Parveen North of England correspodent
Wed 8 May 2019 18.42 BST Last modified on Wed 8 May 2019 20.24 BST
Lost at the bottom of the North Sea almost eight millennia ago, a vast land area between England and southern Scandinavia which was home to thousands of stone age settlers is about to be rediscovered.
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On Wednesday a crew of British and Belgian scientists set off on their voyage across the North Sea to reconstruct the ancient Mesolithic landscape hidden beneath the waves for 7,500 years. The area was submerged when thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started to melt and sea levels began to rise.
The ancient country, known as Doggerland, which could once have had great plains with rich soils, formed an important land bridge between Britain and northern Europe. It was long believed to have been hit by catastrophic flooding.
Using seabed mapping data the team plans to produce a 3D chart revealing the rivers, lakes, hills and coastlines of the country. Specialist survey ships will take core sediment samples from selected areas to extract millions of fragments of DNA from the buried plants and animals.
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Bradford scientists will join Belgian experts onboard RV Belgica for the 11-day expedition in the Brown Bank area of the southern North Sea.
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Until sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, an area of land connected Britain to Scandinavia and the continent.
In previous studies funded by the European Research Council, the Lost Frontiers team mapped the Doggerland region, which is about the size of Holland. The team could identify the location of river valleys, marshlands, hills and even white cliffs, but was unable to find evidence of human activity.
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Archaeological finds made by fishermen over the past century suggest there was a sand ridge east of Great Yarmouth, known as the Brown Bank, which could have been the location of a settlement.
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