Possible Traces of 'Lost' Stone Age Settlement Beneath the North Sea

Deep beneath the North Sea, scientists have discovered a fossilized forest that could hold traces of prehistoric early humans who lived there around 10,000 years ago, before the land slipped beneath the waves a few thousand years later.

Scientists Find Possible Traces of 'Lost' Stone Age Settlement Beneath the North Sea

The scientists sound pretty sure they will find a hunter-gatherer settlement from the Middle Stone Age in the long lost forest. They are going to use heavier dredges or grabs to get large samples from the forest in the fall when they will return to the Brown Bank area.

It is hard to imagine an undersea petrified forest. Sounds like a really cool (and dangerous) place to go diving. Just think of what could be in that forest.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Cool find, they did not give the depth, but it seems fishermen have been pulling up artifacts for years.

a reply to: vonclod


The average depth of the Dogger Banks is about 80'.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

well within the range of the last 10k years. It really makes you wonder in regards the gulf of mexico and the carribean , the English channel etc.

I believe the agreed upon depth change is 400 feet. Given humanity's proclivity for coasts...the real answers are under water

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Ok, thanks, 80' rise in the ocean is quite a bit. It sounds like the dating is 1,700 years post ice age(I'm sure that is a rough date), or maybe they lived during the tail end.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Very cool idea, that lots of place were connected by land,

many animal species are proof of this.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Judging from maps from 1700's and early 1800's,the earth was much different,looks like from Texas through midwest is topsoil washed from destroyed land and villages,ever wonder why west coast was last to develop?.,because it was a huge wasteland from earthquakes tsunami's and volcanic eruptions

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Imagine how much Darvin must be rocking around and screaming in his grave, when people start to think that not all animal species arrived in pieces of driftwood all over the place,

I thought that this was really old news?? I'm old(ish) and I remember talking about this at school. It's called Doggerland, and connected Britian with Europe and was washed away/flooded at the end of the last ice age.

Here's a link.
Link to national geographic.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

On the TV today a series we have over here called Coast was on one of the channel's repeated since I believe the series was made a while ago now but it was essentially a BBC made discovery type program in which expert's would travel around the shore of the UK (and later parts of Europe) and speak to other expert's, go over some of the tragedy's such as sinking's and explore both the local history and the natural world of the region each show covered in a condensed form with usually spectacular shot's of the landscape in the area.

On this episode today, not sure which channel it was as I was channel hopping and stopped to watch just a snippet there was a university expedition on a fishing boat which was bringing up samples of the sea life in the region the episode was covering and the animal they were looking for was a particularly long lived scallop which can live to over 250 years of age and it's shell can then be sectioned and it's layers read just like those of a tree.

It was mentioned by the expert that in these were also found in the north sea and could be anything up to 7000 years old - that is actually a very interesting fact don't you think - up to 7000 years old which would mean that likely this species of native scallop had not colonized the sea bed of the north sea until about 7000 years ago, that is actually rather interesting though only a single species so it could have taken a while to colonize the sea bed there - but thousands of years - well it is a long lived species but?, could that perhaps push the sinking of much of the sea bed to more recently?.

Now if it had reached the early iron age or the late neolithic period it is quite conceivable that early hunter gatherer, fishing and/or even early farming/domestication may also have taken place there and what was once the perhaps thriving heart of primitive Europe.

If that is the case we could even one day discover far more substantial settlement's down there than is currently known to have existed for the period following the cataclysm on what to those people would have been the hinterland's far from the sea and colder due to being at higher elevations than they were when it was land.

Over time that will become land again, the continental crust of much of northern Europe is still undergoing glacial rebound and it is affecting much of the north sea area of that crust as well though at a relatively sedate pace and far more slowly than sea level rise is predicted to occur over the next couple of century's - so before it is land again it will likely first be deeper than it is today, no biggie since much of the land we whom are looking at this thread are living on was once sea and will be again some day the sea rises and fall's relative to the land and the land rises and fall's itself as thing's such as ocean crust spreading, continental tilting, glacial depression and inter-glacial rebound have affect upon it.

I would therefore suggest that what they find there will be far from unique on a global stage though is interesting since it is a window into that early period of post ice age European history of a region now lost to us since it's inundation.

originally posted by: Kurokage
I thought that this was really old news?? I'm old(ish) and I remember talking about this at school. It's called Doggerland, and connected Britian with Europe and was washed away/flooded at the end of the last ice age.

Here's a link.
Link to national geographic.

I think the new part is this.

"We are absolutely dead sure that we are very close to a settlement," said archaeologist Vincent Gaffney of Bradford University in the U.K., one of the project leaders. "The numbers of artifacts historically from that region tell us there is something there."

The Doggerland has been know of for a long time.