Scientists piece together Europe's lost heartland

Tuesday 3 July 2012

SCIENTISTS from a Scots university have recreated for the first time the lost "heartland of Europe", which was submerged by water thousands of years ago.

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A team from St Andrews – working with colleagues from the universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, Dundee and Wales Trinity St David – have built up a picture of the human story behind Doggerland, an area of the North Sea that was drowned between 18,000BC and 5500BC.

They said that following 15 years of "painstaking fieldwork", they believe there may have been tens of thousands of people living in the area – stretching from the north of Scotland to Denmark and down to the Channel Islands. Their work will be unveiled as part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, running until Sunday at Carlton House Terrace in London. Dr Richard Bates, of the St Andrews' Department of Earth Sciences, said: "Doggerland was the real heartland of Europe until sea levels rose to give us the UK coastline of today. We have speculated for years on the lost land's existence from bones dredged up by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it's only since working with oil companies in the past few years that we have been able to recreate what this lost land looked like."When the data was first being processed, I thought it unlikely to give us any useful information, however as more area was covered it revealed a vast and complex landscape."We have now been able to model its flora and fauna, build up a picture of the ancient people that lived there and begin to understand some of the dramatic events that changed the land, including the sea rising and a devastating tsunami."Academics have been able to reconstruct the land, showing it was made up of hills, valleys and lakes, and are investigating evidence of human behaviour, including burial sites and standing stones.Mr Bates said: "We have found many artefacts and submerged features that are very difficult to explain by natural causes, such as mounds surrounded by ditches. "But there is very little evidence left because much of it has eroded."

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Scientists piece together Europe's lost heartland

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