Britain was connected to Europe by a fertile plain called Doggerland until 8,500 years ago. The Storegga tsunami may have delivered the final blow. Fishing boats still dredge up mammoth bones and stone tools from this drowned world.
James Walker, Vincent Gaffney,Simon Fitch,Merle Muru, Andrew Fraser, Martin Bates and Richard Bates, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A Land Between the Waters
After the last glacial maximum, around 18,000 BCE, sea levels were up to 120 meters lower than they are today. This exposed a vast plain of nearly 188,000 square kilometers that connected what is now Great Britain to mainland Europe, from the Netherlands across to Denmark. This was Doggerland. It was not a frozen tundra, but a dynamic area of hills, extensive river valleys, marshlands, and dense forests of oak, elm, and hazel. Sedimentary DNA analysis shows temperate forests existed here as early as 16,000 years ago, far earlier than previously believed.
This Mesolithic heartland was exceptionally productive in resources. Rivers, like the large Shotton River which drained into a vast lake, teemed with fish. The wetlands and forests supported a diverse fauna including aurochs, red deer, roe deer, wild boar, and bears. This environment was a rich hunting and fishing ground for Mesolithic people, whose presence is confirmed by numerous artifacts recovered from the seabed. These include barbed antler points, flint tools, and even a 13,000-year-old decorated aurochs bone. Evidence shows a much deeper history of hominin occupation, with a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal skull fragment found off the Dutch coast.
The Slow Drowning and Final Deluge
The existence of Doggerland was fleeting. As the ice sheets continued to melt, rising sea levels steadily consumed the low-lying plains. Between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, the landmass gradually shrank, turning from a broad plain into an archipelago of islands. The final separation of Britain from the continent occurred around 6500 BCE.
The decisive end for the last islands of Doggerland likely came around 6225–6170 BCE. At this time, a massive submarine landslide occurred off the coast of Norway, known as the Storegga Slide. An estimated 3,500 cubic kilometers of sediment collapsed, triggering a catastrophic tsunami across the North Atlantic. Models estimate the waves reached heights of over 20 meters in the Shetland Islands and between 5 and 10 meters along the coast of Great Britain and the remaining Doggerland archipelago. This event would have inundated the last low-lying remnants of this world, washing away its Mesolithic communities and completing its submersion beneath the North Sea.
Today, the history of Doggerland is pieced together through science. Data from oil and gas exploration has allowed archaeologists to map more than 17,000 square miles of the lost landscape in high resolution, revealing its ancient rivers, lakes, and hills. Fishing trawlers continue to bring up evidence of its former inhabitants, from mammoth molars to the flint tools of its last human residents.
💡Fun Facts
The name "Doggerland" was coined in the 1990s by archaeologist Bryony Coles, naming it after the Dogger Bank, a large sandbank which was once a highland area of the lost plain.
The Dogger Bank itself is named after 17th-century Dutch fishing boats called *doggers*, which were used to catch cod in the area.
A 50,000-year-old Neanderthal tool with a handle made from birch tar pitch was discovered on the Dutch coast, demonstrating complex, multi-stage tasks were performed by Doggerland's earlier inhabitants.
The largest river of this lost world is called the Shotton River, named after the geologist Frederick William Shotton.
The landscape is permanently accessible to view from the coastlines of the UK and Netherlands, but the archaeological sites are submerged beneath 15 to 36 meters of water.
Admission
Free to view the sea; artifacts are housed in various museums, including the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands.
Accessibility
The physical site is inaccessible, located on the seabed of the North Sea.
