In September 1931, the trawler Colinda hauled up a large block of peat off the coast of Norfolk, on the Leman and Ower banks, at a depth of 19 to 20 fathoms (approximately 35 to 37 meters). Inside, there was a barbed point carved from deer antler. Radiocarbon dating (OxA-1950) gives 11,740 years before present, that is between 11,950 and 11,300 years BCE, according to the Norfolk Heritage Explorer notice.
This point, preserved at the Norwich Castle Museum, remains the most cited evidence of land inhabited where cargo ships now pass. Researchers call it Doggerland.
The previous version of this page called it a “paradise for paleodivers” and mentioned a wooden harpoon found in the Netherlands. Everything has been reviewed, source by source. Here is what holds up.
How did Doggerland connect Great Britain to the continent?
During the last glacial period, sea levels were much lower than today and the southern North Sea formed a plain between England, the Netherlands, and Denmark. According to the University of Bradford, this territory, larger than the United Kingdom, was gradually submerged between 18,000 and 5,500 years BCE.
The sea did not take everything at once. It first flooded the valleys, then the low plains. In their article published in 2020 by the journal Antiquity, archaeologist James Walker and colleagues describe a landscape already fragmented around 9,000 years before present, far from the large continuous plain shown on simplified maps. The heights of the Dogger then formed an island. It would have lasted about another millennium before shrinking to a shallow sandbank.
Around 7,000 years before present, this Dogger island would have disappeared.
But the pace matters as much as the result. Between 8,400 and 8,200 years before present, the average sea level rose by 1 to 4 meters, possibly in two phases, according to the same study. On very flat coasts, one can easily imagine what a few meters change means for hunter-gatherers (the details remain to be documented site by site).
The old page dated the birth of the British island “around -6500”. The separation took place over millennia, and no single date summarizes it.
Did the Storegga tsunami engulf Doggerland?
It struck hard, without wiping everything off the map. Around 8,150 years before present, a giant underwater landslide off the coast of Norway launched a wave across northwest Europe. Walker’s team concluded in 2020 that damage varied according to the terrain and that parts of Doggerland survived the wave.
The Storegga slide is the largest known in the Holocene. It covered 80,000 km² and displaced 3,200 km³ of sediment west of southern Norway. In 2018, the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project, funded by the European Research Council, took cores from ancient river channels near the Outer Dowsing Deep, off England. Several contained stones and broken shells mixed with churned sediments, the signature of a wave. Luminescence dating places them at the same time as Storegga.
Yet, ancient DNA preserved in these same cores indicates that the water later receded and that land reclaimed part of the Dogger coastline, contradicting the image of a country erased in a single day.
In short, the wave did not end the story. According to the authors, the end of Doggerland mainly comes from the slow rise of the seas, continuing well after the wave. Some coastal areas may have held out until the Neolithic. We remain cautious.
What remains have been found at the bottom of the North Sea?
Most finds have been brought up by trawlers or sand dredgers. Bones of large mammals from the glacial era, flint tools, the Colinda point, and even a fragment of Neanderthal skull have thus left the seabed, most often without the soil layer that would allow placing them in context.
In 2009, Leiden University noted that tons of Pleistocene mammal fossils are discarded each year by these machines. Among them are woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, horses, reindeer, and bovids. Krijn, a skull fragment, comes from a dredger. An amateur paleontologist, Luc Antholis, spotted it in sand brought up off the Dutch coast. The National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden estimates it to be 50,000 to 70,000 years old.
Krijn is therefore much older than the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, which reminds us that these seabeds mix very distant eras.
But an isolated object says little. Without in-situ soil, it is impossible to know who lived where. Hence the interest of the May 2019 expedition to the Brown Bank, led by Tine Missiaen from VLIZ, the Flemish marine institute. According to University College Cork, the team retrieved a well-preserved early Holocene soil surface, peat, ancient wood, and two flints, including a piece of a hammerstone.
As for the lifestyle, the magazine Archaeology summarized in 2022 what is known about these Mesolithic groups. Between about 10,000 and 8,000 years before present, they exploited the forest (deer, wild boar, berries) but also fish, migratory birds, otters, and beavers.
The old page mentioned a submerged forest discovered off Norfolk in 2015 and cave lions. No reliable trace of these two points has been found, so they have been removed.
How do you map a submerged country?
With seismic data from the oil industry. These surveys, conducted to search for deposits, also show ancient rivers, coasts, and lakes trapped under sediments. In 2016, the University of Bradford announced nearly 23,000 km² mapped between the Norfolk coast and the Dogger Bank.
Jason Urbanus recounts the beginnings in the March-April 2022 issue of Archaeology magazine. The company PGS initially released what it considered a small batch of data, about 2,300 square miles. The work now covers more than 17,000 square miles, or about 44,000 km². The team of archaeologist Vince Gaffney from the University of Bradford followed thousands of kilometers of rivers and valleys there. These outlines are then used to decide where to core.
Thus, in the estuary of an ancient river called Southern River, a sediment sample yielded a fragment of a stone hammerstone, according to the same article, even though no diver had gone down to retrieve it.
Time is running out. In 2022, Archaeology reported that the southern North Sea would be almost entirely covered with wind farms within the next two decades. Each foundation touches the seabed. It is clear why archaeologists want to map before the construction sites.
Can you dive on Doggerland?
No recreational dive outings on Doggerland remains have been found. The knowledge comes from research vessels, cores, and seismic data. The title of “paradise for paleo-divers” that the old page carried was not based on any source, and it has been removed from the title.
Look at the known depths. The tip of the Colinda was about 35 to 37 meters deep. At what level? This is a depth to be framed according to your certification and the country’s rules, with a professional who knows the site. For visibility and current on these banks, no dated data has been found. Impossible to decide from here. And clear water on a given day would say nothing about the safety of the outing, in a sea where traffic is dense.
An ancient object spotted on the bottom is not to be picked up, for the same reason as why you should never touch marine life: the rules change according to national waters, so check with the country’s authorities before any outing.
However, other submerged remains are better documented. Our selection of sunken cities to explore in progress reviews eight of them. You can also read our file on Baia, the Roman city frozen underwater near Naples. Finally, there is Pavlopetri, the oldest sunken city in Greece, in the Peloponnese.
For Doggerland, the best access remains the museum and publications. It costs an entry ticket and a few hours of reading, with no safety margin to negotiate.
FAQ
When did Doggerland disappear?
It disappeared gradually, between 18,000 and 5,500 years before our era according to the University of Bradford. Around 9,000 years before present, only a fragmented landscape and an island on the heights of the Dogger remained. This island is thought to have disappeared around 7,000 years before present.
Did the Storegga tsunami destroy Doggerland?
It struck it around 8,150 years before present, with damage varying according to the relief. The study published in Antiquity in 2020 shows that some lands survived the wave. The end of Doggerland mainly comes from the slow rise of the seas.
What is the most well-known object found in Doggerland?
It is the barbed point made of red deer antler recovered in 1931 by the trawler Colinda, off the coast of Norfolk. It is dated to 11,740 years before present by radiocarbon dating. It is kept at the Norwich Castle Museum.
Can you dive on the remains of Doggerland?
No recreational diving trips have been found organized on these remains. Research is conducted via ships, cores, and seismic surveys. If you want to see submerged remains, other sites like Baia or Pavlopetri are better documented.
Sources
- A great wave: the Storegga tsunami and the end of Doggerland? (Walker et al., Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2020)
- Letter from Doggerland: Mapping a Vanished Landscape (Jason Urbanus, Archaeology, Archaeological Institute of America, 2022)
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