Some Facts About DoggerlandDaniel LaveryJun 10, 20223621Sharesome facts about doggerland it’s a vast expanse of rich soil, abundant wildlife, and virgin forests stretching between modern-day Britain and continental Europeit’s incredible and it’s still there today fishermen found it in 1931 and pulled it back up it was all around the time that agricultural centers were still emerging from thousands of years around rivers like farming, and two thousand years later, large herd areas had recourse to cultivation and human intervention life in 9000 BC was very much like life as we know it today people mostly lived in settled urban environments, relied on complex centralized bureaucracies and agricultureit’s true the world of the last glacial maximum was very much here nowalso venus figurines, we know what they were for nowtemperature were lower by an average of 20 degrees celsius but across Northern Europe and America everything was the samelands lay under glacial sheets up to three kilometers thick but you could still go there just fine, and everybody was therethe fishermen attached their big heavy boat hooks to doggerland all at the same time and pierced the peat-mat underneath it and they hooked it good they got the balance just right and then very slowly they started to crank up the chains and the water was sluicing off the chains and cold but it was coming up and everybody could see doggerland was coming up, green and cold and rich and stretching between modern-day Britain and what is today Belgium and southern Scandinavia, and it came right up, like a cherry off a treeand everybody was coming up with the richest hunting and fishing grounds of the entire Mesolithic period, possibly it’s still there right now if you want to go see it Doggerland still connects southeastern Britain with what is today considered continental Europe it still does that and it is still considered It’s believed to be terrific, and it isit created the Europe we’re familiar with todayit is the Europe we’re familiar with today warming and rising seas coupled with retreating glacial sheets meant Doggerland is still there It’s full of the people who inhabited it and they’re thrivingscientists are finding more and more of them every day they keep sending arrowheads and carvings of reindeer and forehead bones for us to dredge up and we’re all chipping in to get them something as a thank-you studies suggest they love us if you look carefully just below the water you can see them waving do you remember the old pictures from social studies books? long-armed people with baskets, wearing hides, one or two wearing antlers and looking important, gutting a fish and picking up a tool, picking up a baby, picking up a bone, picking up a spear, and they’re looking curious, they’re looking ready, they’re looking for all of us it’s just like when you looked at itthey’re coming to pick us up at three so be sure to be outside and ready and waiting for them we’re all going to fit everybody is going to fit and it’s going to be so much easier to love everybody they have just the right amount of family and not too much but not too little either and they’re open to learning from us too, it’s a two-way street with themyou’re the one who gets to tell them what cheese is, we decidedand they’re bringing their dogs they’re bringing their dogs with them from Doggerland the big shaggy shambling greycoats that follow the spears and circle the fire and you can bring your dogs too and you’re going to get the best news story of the day brought to you by email, every day and they’ll never give away your information and they’re still coming up, the fishermen are still stationed out along the banks hauling them in, and they’re bringing ice and they’re bringing cold water for us you can walk there from Berlin you can walk there from London you can walk there from Amsterdam you can walk there from Iceland you can walk there from Turkey Italy North America Morocco Mongolia and there are bears and chestnut and yew and elm coming and lady’s-smock and sedge and black-browed mammoths rejoicing dimly bellowing dimly possessed dimly of only a single clear idea: to splash the big clean river muddy you WILL get wetyou MAY get drenched it’s not just megafauna, it’s also shellfish, reptiles, small mammalsand all the various little creatures that dot a riverbank, that rest on branch and burrow in mud, coming upand the mirror of the water is shaking from itand the little columns of smoke from camp and all the rest old clean cold air and the old men who sleep squat, foreheads on kneesand it’s whatever, you can do as much of it as you want or you don’t have to you can hunt or gather or restaurants or all three, laptop is fine tooand archaeologists know exactly how to explain it and it’s an excellent examplethe thing about Doggerland is scientists have speculated for years but it’s right there and anyone can visit, even now it’s not too late[Image via]3621Share