Somewhere around 8,000-to-10,0000 years ago, amidst the Mesolithic Era, a hunter-gatherer community resided between the UK and mainland Europe.
It was called “Doggerland.” And as the last ice age began to dwindle, it provided a landmass connecting the British isles to the rest of Europe…until an alleged catastrophe.
A tsunami, supposedly, wiped out the nomadic folk of Doggerland, and their land, too, forming what we know today as the English Channel. And below, a video dives into that history.
The video is captioned:
“8,000 years ago, a massive wave wiped out an entire civilization in Europe. No survivors. No warning. They lived on a land bridge connecting Britain to Europe, a place scientists call “Doggerland.” Then, one day, the ocean swallowed it whole. This video investigates the Storegga Slide—the largest underwater landslide in history.”
It even goes so far as to estimate the size of the tsunami – 25 meters, or 82 feet.
The video narration continues: “It wasn’t just a wave. It was an erasure. It didn’t just kill a tribe. It drowned an entire civilization. And the weapon that caused it, is still waiting at the bottom of the North Sea. But moments before the end, it was a paradise.”
Related: Is It Possible to Surf a Tsunami? An Investigation (Video)
Now, there are some who dispute the claims around a tsunami and the demise of the storied Doggerland, some with more expertise in the field. Like a study published by Cambridge University in 2020, which opens as such:
“Around 8150 BP [Before Present]the Storegga tsunami struck North-west Europe. The size of this wave has led many to assume that it had a devastating impact upon contemporaneous Mesolithic communities, including the final inundation of Doggerland, the now submerged Mesolithic North Sea landscape.
“Here, the authors present the first evidence of the tsunami from the southern North Sea, and suggest that traditional notions of a catastrophically destructive event may need rethinking. In providing a more nuanced interpretation by incorporating the role of local topographic variation within the study of the Storegga event, we are better placed to understand the impact of such dramatic occurrences and their larger significance in settlement studies.”
Cooler heads prevail.
Related: The Biggest Tsunami Ever Recorded: Inside the 1,720-Foot Wave (Video)
