Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the people, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea, now called Doggerland after Dogger Bank, inhabited up to c7000BC or roughly 3000 years before the beginnings of Stonehenge. There are traces of this landscape at low tide, such as the tree stumps at Redcar (above); yet more is being learned from diving and seismic surveys which are building a picture of an ideal environment for humans to hunt and gather, with rivers and wooded hills. Rising seas submerged this land as glaciers melted, and the people and animals who lived there moved to higher ground, with the coasts of modern-day Britain on one side and Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France on the other.
With
Vince Gaffney Anniversary Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford
Carol Cotterill Marine Geoscientist at the British Geological Survey
And
Rachel Bynoe Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.7 | Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
| 0:07.4 | There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our |
| 0:10.7 | programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. |
| 0:14.6 | I hope you enjoyed the programs. |
| 0:16.6 | Hello, doggar, German bite, humba, tems and dover at no place in the Stone Age shipping |
| 0:22.1 | forecast as they were areas of land, not sea, and ideal habitats for human hunter gatherers. |
| 0:28.7 | The highest point in doggar bank was the last to disappear perhaps 7000 years ago as ice |
| 0:33.3 | sheets melted and the sea levels rose and Stone Age residents took to the higher ground |
| 0:38.3 | of Norfolk and the Netherlands. |
| 0:40.7 | The submerged areas now known as doggar land and at low tide on the North Sea coast you |
| 0:44.9 | can still see traces of tree stumps left by its ancient forests. |
| 0:49.6 | We'd me to discuss doggar land our Carol Kotrill, marine geoscientist at the British |
| 0:53.6 | Geological Survey, Rachel Byno, lecturer in archaeology at the University of Southampton |
| 0:59.0 | and Vincent Gaffney, aniversary professor of landscape archaeology at the University |
| 1:03.6 | of Bradford. |
| 1:04.6 | Vincent Gaffney, can you clarify what's the extent of this submerged area that was once |
| 1:09.2 | a land? |
| 1:10.5 | It the lowest glacial stand about 20,000 years ago, the sea level is about 120 metres lower |
| 1:16.7 | than it is today. |
| 1:18.9 | That meant that huge areas of coastal plain today were actually dry land. |
| 1:25.6 | Globally we're talking about an area perhaps the size of North America. |
... |
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