Beorn
03-15-2009, 03:31 AM
Ten thousand years ago, before the melting ice from the end of the last Ice Age led to a huge rise in sea levels, the map of Britain looked very different to what it is today. In what is now the North Sea and the English Channel, there was an area of land the size of England itself – a great plain that stretched across from the east of Britain to what is now Denmark, northern Germany, Holland, Belgium and France. Meandering through it, the rivers Rhine, Thames and Seine and their various tributaries converged into an immense estuary that discharged into the Atlantic Ocean to the west.
As temperatures rose and the ice melted, the land joining Britain to the continent became home to great grasslands, forests, marshes and lakes. It was populated by a wide variety of animals, birds, fish – and humans. For a time 'Doggerland', as it has been dubbed, possessed rich natural resources that would have drawn people northwards from the European mainland. For a couple of thousand years, perhaps, before it began to be swamped by meltwaters from the end of the Ice Age, it would have been a mini-paradise for the Mesolithic (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/mesolithic.html) hunter-gatherers who dwelt there.
Then, in a relatively short period of time – fast enough for its effects to have been observed by the people living there – a very rapid rise in sea levels transformed the landscape utterly. The world those Mesolithic (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/mesolithic.html) hunter-gatherers knew quite literally disappeared beneath the waves. By about 6,000 years ago, it had gone entirely. Britain was no longer part of Europe but an island, and its development began to diverge from that of the continent from which its latest wave of human occupants had arrived.
In this Time Team Special, Tony Robinson and the Team call upon the leading experts in the field to piece together the new discoveries and research that have rewritten the books on the ancient human occupation of Britain in recent years. It is a fascinating tale of the drowned world that once was part of Britain.
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As temperatures rose and the ice melted, the land joining Britain to the continent became home to great grasslands, forests, marshes and lakes. It was populated by a wide variety of animals, birds, fish – and humans. For a time 'Doggerland', as it has been dubbed, possessed rich natural resources that would have drawn people northwards from the European mainland. For a couple of thousand years, perhaps, before it began to be swamped by meltwaters from the end of the Ice Age, it would have been a mini-paradise for the Mesolithic (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/mesolithic.html) hunter-gatherers who dwelt there.
Then, in a relatively short period of time – fast enough for its effects to have been observed by the people living there – a very rapid rise in sea levels transformed the landscape utterly. The world those Mesolithic (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/mesolithic.html) hunter-gatherers knew quite literally disappeared beneath the waves. By about 6,000 years ago, it had gone entirely. Britain was no longer part of Europe but an island, and its development began to diverge from that of the continent from which its latest wave of human occupants had arrived.
In this Time Team Special, Tony Robinson and the Team call upon the leading experts in the field to piece together the new discoveries and research that have rewritten the books on the ancient human occupation of Britain in recent years. It is a fascinating tale of the drowned world that once was part of Britain.
tSnreaCpFho
aKlPcxdomr0
VzIxZMjXe5Q
qx9smho3a_E
F6MLWBYI8xA
sxgFx6GoC80
_iLPcbez5Q0
bSGqEgyk1_Y