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Okay, have a look at this map. Now, you may well be aware of Doggerland. This vast swathe of land here that once connected what is now Britain to mainland Europe. But that eventual sea rise would take generations, centuries to cut Britain off. What if within that sea level rise, there was one single moment, a catastrophic event that didn’t necessarily cut Britain off physically at that point, but it sparked a transition?

Now when we talk of eras in human history, I think it’s really important to gauge the scale of time between those eras. Neolithic to Bronze Age to Iron Age and onwards, they didn’t happen overnight. In fact, 43 AD when the Romans rocked up on our shores, they would have probably just seen a bunch of farmsteads in a lot of cases peacefully doing their thing. And I wonder if the change for them was very dramatic at all. But let’s have a look at a change that might well have been different.

In fact, stop the car. I’ve got a theory or hypothesis. But back to the map. The map of Doggerland. Now, we know that Britain wasn’t isolated overnight. It wasn’t flooded in one immediate hit. Gone, broken forever. Instead, perhaps something more fragile was broken. Confidence, a memory, and an assumption that the land was stable, predictable, and safe.

Because if you’re living on that land, hunting, gathering, moving seasonally, and the sea suddenly rises up, that very much changes how you see the world, and even if the land remained, well, it may never have felt the same again. You see, Britain didn’t become an island overnight. But 6,200 BC, an event took place that may have made it feel very much like one.

So, join me today on the Ridgeway and a special guest who I’m trying to find a couple of miles up ahead as we tell you the story of the day Britain was cut off.