Posted on 04/23/2007 2:29:02 PM PDT by blam
Lost world warning from North Sea
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education
How a homestead might have looked in the flooded area
Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea. This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.
University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe".
This large plain had disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years ago.
Scientists at the University of Birmingham have been using oil exploration technology to build a map of the once-inhabited area that now lies below the North Sea - stretching from the east coast of Britain up to the Shetland Islands and across to Scandinavia.
'Terrifying'
"It's like finding another country," says Professor Vince Gaffney, chair in Landscape Archaeology and Geomatics.
Prehistoric rivers, hills and valleys are mapped off the east coast
It also serves as a warning for the scale of impact that climate change can cause, says Professor Gaffney.
Human communities would have lost their homelands as the rising water began to encroach upon the wide, low-lying plains.
"At times this change would have been insidious and slow - but at times it could have been terrifyingly fast. It would have been very traumatic for these people," he says.
"It would be a mistake to think that these people were unsophisticated or without culture... they would have had names for the rivers and hills and spiritual associations - it would have been a catastrophic loss," says Professor Gaffney.
As the temperature rose and glaciers retreated and water levels rose, the inhabitants would have been pushed off their hunting grounds and forced towards higher land - including to what is now modern-day Britain.
The rising water levels began to remake the coastline
"In 10,000 BC hunter gatherers were living on the land in the middle of the North Sea. By 6,000 BC, Britain was an island. The area we have mapped was wiped out in the space of 4,000 years," says Professor Gaffney.
So far the team has examined a 23,000 square kilometre area of the sea bed - mapping out coastlines, rivers, hills, sandbanks and salt marshes as they would have appeared about 12,000 years ago.
And once the physical features have been established, Professor Gaffney says it will be possible to narrow the search for sites that could yield more evidence of how these prehistoric people lived.
These inhabitants would have lived in family groups in huts and hunted animals such as deer.
The mapping of this landscape could also raise questions about its preservation, says Professor Gaffney - and how it can be protected from activities such as pipe-laying and the building of wind farms.
Genetic studies done by professor Stephen Oppenheimer show that a genetic group was split by the 'opening' of the English Channel. This genetic split is still detectable on both sides of the Channel.
If the stupid idiots hadn’t heated with wood, they wouldn’t have created globull warming and they’d still be around today.
That is an odd conclusion, since each flows downhill.
Savages.
These must be the people who invented "moving to where the water ain't."
Somehow, I think we'll find a way to rediscover their invention as we, and our children's children's children, face the eternal changes in weather.
” protected from activities such as pipe-laying and the building of wind farms.”
Protecting the sea bottom from a wind farm? First there was NIMBY, then there was BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything). Now we just have Luddites masquerading as scientists.
North Sea subsidence would cause this. A lot of weight redistribution occurred as the glaciers melted.
North Sea ? Bush’s fault !
North Sea
A flooded portion of the northwest continental margin of Europe occupying an area of over 200,000 mi2 (500,000 km2). The North Sea has extensive marine fisheries and important offshore oil and gas reserves. In the south, its depth is less than 150 ft (50 m), but north of 58° it deepens gradually to 600 ft (200 m) at the top of the continental slope. A band of deep water down to 1200 ft (400 m) extends around the south and west coast of Norway and is known as the Norwegian Trench.
http://www.answers.com/topic/north-sea
If what this bunch is putting forth is true there should be similar evidence worldwide (at least where human populations are known to have existed simultaneously) along all/most coasts - WHICH WOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN SUBJECT TO SUBMERSION if the “rising sea level” is to blame. I suspect that tectonic plate shifts/sinking is the actual truth, being passed off as “rising sea” level to further the global warming fraud.
Apparently all the survivors of this global warming scenario were able to drive themselves out of harm’s way in their Toyota Highlanders and GMC Yukons which then were presumably dissassembled and sold for scrap, since no memory of these ancient SUVs exists today.
You may well have a point. And one thing is for certain, the prehistoric human inhabitants couldn’t have caused the global warming claimed at that time. The ultimate truth is that the earth has a habit of abiding like it wants to and we are scum on it’s surface.
Global warming hysteria.
EXACTLY! I am certain that we will find their evil "advanced technology" soon! Wait, I need to readjust my aluminum foil shield.... Get back to you soon...
I really enjoy anthropology, archeology, history etc...but couldn't this statement be made for just about any area "under the sea" ?
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