Doggerland: Europe's Missing Country

Today, Europe is densely populated and home to a population of over seven hundred and forty-three million, with so many people on Earth's second smallest continent that almost every square kilometer of land must be put to good use without exception, but what if they say there's a huge piece

missing

, you're probably saying we have satellites so there's no way we could have missed it, but it's true and no, I'm not talking about a little island somewhere. I'm talking about a land mass roughly the size of Great Britain, which was once as densely populated as the rest of Europe, but now that doesn't appear on the map.

Here's a picture of Europe today and this is what it looked like about eight thousand years ago: The glaciers where you might notice the biggest change occur here. in the North Sea here it is again today and 8,000 years ago here is a closer map with the modern borders drawn so you can really see the difference. You can see this area that was once the North Sea is now almost entirely land. It is called Doggerland and all evidence indicates that it was once a region of fertile, unpopulated lowlands; In fact, it has been predicted that the Land of the Dogs could have been the richest hunting area in all of Europe during the Mesolithic period and could have attracted large numbers of people for many years.

Prehistoric tools, weapons, and even man-made structures have been discovered in underwater lands. Fishermen here have even discovered prehistoric skeletons of mammoths, rhinos and lions. Study of the contours of the ocean floor here also revealed many lake beds and river valleys - approximately 10,000 in fact. Miles of river channels have been revealed through the use of seismic surveys. It was even discovered that several major rivers in Europe today, including the gentle Rhine, the Meuse and the Shhelp, once joined together to form a single, impressive river that ran where the English Channel is located. ok today, so by now you must be wondering what happened to the darkest land, as many of you may have guessed, because the number one demise of Doggerland was the glacial mouth when the last ice age came to an end, the glaciers They backed up and all that water had to go.

Somewhere and as a result, sea levels rose by about 120 meters, but this was not enough to completely submerge a gallon and actually a good amount of land still and after sea levels rose to where they are today. , the second cause is a known process. like isostatic rebound, which is exactly what it sounds like, well, what does it sound like, you might ask, in short, during the ice ages, the glaciers north of Doggerland had so much in the crust that they actually pushed the crust toward the mantle and lifted her up. surrounding areas higher up like a seesaw, but on a massive scale, once I started melting, this process began to reverse and the elevation of all of Doggerland actually decreased while the elevation of the area that had previously been under ice increased up to that everything was back in order.

Typically, even larger portions of

doggerland

were lost as this process took its toll on the land. This isostatic rebound process still occurs today primarily in Canada, Norway, and Antarctica, even thousands of years after the Ice Ages ended, and will likely continue for a few thousand more. years, but even after all this happened, an island about the size of Denmark remained in the North Sea and this is what is now called Dagger Bank, a very shallow portion of the North Sea and is where Doggerland It got its name, but it's no longer there either. So what happened to the dog or the bank?

This is where it starts to get speculative because three, well, it's more of a recent hypothesis that suggested that the final event that caused the total submergence of Doggerland was a mega tsunami and yes, that's the technical term for it. Just a couple of thousand miles off the coast of Norway, around 6200 BC. C., a series of three massive underwater landslides collectively called stereoslide occurred, probably caused by a nearby earthquake. This event created one of the largest tsunamis known to man and sediments from the tsunamis have been found throughout the North Atlantic region. Fossils found in the sediment subsequently created by this event roughly coincide with the time when Dagger Land was flooded with water.

It is also believed that this was the event that separated Britain from continental Europe forever, but if it weren't for that random disaster, Europe might have been home to another small region or even an entire

country

now, if you're thinking that This all sounds like the setting of a real world in which only Lanta, it has been speculated that this land could have been the origin of such an idea, however, for the most part, the influx of water would have been gradual for the people who They lived there and it would have given them plenty of time to escape to the surrounding regions.

This may also explain why northwestern Europe was more densely populated than it should have been at this time, except for those people who could have held out until the end because I will remind you that there was a mega tsunami that wiped out significant portions of land, What I'm saying is that yes I had to wonder where I thought the sunken city of Atlantis might be. I'd probably say somewhere on Dogger Bank in the North Sea, so the next thing you might ask is what Doggerland would be like today if it still existed and well, first of all. it would probably be called doggerel and was only named after dogger Bank which got its name from the old Dutch word for fishing boat dogger, which I'm probably mispronouncing dogger doger dozier and I doubt there would be much cod fishing there.

If it were still land, trying to guess much more about modern

doggerland

is difficult, but I'll try anyway. I'll also still call it a target land although I just pointed out that's not what it would be called, I'm probably just trying to keep things simple okay, so the first Doggerland would probably be a very rich nation as it sits on important oil and natural gas reserves that make neighboring countries billions of dollars a year, ironically, however, Doggerland would probably also be a big proponent of green and renewable energy. Due to its low-lying geography and vulnerability to widespread flooding, as I mentioned before, Doggerland was also predicted to be a fertile land with many rivers and would most likely have served an intense agricultural purpose, the place where several major European rivers met and flowed into The ocean would likely have been an extremely strategic location and would likely have become home to a huge port and a highly populated city.

If Doggerland were its own

country

instead of belonging to one of the existing European nations, it would probably be a comparable powerful nation. to the United Kingdom or Germany, but other than that, it is impossible to guess how this country would have impacted the history of Europe and the world as a whole. Doggerland should remind us of the potential impacts of a changing climate and the dangers many of us will face as sea levels continue to rise. I'm not saying this is a good parallel to our modern times, where we see the northern ice caps disappear due to man-made emissions, but in reality, that's exactly what happens if we continue to warm the climate.

We might well end up like those early Doggerlanders forced to move to higher ground until there's nowhere left to go and then a mega tsunami kills us all anyway. What I'm saying is that we should be more attentive to mega tsunamis and take this as a lesson that we should adapt to the land and not the other way around, so maybe we should carpool and recycle and not eat so many beets. Thanks for watching. I hope you liked it and look out for more of my videos in the future and leave a comment. Teach me how to pronounce dogger correctly and maybe I'll give you more ideas on what Doggerland would be like today, thanks.