A vast, once-inhabited area that was submerged by the North Sea thousands of years ago has been discovered by divers working with oil companies and science teams from several British universities.
The underwater world, being called Doggerland and Britain’s Atlantis, stretched from Scotland to Denmark when Britain was not an island but connected to the European continent. It was gradually submerged by water between 18,000 B.C. and 5,500 B.C., according to researchers.
“Divers from oil companies have found remains of a ‘drowned world’ with a population of tens of thousands, which might have once been the ‘real heartland’ of Europe,” Britain’s Daily Mail reported.
“A team of climatologists, archaeologists, and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies — and revealed the full extent of a ‘lost land’ once roamed by mammoths.”
The melting of ice caps during a warm period raised sea levels and submerged the area, which was also hit by a “devastating tsunami,” the researchers claim.
“People seem to think rising sea levels are a new thing, but it’s a cycle of earth history that has happened many, many times,” said Richard Bates of the University of St. Andrews.
“We have speculated for years on the lost land’s existence from bones dredged by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it’s only since working with oil companies in the last few years that we have been able to re-create what this lost land looked like.”
