Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Lost beneath the waves, the ancient underwater world of Doggerland once stretched across Northern Europe, cloaked in rich, habitable forests even during the last Ice Age. Where the North Sea now churns and crashes, there were once vibrant woodlands and bustling living landscapes, a whole hidden chapter of Earth’s history lying quietly on the seafloor, just waiting to be rediscovered.

Archaeologists are actively exploring Doggerland, this extraordinary lost landscape beneath the North Sea, which once supported one of the largest prehistoric settlements in all of Europe.

A new study using ancient DNA from sedimentary samples has revealed that forests developed on Doggerland thousands of years earlier than previously thought. This evidence indicates that the area may have served as a surprisingly hospitable refuge for plants, animals, and possibly humans long before forests became common across Britain and northern Europe.

Researchers from the University of Warwick found that temperate tree species such as oak, elm, and hazel were present more than 16,000 years ago. They also detected DNA from a tree genus believed to have disappeared from the region 400,000 years ago. In addition, the study shows that parts of Doggerland withstood major flooding events, including the Storegga tsunami around 8,150 years ago, and that some areas of the landscape remained above sea level until about 7,000 years ago.

“By analysing sedaDNA from Southern Doggerland at a scale not seen before, we have reconstructed the environment of this lost land from the end of the last Ice Age until the North Sea arrived. We unexpectedly found trees thousands of years earlier than anyone expected — and evidence that the North Sea fully formed later than previously thought.

From a human perspective, this is the best evidence that Doggerland’s wooded environment could have supported early Mesolithic communities prior to flooding and may help explain why relatively little early Mesolithic evidence survives on mainland Britain today,” Professor Robin Allaby at University of Warwick and lead author of this study says.

The Lost Trees Of Doggerland

Doggerland was a now-submerged landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe, forming what is today the floor of the North Sea. Before it was flooded by rising sea levels, the area was forested, but scientists have long debated exactly when trees first became established there and how suitable this landscape was for prehistoric human communities.

To investigate this, researchers analyzed sedimentary ancient DNA from 252 samples taken from 41 marine cores along the prehistoric Southern River, a former river system chosen because its sediments are well preserved and likely to reveal past habitats. This allowed them to reconstruct Doggerland’s ecological history from about 16,000 years ago up to its final submergence.

Doggerland landscape 18,000, 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. Credit: University of Bradford Submerged Landscape Research Centre & Nigel Dodds

Their findings show that temperate woodland species such as oak, elm, and hazel were present thousands of years earlier than traditional British pollen records suggest. They also detected lime (Tilia), a warmth-loving tree, appearing around 2,000 years earlier than previously recorded in mainland Britain. This indicates that parts of Doggerland may have served as a northern refuge for certain tree species during the last Ice Age.

In addition, the team identified DNA from Pterocarya, a relative of the walnut tree that was thought to have vanished from north-western Europe about 400,000 years ago. Its presence in these sediments reveals that Pterocarya survived in the region far longer than previously believed.

Rethinking Ice Age Europe

The study adds to growing evidence that small, localized “microrefugia” enabled temperate plant species to survive the harsh conditions of northern Europe during the Ice Age. These sheltered pockets of suitable habitat help explain Reid’s Paradox: how trees were able to recolonize northern Europe so quickly once the ice sheets retreated.

Findings that woodland habitats existed in southern Doggerland around 16,000 years ago indicate that this now-submerged landscape likely supported rich ecological resources for humans. These would have included forest animals such as wild boar, and they were present long before the appearance of well-known cultural groups like the Maglemosian people, who are documented from around 10,300 years ago.

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“For many years, Doggerland was often described as a land bridge – only significant as a route for prehistoric settlement of the British Isles. Today, we understand that Doggerland was not only a heartland of early human settlement, but also that the presence of the land mass may have provided a refuge for plants and animals and acted as a fulcrum for how prehistoric communities settled and resettled northern Europe over millennia,” co-author, Professor Vincent Gaffney at the University of Bradford says.

The study was published in the journal PNAS

Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer