One day in September 1931, a few dozen miles off England’s Norfolk coast, a stray lump of peat dredged up from the sea floor hits the deck of the trawler Colinda – and makes entirely the wrong sound.
One day in September 1931, a few dozen miles off England’s Norfolk coast, a stray lump of peat dredged up from the sea floor hits the deck of the trawler Colinda – and makes entirely the wrong sound.
On behalf of my fellow Mesolithic descendants, I’d like all the people of the UK and Ireland to leave so we can return to our ‘stolen’ land.
Sarc, sort of.
“Mesolithic”? How lithic are you, Tarzan?
“That’s an estimated 840 cubic miles of shelf material on the move – transferring an unimaginably vast pulse of kinetic energy into all the seawater it thrust aside.
You’ve seen disaster movies. You know what happens next.
The subsequent tsunamis that raced in all directions would have been astounding. When they thundered into the shallows of Doggerland, they’d be anything up to 25 metres tall.”
Wait what?
840 cubic miles of earth only makes a 25 metre wave?
I’ve probably watched too much TV.
Waterworld, cmon man.
Kevin Costner, you know Yellowstoning it.
There is a reason why the Biblical flood story has equivalent tales in many cultures: the end of the last Ice Age meant melting glaciers sent waters down into lakes which overflowed into the oceans. The breach of Lake Winnipegosis and the subsequent release of water into the Hudson’s Bay area and thence through the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea is often cited as the source of the Noah legend (though the Med would have risen gradually but inexorably for some years).
Similarly, on the west coast of British Columbia, the “indigenous” who had migrated across what is now the Bering Strait and who had settled along the coast where the living was relatively easy now found their homes being threatened by steadily rising waters, and had to move inland and upland. Pauline Johnson, in one of her books of short stories, wrote about a threatened community which sent a young couple and some young’uns out in a canoe to ride out the catastrophe. Am not sure how true to the west coast legends that tale was, but the coastal residents would have indeed suffered serious dislocations.
There are no indigenous people. Just one invasive wave after another.
Thomas, we are all indigenous to this planet, there are no exceptions. Yes we also moved around a lot.
It is just a shame that no one has invented a time machine to go back to these times to actually record what happened then. It should would take a lot of guesswork out of a lot of things that have been lost to time.
We could actually hear and record what the Egyptian language sounded like.
See the start of the dinosaurs, see the American rocky mountains actually be made.
Fun time for all.
Thank you so much for the link, Kate! Appreciate it.
SNIP: At the end regarding WIND turbines being built on these ancient lands;
“As Professor Gaffney says, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s certainly encouraging news for future electricity generation (the world just hit the 10% mark from wind & solar), and the nightmare in Ukraine is showing why it’s a good thing for the countries of the world to be able to wean themselves off fossil fuels supplied by (and funding) violent dictatorships…”
They just have to ruin it all by politicizing for the ecoterrorists.
Indeed.
I mostly concur with Mike and yes, I did know pretty much all of it, as a fellow Holderness Tyke with more than a passing knowledge of the geology of the North Sea (having drilled a couple few holes into its bed) great to see it put out there as a short coherent and enjoyable read.