Doggerland, the Land Under the North Sea
Fishing nets in the North Sea brought up mammoth bones and Stone Age tools from a lost land now under the waves.
What was reported
At the end of the last Ice Age, Britain was joined to continental Europe by a broad, low-lying land of hills, rivers, marshes and forests, now called Doggerland. People hunted and fished there.
Since the 1800s, fishing boats trawling the North Sea have dragged up the bones of mammoths and woolly rhinos, and in 1931 a trawler brought up a harpoon point made of antler. Seismic surveys have since mapped its buried rivers and hills.
Explanations offered
As the ice melted, sea levels rose and Doggerland was gradually flooded. A huge undersea landslide off Norway around 6200 BC, the Storegga Slide, sent a tsunami across the region, and soon afterwards Britain became an island. Researchers are now searching the seabed for traces of settlements.
- When
- Flooded by around 6000 BC
- Where
- Southern North Sea
- Witnesses
- Fishermen who dragged up bones and tools
- Status
- Confirmed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.