Friday, July 6, 2012

'Atlantis' Disappeared Round British Isles


Not to be outdone in the Atlantis sweepstakes, a British museum is displaying artifacts from a long-ago submerged society called Doggerland.

Among the artifacts recovered after a series of deepsea dives at the bottom of the North Sea are hunting tools such as harpoons and fish prongs, as well as fossils of mammoths.

The theory is this Doggerland was a massive bit of land connected to the Continent that stretched Denmark, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. Trade with the European mainland (as we now know it) would have been extensive in those days — those days being the end of the last Ice Age. After that time, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, the rising sea levels slowly put Doggerland underwater, in the process creating the English Channel (as we now know it) and making the British Isles into what they are today.

The good scientists in the U.K. have consulted geophysical surveys and used their handy computers to create three-dimensional versions of what they think Doggerland looked like. The 3D mapping includes topographical differences like peaks and valleys dotted on the landscape, near evidence of lakes and rivers.

As for Atlantis, well no one really knows still where it was, when it was, or if it was. The evidence that we have is so sketchy that many historians have concluded that it is a morality tale only. For others, though, the search goes on.

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