The more that time passes since the heyday of an ancient civilization, the more mysterious that civilization becomes. And while it's the life's work of archaeologists to unravel those mysteries, the ravages of time have a way of making that difficult. After all, archaeologists can only find the artifacts that managed to survive thousands of years of unpredictable natural processes. Nature has a way of destroying evidence.
This makes it especially exciting when an ancient civilization is discovered underwater, as finding ruins in the world's vast bodies of water is very much akin to finding a needle in a haystack. And that goes double when that discovery fundamentally changes people's understanding of the ancient world.
The mystique of Atlantis
Although the lost city of Atlantis described by Plato only seems to exist in legends, that hasn't stopped people from holding out hope of its existence.
For many, the idea that an ancient civilization could still be thriving under the known world is an attractive proposition that inspires endless curiosity.
The reality of underwater discoveries
But while that thought remains attractive thousands of years after Plato's writings, it actually isn't unheard of for archaeologists to find deep-sea evidence of lost communities.
As is the case for this ancient Roman statue, these lost cities once stood on land but found themselves submerged amid changes in sea level and other natural forces.
One big discovery is even older
But while it doesn't evoke the kind of sophisticated wonder that imaginings of Atlantis tend to suggest, one lost ancient civilization has been the subject of great archaeological interest in recent decades.
And that's partially because its existence fundamentally changes humanity's understanding of ancient Europe.
Welcome to Doggerland
According to National Geographic, the British Isles have only been islands for the last 6,000 years.
Before that, they were connected to the rest of Europe by an area known as Doggerland.
Not just a land bridge
And while the existence of this region explains how early humans were able to spread throughout Europe without having to deal with the North Sea, Doggerland was far more than a land bridge.
For humanity's earliest relatives, it was a paradise.
An oasis in a hard time
National Geographic reported that at the tail end of the last Ice Age, Doggerland was a lush region filled with rolling hills, densely wooded valleys, wetlands, and swamps.
As such, it was able to support a society of hunter-gatherers when much of the world at the time wasn't.
The name is much newer than the place
As disappointing as it may be to hear, this ancient area wasn't called Doggerland because it featured an abundance of dogs.
Instead, The Guardian reported the name is based on a stretch of seabed known as the Dogger Bank that would have been part of the area. The bank is named for the "dogger" fishing boats that sailed the area during the 17th Century.
So many generations of hunter-gatherers
According to The Guardian, Doggerland stood for long enough that not only were early humans able to forage there, but so too were the beings that predated them.
And that's not limited to Neanderthals, as even the common ancestor humanity shares with them — known as Homo antecessor — had a chance to wander those ancient lands.
A bountiful place
The residents of Doggerland migrated in pursuit of animals to hunt and fish to catch, but they also foraged for local plant-based food sources.
Hazelnuts and berries were notable examples of what one could expect to find in Doggerland.
Doggerland leaves traces of itself millennia later
Since Doggerland once connected the United Kingdom to the Netherlands (among other nations), artifacts dating back thousands of years have occasionally washed up on Dutch beaches.
And while employees of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden often assist in analyzing these artifacts, The Guardian reported that it's not often archaeologists who find them.
The help of citizen scientists
According to The Guardian, the museum has about 200 artifacts that originated from Doggerland. And while they largely consist of the fossils of hunted animals like mammoths, deer, and hyenas, there's also a fragment of a young male Neanderthal among them.
And as the museum's assistant curator — Dr. Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof — said, "We have a wonderful community of amateur archaeologists who almost daily walk these beaches and look for the fossils and artifacts."
Another watershed change in the world's history
But one of the most important discoveries to come from Doggerland wasn't a fossil at all. Instead, it's a flint tool dating back about 50,000 years that was made from the pitch of a birch tree.
What makes this tool so important is the fact that it demonstrates the Neanderthals weren't quite as primitive as humanity once thought. As The Guardian put it, they were "capable of precise and complex multi-staged tasks."
Nothing lasts forever
While it existed above the surface, the abundance of natural resources on Doggerland made it no less than the heart of Europe for its many generations of inhabitants.
But as the Ice Age drew to a close, this vast region slowly started to vanish.
The results of an Ice Age ending
Although Doggerland was a key refuge during the latter portions of the Ice Age, it was also destroyed by the very processes that drew the harsh period to a close.
According to National Geographic, most of Doggerland slowly submerged over the course of a millennium due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, which caused sea levels to rise three to six feet per century.
It was slow, but it added up
Although this process sounded slow and incremental, it was fast enough to fundamentally change the landscape of Doggerland.
According to the Smithsonian Magazine, it only took 1,000 years for Doggerland to flood to the extent that it transformed from a consistent landmass to an archipelago of islands.
Accelerated by catastrophe
But while this trend was always going to mean the end of Doggerland, its remnants were almost completely destroyed after an underwater landslide off the coast of Norway triggered a devastating tsunami.
As Vincent Gaffney — an archaeologist from the University of Bradford — said, "If you were standing on the shoreline on that day, 8,200 years ago, there is no doubt it would have been a bad day for you."
Doggerland's last legs
But while this tsunami was long understood to have doomed Doggerland to its watery fate, a 2020 study in the Antiquity journal found that the archipelago stayed above the surface until about 7,000 years ago. That was all the time the fallout from the Ice Age ending needed to finish the job and completely submerge Doggerland.
Gaffney said, "Ultimately, it was climate change that killed Doggerland."
Even this ending changed the world forever
According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the richness of what was left of Doggerland served as an ideal staging ground for some of the world's first farmers during the Neolithic period.
And since both the hunter-gatherers and the early farmers would have to relocate from Doggerland as it shrank and sunk, they would have resettled in Britain and the Netherlands. As such, 6,000 years of European agriculture can be traced back to the doomed civilization.
Modeling the civilization that was
But while archaeologists studying Doggerland have had a wealth of community-sourced artifacts to work with, more recent opportunities have given scientists an idea of what the landscape physically looked like.
According to National Geographic, British and Dutch researchers were able to map 18,000 square miles of pre-flooding Doggerland.
An unlikely source
These modeling efforts required a wealth of seismic data from widespread surveys of the area, but paleontologists and archaeologists were able to obtain sufficient from an unexpected source.
As National Geographic reported, oil companies had to conduct the required thorough surveys to drill in the North Sea effectively. They then made their data available to researchers.
A new technique
In addition to the artifacts acquired by citizens combing the beaches and the modeling afforded by this seismic data, researchers are also searching for any remnants of Doggerland's former residents that still exist under the North Sea.
And as The Jerusalem Post reported, they're using magnetometry to do it.
What is magnetometry?
Magnetometry involves using ground-penetrating radar systems like this to measure the magnetic fields in a given area.
Once the relevant data is gathered, researchers then peruse that data for any anomalies. The hope is that those anomalies will tell them where they can find possible mortal remains.
An unorthodox technique
As The Jerusalem Post reported, magnetometry is typically used by archaeologists who work on land, as demonstrated by this research team.
Although the current work involving Doggerland won't be the first time scientists have attempted this technique with an undersea landscape, it marks one of only a few times magnetometry has been used this way.
The most practical solution
Since this research covers ground that once made up a significant portion of the North Sea, it would be impractical, if not impossible, to fully comb the area with divers.
Thus, the magnetic field analysis would serve as a way to uncover the same potential leads for remains and artifacts that would otherwise require this hands-on approach.
Time is also a factor
Magnetometry is also one of the more time-efficient techniques researchers could use to uncover the data they need, as there's a relatively short window of time for these scientists to work in.
That's why archaeologists from the University of Bradford are teaming up with climate scientists and engineers to examine what remains of Doggerland while they can.
What's the rush?
According to The Jerusalem Post, other energy companies are planning to construct offshore wind farms in the North Sea. This initiative is part of the British government's efforts to expand wind power and meet its pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
However, these wind farms would also leave significant portions of the North Sea inaccessible to the team investigating Doggerland's final resting place.
What they're hoping to find
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Ph.D. student Ben Urmston explained what would tip the research team off to the possibility they've hit paydirt.
In his words, "Small changes in the magnetic field can indicate changes in the landscape. Such as peat-forming areas and sediments, or where erosion has occurred, for example, in river channels."
The big hope
After enough of these landscape changes are identified, Urmston is holding out for the possibility that they'll reveal how the land was used when Doggerland was inhabited.
As he said, "As the area we are studying used to be above sea level, there's a small chance this analysis could even reveal evidence for hunter-gatherer activity. That would be the pinnacle."
A little ancient garbology
Another feature Urmston is on the lookout for is something the hunter-gatherers who roamed Doggerland may not have taken a second glance at. But to an archaeologist, it might as well be gold.
In Urmston's words, "We might also discover the presence of middens, which are rubbish dumps that consist of animal bone, mollusk shells, and other biological material, that can tell us a lot about how people lived."
A cautionary tale
But regardless of what Urmston and other researchers turn up as they examine Doggerland from every angle, the ancient civilization that once stood in its place is a sobering reminder of how destructive climate change can be.
After all, rising sea levels were the main factor that turned the heart of Europe into a forgotten, submerged ruin.
