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Doggerland was a large area of land in Northern Europe, now submerged beneath the southern North Sea. This region was repeatedly exposed at various times during the Pleistocene epoch due to the lowering of sea levels during . However, the term "Doggerland" is generally specifically used for this region during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. During the early Holocene following the glacial retreat at the end of the Last Glacial Period, the exposed land area of Doggerland stretched across the region between what is now the east coast of Great Britain, northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, north-western Germany, and the Danish peninsula of Jutland. Between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, Doggerland was inundated by rising sea levels, disintegrating initially into a series of low-lying islands before submerging completely. The impact of the tsunami generated by the Storegga Slide 8,200 years ago on Doggerland is controversial. The flooded land is known as the Dogger Littoral. "The Doggerland Project", University of Exeter Department of Archaeology
Doggerland was named after the Dogger Bank (which in turn was named after 17th-century Dutch fishing boats called doggers), which formed a highland region that became submerged later than the rest of Doggerland.
The archaeology potential of the area was first identified in the early 20th century. Interest intensified in 1931 when a fishing trawler operating east of the Wash dragged up a barbed antler point that was subsequently dated to a time when the area was tundra. Vessels have since dragged up remains of Woolly mammoth, Panthera spelaea and other animals, and a few prehistoric tools and weapons. Most archaeological evidence of human habitation dates to the Mesolithic period during the early Holocene. Patterson, W, "Coastal Catastrophe" (paleoclimate research document), University of Saskatchewan
, international teams are continuing a two-year investigation into the submerged landscape of Doggerland using new and traditional archaeo-geophysical techniques, computer simulation, and molecular biology. Evidence gathered allows study of past environments, ecology change, and human transition from hunter-gatherer to farming communities.
During the most recent glaciation of the Last Glacial Maximum, the North Sea and much of the British Isles were covered with glacial ice, and the sea level was about lower. The climate later became warmer, and around 12,000 BCE, Great Britain, as well as much of the North Sea and the English Channel, was an expanse of low-lying tundra. University of Sussex, School of Life Sciences , C1119 Modern human evolution, Lecture 6, slide 23
Evidence, including the contours of the present seabed, indicates that after the first main Ice Age the Water divide between the North Sea and the English Channel extended east from East Anglia, then southeast to the Hook of Holland, rather than across the Strait of Dover. The Seine, the Thames, the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Rhine joined and flowed west along the English Channel as a broad, slow river before eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. In about 10,000 BCE the north-facing coastal area of Doggerland had a coastline of , , and beaches as well as inland streams, rivers, and lakes. It may have been Europe's most prosperous hunting, fowling, and fishing ground in the Mesolithic period.
One extensive river system found by a 3D seismic survey undertaken by the Birmingham "North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project" drained the southeastern part of the Dogger Bank hill area into the east end of the Outer Silver Pit lake. It has been named the Shotton River after the Birmingham geologist Frederick William Shotton.
A recent hypothesis suggests that around 6200 BCE much of the remaining coastal land was flooded by a tsunami caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway known as the Storegga Slide. This suggests "that the Storegga Slide tsunami would have had a catastrophic impact on the contemporary coastal Mesolithic population ... Britain finally became separated from the continent and in cultural terms, the Mesolithic there goes its own way." It is estimated that up to a quarter of the Mesolithic population of Britain lost their lives. A study published in 2014 suggested that the only remaining parts of Doggerland at the time of the Storegga Slide were low-lying islands, but supported the view that the area had been abandoned at about the same time as the tsunamis.
Another view speculates that the Storegga tsunami devastated Doggerland, but then ebbed back into the sea, and that later Lake Agassiz (in North America) burst, releasing so much fresh water that sea levels rose over about two years to flood much of Doggerland and make Great Britain an island. Britain's Stone Age Tsunami, Channel 4, 8 to 9 pm, Thursday 30 May 2013 The difference in the distribution of broken shells between lower-lying and high-lying parts of the area also suggests the survival of land after the Storegga tsunami.
Interest was reinvigorated in the 1990s by Bryony Coles, who named the area "Doggerland" "after the great banks in the southern North Sea" – and produced speculative maps of the area. B.J. Coles. "Doggerland : a speculative survey (Doggerland : une prospection spéculative)", Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, , 1998, vol. 64, pp. 45–81 (3 p. 1/4) Although she recognised that the current relief of the southern North Sea seabed is not a sound guide to the topography of Doggerland, this topography has more recently begun to be reconstructed more authoritatively using seismic survey data obtained from oil exploration.
Between 2003 and 2007, a team at the University of Birmingham led by Vincent Gaffney and Ken Thomson mapped around of the Early Holocene landscape, using seismic data provided for research by Petroleum Geo-Services, as part of the work of the University of Birmingham North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project. North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project The results of this study were published as a technical monograph and a popular book on the history and archaeology of Doggerland. Laura Spinney, "The lost world: Doggerland" Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch, David Smith, Europe's Lost World: The rediscovery of Doggerland, University of Birmingham, 2009 Names have been given to some of its features: "The Spines" to a system of dunes above the broad "Shotton River", the upland area of the "Dogger Bank", a basin between two huge sandbanks called "The Outer Silver Pit".
A skull fragment of a Neanderthal, dated at over 40,000 years old, was recovered from material dredged from the Middeldiep, some off the coast of Zeeland, and exhibited in Leiden in 2009. Palarch: Spectacular discovery of first-ever Dutch Neanderthal Fossil skull fragment unveiled by Minister Plasterk in National Museum of Antiquities, 15 June 2009 In March 2010, it was reported that recognition of the potential archaeological importance of the area could affect the future development of offshore wind farms. In 2019, a flint flake partially covered in birch bark tar dredged up off the coast of the Netherlands provided valuable insight into Neanderthal technology and cognitive evolution.
In 2012, the results of a study of Doggerland by the universities of Birmingham, St Andrews, Dundee, and Aberdeen, including surveys of artefacts, were displayed at the Royal Society summer exhibition in London. Richard Bates of St Andrews University said:
Since 2015, the University of Bradford's Europe's Lost Frontiers project has continued mapping the prehistoric landscapes of Doggerland and has used this data to direct a programme of extensive coring of marine palaeochannels. Sediment from the cores has provided sedimentary DNA and conventional environmental data. These will be used in a major computational modelling programme replicating colonisation of the submerged landscape.
In 2019, a team of scientists from the University of Bradford and Ghent University found a hammerstone flint on the seabed off the coast of Cromer, Norfolk, from a depth of , which could point to the existence of prehistoric settlements.
An internationally significant early Middle Palaeolithic assemblage from the southern North Sea was also discovered through aggregate dredging off the coast of Norfolk. The cultural material was found to be associated with a floodplain deposit of the now submerged Palaeo-Yare river system.
Ancient artefacts have been found by beachcombers in material dredged from the sea bottom offshore and sand motor, as a coastal protection measure.
Doggerland was the subject of a 2007 episode of the Channel 4 Time Team documentary series called "Britain's Drowned World".
Disappearance
As the ice melted at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, sea levels rose, and the land began to tilt in an isostatic adjustment as the huge weight of ice lessened. Doggerland eventually became submerged, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BCE. (2025). 9780500285312, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500285312 The Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 5000 BCE. Key stages are now believed to have included the gradual evolution of a large tidal bay between eastern England and Dogger Bank by 9000 BCE and a rapid sea level rise thereafter, leading to Dogger Bank becoming an island and Britain becoming physically disconnected from the continent. Bernhard Weninger et al., The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland by the Storegga Slide tsunami, Documenta Praehistorica XXXV, 2008
Discovery and investigation by archaeologists
The existence of what is now known as Doggerland was established in the late 19th century. The remains of plants brought to the surface from Dogger Bank were studied in 1913 by Clement Reid, and the remains of animals and worked flints from the Neolithic period had also been found. In his book The Antiquity of Man of 1915, Anatomy Sir Arthur Keith discussed the archaeological potential of the area. In 1931, the Fishing trawler Colinda hauled up a lump of peat whilst fishing near the Ower Bank, east of Norfolk. The peat was found to contain a barbed antler point, possibly used as a harpoon or fish spear, long, which dated from between 10,000 and 4,000 BCE when the area was tundra.
See also
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Further reading
(2025). 9789464261134, Sidestone Press. ISBN 9789464261134
Alistair Moffat (2025). 050005133X, Thames & Hudson. 050005133X Discussed in depth in chapters 2–4.
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