Category: Geology

Doggerland

“When you could walk from London to Paris to get a Croissant for breakfast…” (Jeff Goodell)

Land bridge between the mainland and Britain – Doggerland and Dogger Bank. Comparison of the geographical situation in 2000 to the late years of the Vistula-Würm Glaciation. Translation from German into English of File:Doggerland3er.png using GIMP (XCF file available for use in further translations).

As ice melted at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, sea levels rose and the land began to tilt 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. The Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 5000 BCE.
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. (source Wikipedia)

The afterlife of cities

When cities are deserted, their existences can be traced back by the types of earths in the ground for centuries. Geologists call the type of earth created by human settlement dark earth. Dark earth is rich in charcoal and botanic fibres, the left overs of human settlement. Often it is also a sign of the direct effects of urban decay, when former houses or temples are abandoned and then reused by rural communities as hen-coops or dumps.