As much as the British like to pretend otherwise, they’re still a part of Europe. For most of Britain’s existence, there wasn’t even any water separating it from the mainland. In order for it to become an island, a bunch of cavemen had to drown.
Back in the ancient days, Earth’s landmasses were a big tight family. Such is the case with Britain, which until 8,000 years ago was at best a peninsula. Back then, what are now the English Channel, Irish Sea, and North Sea were dry land, serving as umbilical cords to Mother Europe. However, when the last Ice Age waned and the ice caps melted, the region started developing the much milder, moister climate they love to complain about today.
Slowly but deliberately, the lowlands of Britain started flooding. That wasn’t a massive issue for the roughly 5,000 hunter-gatherers inhabiting the region, as moving around was kind of their thing anyway. But then, around 6100 BCE, some kind of gargantuan landslide – Storegga landslide – is thought to have occurred somewhere in Norway, causing a big-ass tsunami to hit Britain. Which was bad news for anything with limbs, because, as one geologist put it, “Anyone standing out on the mud flats at that time would have been dismembered.”
This video below shows a physics-based computer simulation of the Storegga (Norway) landslide and mega-tsunami that occurred 8,200 years ago.
The northeast part of the county took the biggest hit, with 33-foot-high waves destroying everything and everyone in its path. In Scotland, scientists found a remnant of the moment this incredible event took place: a layer of ancient sand that crashed in what should have been a continuous bank of clay. Water traveled 25 miles inland, instantly creating the three large bodies of water we mentioned earlier. The surviving people who had migrated far enough inland were at once cut off from the continent. If they were anything like their descendants, that suited them fine.
What is Doggerland?
Doggerland is a former landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. It is believed to have disappeared after being flooded by rising sea levels in about 6,500 BC. It was likely home to Mesolithic tribes (10,000 to 5,000 BC). Since 1931, a number of discoveries have been made in the North Sea that suggest clues as to what the landmass would have been like. The remains of mammoths, lions and other animals, in addition to prehistoric tools and weapons, provides evidence for settlement by humans and animals.
A devastating natural disaster – an underwater landslide – triggered a powerful tsunami that created a new island, Britain, but wiped out a bunch of cavemen.
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The Moment Britain Became an Island – BBC
Tsunami Affecting the British Isles – Wikipedia
‘How Britain’s Atlantis’ and its tribes were wiped out by a TSUNAMI triggered by a landslide off the coast of Norway 8,200 years ago – Daily Mail
What a load of rubbish! People 8000 years ago were NOT cavemen.
A (relatively small ) tsunami would have flooded Doggerland for some distance, sure, but Doggerland was doomed anyway by rising sea levels from the end of the last ice age. To say it made Britain is silly. Lots of Britain too that would not have been affected
Doggerland…sounds like a place I used to work.
Tsunamis retreat when they have done the job, so I think that when the tsunami pulled back, then the sea level rize continued and burried Doggerland and eventually made Britain an island.