doggerland it is a mirror to the past that can also tell us about our future. It is an ancient civilization, from the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, which was buried under water due to climate change. Archaeologists have been trying to study it for some time, but it is difficult to work underwater. For this reason, they have now added the magnetic fields to your search tools.
Those responsible for this new research technique are a team of scientists from the bradford university. Since they know the approximate location of the settlements, they have proceeded to subject them to a magnetic field, since small variations in it can indicate the presence of changes in the landscape, such as “areas of peat and sediment formation, or where produced erosion, for example, in river channels”.
For years fishermen in the area have found bones or instruments which indicate the nearby presence of Doggerland, but the exact location of the settlement remains to be studied. Now, they could have the key to achieve it and, thus, analyze that past that can tell us so much about our future.
What happened to Doggerland?
about 12,000 years agoDoggerland was located between continental Europe and the east coast of Great Britain. Today everything is water, but back then the landscape was made up of gently sloping hills, marshes, heavily forested valleys and marshy lagoons. According to archaeologists who have studied the area, the people who lived there were mostly hunter gatherers, migrating with the changes of the seasons.
However, the melting of the glaciers due to natural climate change, not anthropogenic like the current one, ended flooding the area, forcing the inhabitants of Doggerland to move to higher places. Thus, that settlement became a kind of Atlantis, which to this day remains partly a mystery.
The role of magnetic fields
The authors of this research have been working with the engineering consultancy Royal Haskoning. They have been the ones who, within the framework of a project to study the environmental impact in the area, have provided the data sets of magnetic fields associated with the location of Doggerland.
For this they have been used magnetometers, which are torpedo-like instruments, which are attached via cables to survey ships. These devices crawl along the seabed and collect data on its magnetic fields. Thus, profiles are created that can be analyzed in search of anomalies associated with changes in the terrain, such as those mentioned above.
I work against the clock
Currently, the offshore wind power has become a very useful alternative to fossil fuels. And precisely the area in which Doggerland is located is one of the main candidates to continue housing mills of this type.
For this reason, the scientists of this project are working against the clock, in order to look for signs of the settlement before the facilities make it inaccessible. If not, that old Atlantis will be buried forever, hiding the past from us and unable to give us information about a possible future.