Doggerland: a lost world in the North Sea - English

Collecting Doggerland

Many of the discoveries shown in this exhibition can be credited to collectors, fishers and beachcombers, who spend hours traipsing along beaches come rain or shine. Despite being amateurs, these archaeologists and palaeontologists often keep professional records and archives of their finds. Their close partnerships with scientists enable us to tell a shared story of Doggerland. 

What if you make a discovery?

You are walking along the beach and you come across something that looks old: pottery shards, driftwood, a human bone, flint, a fossil or ancient animal bone, glass or metal tools, and so on.

What should you do?

The most important thing is to gather as much information as possible while you are still at the site:

• Where did you find it? Coordinates are best, but noting the nearest landmark and estimating your position on the beach you were is also useful.
• What were the discovery conditions? Was the object buried, sticking out of the ground, lying at the high tide line, on wet or dry sand, etc.? Were there any other artefacts nearby?
• What exactly did you find? Try to describe the object clearly and take sharp photos. Place a two-euro coin next to the object for scale, or a ruler or shoe for larger items. Be sure to photograph both sides of the object and include close-ups of any special details.

How and where to report your finds?

If you find structures, large items, or concentrations of objects, leave them where they are. Report them as soon as possible via the chance find application of the Flemish Heritage Agency: www.onroerenderfgoed.be/toevalsvondst

Finds made using a metal detector must be reported through the metal detection reporting app: loket.onroerenderfgoed.be/archeologie/metaaldetectievondstmeldingen

For a single, loose find, you may email the location, date of discovery, and photos to the Flemish Heritage Agency: [email protected]

If you find human remains or ammunition, do not touch or move them. Alert the police immediately (via 112) and stay near the location so it can be found again. Be sure to notify the Flemish Heritage Agency as well.

[SHOWCASE 1]

Memories of a drowned landscape

During the Ice Ages, the Doggerland area was often a cold steppe landscape, grazed by reindeer, horses, and mammoths. Remains of mammoths still occasionally end up in fishermen’s nets or are found on Belgian and Dutch beaches.

Zwin guide Omer Rappé was active as a fisherman in the 1970s along with his brothers and sister. Their ship, the Z 420 VERA, was equipped with a beam trawl. In this fishing technique, the net is dragged over the sea floor. Several times, remnants of a mammoth were brought up: a huge tusk and two molars, memories of the drowned landscape in the North Sea.

1. Part of a mammoth tusk (weight: 9.9 kg), caught by the Rappé family near the Hinder Banks, early 1970s

Elephant-like animals have four visible molars that can be replaced up to six times during their lifetime. Each new tooth pushes forward in the jaw, gradually replacing the old one.

2. Mammoth molar (weight: 6.0 kg), caught by the Rappé family, North Sea

This past spring, several surveys of the breeding bird islands in the Zwin were carried out by staff from INBO, ANB, and the Zwin Nature Park. During one of these visits, Eric Stienen made an unexpected discovery in the deposited shell sand: an intact mammoth molar.

3. Molar of a young mammoth, breeding bird islands in the Zwin, found on 14/05/2025

Lost world in the North Sea

Off our coast lies a vast lost world: Doggerland. Where there is now the North Sea, for the past million years there was mostly land. You could walk from here to England through a wide valley crossed by rivers, the forerunners of the Rhine, Meuse and Thames. It was a vast steppe full of life during the ice ages. Herds of reindeer, horses and mammoths roamed along the rivers, prey for animals like cave lions and hyenas. More than 900,000 years ago, it was here that the first hominids reached northern Europe. Much later, this rich area became the hunting ground for our closest relative: the Neanderthal. During the last Ice Age, Neanderthals left and never returned to Doggerland; modern humans did. As the climate warmed, the forests, wetlands and coastal areas provided abundant resources. It was easy living in Doggerland. But the water kept coming. The temperature warmed and sea levels rose due to melting ice caps. Slowly but surely Doggerland drowned: 8000 years ago it was lost under the waves forever.

This exhibition tells the story of Doggerland and its inhabitants. A story of a million years, about one of the most important archaeological landscapes in the world. A story of unprecedented climate change, just like today.

[SHOWCASE 2]

Handaxe

Handaxes were the tools of the Neanderthals and their predecessors for thousands of years. In Doggerland, hundreds of thousands were made, used, carried, admired and lost. It is the symbol par excellence of a lost world.

1. Flint handaxe, Yerseke/Middeldiep, ca. 50,000 BP.

Points

Points of bone and antler were used in hunting weapons like spears and arrows. After the last Ice Age, they were often used by our ancestors in the food-rich but slowly drowning landscape of Doggerland.

2. Bone points, Maasvlakte 1 and 2, 11,000-8,000 BP.

A Rich Valley

For thousands of years Doggerland, the area of more than 200,000 km2 between the Dutch, Belgian, British and Scandinavian coasts, was the beating heart of Europe. Until recently, it was completely forgotten and unknown. Fossil tree stumps on the English coast and large bones of strange animals in fishing nets primarily raised questions.

At the beginning of the last century, researchers began to gain insight into the age of the earth and of man. British geologist Clement Reid concluded in 1913 that a drowned and probably once inhabited prehistoric landscape lay beneath the North Sea. It was the beginning of research into Doggerland.

[SHOWCASE 3]

Discovery

1. Submerged Forests (1913) by British geologist Clement Reid.

From land bridge to landscape

Doggerland was long regarded as a land bridge rather than a continuously inhabited area. The publication Doggerland. A speculative survey (1998) by archaeologist Bryony Coles changed all that. She pointed out the enormous potential of this drowned land and gave it its name: Doggerland.

2. Doggerland. A speculative survey by Bryony Coles (1998).

The Leman and Ower Banks ‘harpoon’

The first evidence of human presence in Doggerland came to light in September 1931. A large chunk of peat fell out of the net onto the deck of the trawler Colinda, fished up by the Leman and Ower Banks. When skipper Lockwood broke it open, a pristine, 21 cm long barbed antler spearhead rolled onto the deck.

3. Replica antler spearhead, Leman and Ower Banks, original c. 11,740 BC. Maker Diederik Pomstra.

In 1971 in the Netherlands, curator Leendert Louwe Kooijmans of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) published an overview of Mesolithic bone and antler tools from the North Sea.

4. Mesolithic bone and antler implements from the North Sea and the Netherlands by Leendert Louwe Kooijmans (1971) with one of the finds described, a bone pick, Brown Bank, 9000-6000 BC.

5. Fossil mammal remains and recent finds, Pleistocene and Holocene, loan North Sea Fossils.

Mapping the seabed

Research into Doggerland mainly takes place at sea. Bathy­metric surveys map the seabed by measuring elevations. Seismic surveys, often used to search for oil or gas, allow the reflection of sound waves to reveal different types of soil, such as sandy riverbeds. Drilling to bring up a column of sediment is the most precise. The layers on top of each other show the development of the landscape through time. The different layers can be examined and dated separately.

VIDEO: GoPro video from research institute VLIZ showing how a drilling is carried out under water from research vessel Simon Stevin.

[SHOWCASE 4]

Core sample

A core sample is an archive of thousands of years of environmental changes. The core shown here was taken 500 meters off the coast of Raversijde, at a depth of 5 meters, and reveals 10,000 years of history.

From bottom to top, you see brown sand with traces of roots, indicating land deposits near a river. (1)

Above that lies a dark peat layer, a remnant of marsh plants from a wet period 9,000 to 8,000 years ago. (2)

The gray silt layer that follows points to a transition to a tidal area due to rising sea levels and soil compaction. This process accelerated from Roman times onward due to peat extraction. (3)

Finally, a shell layer is visible, a sign of a fully marine environment. (4)

This core illustrates how sea level rise over the past millennia has drastically transformed the landscape. Further laboratory analyses help to understand this story in even more detail.

Fluctuating Sea Levels

Over the past million years, Earth has experienced alternating cold periods (ice ages or glacials) and warmer periods (interglacials). During the ice ages, sea levels dropped because increasing amounts of precipitation remained on land in the form of ice. At the end of the last ice age, the Weichselian, sea levels were up to 130 metres lower than they are today. Since much of the southern part of the North Sea is less than 50 metres deep, large areas of this region became dry land. The shallowest areas, such as the Dogger Bank, were the first to emerge above sea level. Depending on the prevailing climate, Doggerland was covered by ice plains, tundra, or forests.

Early inhabitants

The human habitation of Doggerland goes back a long way. More than 900,000 years ago, the first hominids came to northern Europe. They left the oldest European footprints in an estuary near Happisburgh, England. Then, around 400,000 years ago, Doggerland became the home of Neanderthals. They lived in a changing climate with long ice ages and short, warmer periods. Large herds of animals grazed on the mammoth steppe. As hunters, Neanderthals were in their element. For thousands of years they camped along the banks of the rivers. The thousands of stone tools found on Dutch beaches are a testament to their prowess.

40,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared. Shortly after, modern man reached Doggerland, settling there permanently 14,000 years ago. The long history and the different human species make the North Sea one of the most important places to learn about the early habitation of Europe.

[SHOWCASE 5]

Beach walkers

The oldest traces of hominids in Northern Europe were found in 2013 near Happisburgh (Norfolk), England. Spectacular was a series of footprints in the clayey subsoil dating back 950,000 to 850,000 years. A total of fifty footprints were found in an area of approxi­mately 40 m2. This was probably a group of about five people, including children. Analysis of pollen grains showed that it was a colder period, with many pines and conifers.

1. Print of a cast of one of the fifty footprints found at Happisburgh, 2013, with thanks to Nick Ashton/Pathways to Ancient Britain Project.

The first handaxe

The Happisburgh handaxe is the oldest handaxe in Northern Europe, dating back some 700,000 years. Handaxes were the ‘Swiss army knives’ of our early ancestors. They required knowledge and skill to make, but lasted a long time.

2. Replica Happisburgh-handaxe, Happisburgh, 700,000-500,000 years ago, loan Norfolk Museums.

Neanderthals and Ice Ages

The most successful inhabitants of Doggerland were the Ne­anderthals. They lived in this area for around 450,000 years. By comparison, we modern humans only settled here perma­nently 16,000 years ago. As excellent hunters, they stood at the top of the food chain. They could make fire, produced multi-purpose tools and used technically complex materials such as birch pitch. They led a nomadic existence, living along the great rivers, which were important migration routes for game. During the coldest phases of the last ice ages, Neanderthals migrated away.

[SHOWCASE 6]

Versatile flint

Flint handaxes are the most iconic Neanderthal finds. They are the Swiss army knives of the time, suitable for cutting and chopping, and for making fire with pyrite. A remarkable find are the 33 handaxes amateur archaeologist Jan Meulmeester found in a matter of days on the spoil heaps of a gravel processing plant in Vlissingen.

1. Handaxe of flint nodule from river gravel, Moustérien tradition, Zandvoort, 160,000-40,000 years ago.

2. Handaxe, Yerseke, 90,000-40,000 years ago.

3. Three of the 33 flint handaxes found by Jan Meulmeester, Vlissingen, 250,000-200,000 years ago, loan Jan Meulmeester.

Toolkit

Flint Neanderthal tools consisted of more than just handaxes. Scrapers of all sizes were used for working hides, bone and wood, points could be used for hunting and a serrated tool, a so-called denticulé, had a sawing function.

4. Scraper, Castricum, 90,000-40,000 years ago.

5. Point (possible spearpoint), Mousterian-tradition, Zandmotor, 90,000-40,000 years ago.

Shape and technique

Shape and technique show how much craftsmanship was required for some of the handaxes. The shape also reveals something about age and origin. Most finds on the beaches are pieces of waste from flint knapping, such as old cores or failed flakes.

6. Levallois-flakes, Camperduin, Schoorl, 300,000- 50,000 years ago.

7. Levallois-flakes, Yerseke, 300,000-40,000 years ago.

8. Flakes, Maasvlakte 2, 300,000-40,000 years ago.

9. Core fragment, Yerseke, 300,000-40,000 years ago.

IMAGE ON BANNER: A Neanderthal is having his head shaved with a small flint knife hafted in birch pitch. Illustration: Kelvin Wilson.

The oldest glue

In 2016, Willy van Wingerden found a remarkable object on the Zandmotor, an artificially created sandbank off the coast of South Holland: a flint knife, encased in a clump of tar-like material. A 14C-dating yielded an unexpected age of 50,000 years: a Neanderthal find. Chemical analysis confirmed that it was birch pitch. This makes it one of only five known Palaeolithic birch pitch finds in Europe. The pitch was moulded around the knife in its soft state and served as a handle. The knife was left north of the Rhine on the cold mammoth steppe.

[SHOWCASE 7]

Method of production

Chemical research into the composition of the birch pitch provided information about the method of production. It indicated the use of a method involving an oven and a collecting reservoir. Ne­anderthals invested a lot of time in searching for firewood and birch bark in the nearly treeless mammoth steppe, but also in developing this kind of technologically complex skill.

1. Replica of the flint knife embedded in birch pitch, original Zandmotor, c. 50,000 years ago.

2. Rolls of birch bark.

3. Lump of hardened birch pitch.

4. Experimentally made spearheads attached with birch pitch. Maker Paul Kozowyk.

IMAGE ON BANNER: A Neanderthal concentrates as he moulds birch pitch around a flint knife. Illustration: Tom Björklund for Moesgaard Museum (Denmark).

The First Neanderthal

Did you know that the first fossil remains of a Neanderthal were discovered in Belgium?

In 1829, skull fragments of a child were found in the Schmerling Caves in the municipality of Engis, near Liège. However, the significance of this discovery was not yet understood at the time. It was only several decades later, in 1856, that the Neanderthal was formally described, based on skeletal remains found in the Neander Valley in Germany.

A Neanderthal skull fragment was also found in the North Sea. This is the first (and so far the only) known Neanderthal fossil from the area once known as Doggerland! It is a forehead bone with a thick eyebrow arch, a typical feature for Neanderthals. The Neanderthal was given the Zeeland name ‘Krijn’. The fossil was dredged up in 2001 off the coast of Zeeland and discovered between shell grit at a processing plant in Yerseke.

[SHOWCASE 8]

Krijn

Extensive research followed, including at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. The bone turned out to belong to a young adult, probably male. Using stable isotope analysis, it was de­termined that this individual ate a lot of meat, typical of these big game hunters.

Unusual was a small cavity behind the brow bone, a scar from a subcutaneous tumour. This produced a lump, but was harmless.

1. Replica of the fossil frontal bone (Os frontale) of the first Dutch Neanderthal, ‘Krijn’, original Zeelandbanken/Yerseke, c. 50,000 years ago.

2. Replica of the bone fragment of Krijn in a replica of the Neanderthal skull from La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. A perfect match. The fossil is 3000 times more likely to be a Neanderthal than another hominid. Loan Jan Glimmerveen.

3. Scientific impression of Krijn by Kennis&Kennis Reconstructions, based on the skull seen at no. 2 in this showcase, plus the lower jawbone of a young individual from Croatia. The sizeable nose is a typical Neanderthal characteristic, as is the protruding face shape. In this impression the subcutaneous tumour can clearly be seen as a lump just beind the right eyebrow.

Modern humans at the end of the Ice Age

Around 45,000 years ago, modern humans entered southeast­ern Europe and reach Doggerland a few thousand years later. Neanderthals are already extinct. The first traces of modern man in these areas date from around 35,000 years ago. From 16,000 years ago, after the coldest period of the last Ice Age, we find more traces of habitation. One of the most extraordinary North Sea finds is an ornate metapodial of an aurochs or bison more than 13,000 years old. Planes have been carved around the bone, in which V-shaped decorations have been scratched with a flint burin.

[SHOWCASE 9]

Earliest art

We know of only four other similar finds from this period from Northern Europe, including the lower jaw of a horse from Wales, rubbed with red ochre. The objects seem to have a ritual or symbolic role and the similar decoration suggests contact over long distances.

1. Replica of the decorated piece. The decoration is rubbed with red ochre, just like a find from Wales. Maker Diederik Pomstra.

The oldest modern human in the Netherlands probably had a very dark skin colour and blue eyes. Research on aDNA (ancient DNA) shows that this combination was common about 13,000 years ago. A lighter skin colour that absorbs more vitamin D evolved later in Europe and may be related to successive mi­grations of farming societies from the Near East and later Ukraine and southern Russia.

2. Blade, Maasvlakte 1, 300,000-10,000 years ago.

IMAGE ON DISPLAY CASE: Reconstruction of Mesolithic Cheddar Man. Reconstruction and photo: Kennis & Kennis.

IMAGE ON BANNER: A shaman of the Federmesser culture performs a dance with a drum and decorated staff. Illustration Kelvin Wilson.

Doggerland drowning

After the peak of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, the climate warmed. Doggerland changed from a cold, vast open plain to a dense forested region. The rivers, coast and freshwater marshes formed rich areas, with game, fish, birds, shellfish and plant foods.

For thousands of years it was the ideal home for our ancestors, the hunter-fisher-gatherers of the Mesolithic. Melting ice and a resulting rising sea level put an end to this: slowly and gradually at first, and increasingly quickly from 8500 years ago. The inhabitants saw the landscape change with every generation. Living areas became fishing grounds, land became islands and the other side became more and more distant. A huge tsunami, caused by a landslide off the Norwegian coast, marked the beginning of the end.

Barbed points, spear- and arrowheads of bone and antler, are characteristic of Mesolithic Doggerland. Most barbed arrow and spear points are found on the artificial beaches, especial­ly on Maasvlakte 1 and 2 and the Zandmotor. The large number of points found indicates the frequent hunting expeditions in this food-rich area.

[SHOWCASE 10]

Use and re-use

Large barbed points (from 8 cm) are interpreted as (fishing) spearheads, the smaller ones (3-8 cm) as arrowheads for hunting fish, birds and mammals.

Use-wear analysis of the small points show that they have been intensively used and repaired.

1. Barbed bone point, Maasvlakte 1, 9000-6000 BC.

2. The first bone point found by Adrie de Vries in 1971, Maasvlakte 1, 9000-6000 BC, and a copy of the accompanying letter reporting the find.

3. Points with different types of barbs and different lengths, Maasvlakte 1, Hoek van Holland and unknown, 9000-6000 BC.

Production

Points were made using the groove-and-splinter technique. Using a flint tool, elongated notches are made in a piece of bone or antler, after which a chip of bone or antler is loosened. They are then further shaped by sanding and polishing. The shafting was done with fibres like tendon, and sometimes with the help of (birch) pitch.

4. Bone and antler waste pieces groove-and-splinter technique, Maasvlakte 1, Rockanje and Southern Bight North Sea, 9000-6000 BC

5. Set of replicas made with stone tools to illustratie the groove-and-splinter technique. Maker Diederik Pomstra.

An interesting question is which bones were used for the points. Bone points can be examined with ZooMS, which is used to look at proteins. It appears that of the nine points tested, seven were made from red deer bone and two ... from human bone!

ILLUSTRATION ON THE OTHER SIDE OF DISPLAY CASE: A Mesolithic hunter. Illustration: Kelvin Wilson.

Bouldnor Cliff

In 1999, divers in the Solent in Southern England observed a lobster discarding flints from its burrow. This small creature led them to discover an 8,000-year-old Mesolithic site in a submerged ancient forest on the edge of a river basin. The site is slowly eroding. The unearthing of thousands of flint tools, an axe and animal remains indicated that food was prepared along the riverbank. Another location revealed many pieces of wood showing traces of woodworking and burning, with one large oak trunk fashioned into a log boat. The additional discovery of large wooden platforms made of tree bark and sapwood suggests that Bouldnor Cliff could be the world’s oldest boatyard.

3D photo mosaic of a Mesolithic wooden platform at Bouldnor Cliff. Photo: Maritime Archaeology Trust.

Ancient grain

Yet another breathtaking discovery was found in sediment at Bouldnor Cliff. It contained the 8,000-year-old DNA of a domesticated cereal grain: Einkorn. This is rather peculiar, as it predates Britain’s first farming communities by 2,000 years. Could this be a very early import from the east?

VIDEO: This video shows the excavations at the Mesolithic site at Bouldnor Cliff. The site is fast disappearing due to erosion. Watch how the finds are documented and drawn underwater. The diver archaeologists use a metal frame and grid to divide the site into smaller excavation plots. ©The Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology

Bone and antler culture in the Mesolithic

Hunter-gatherers used bones and antlers to make various tools and sleeves for camp or hunting. Remarkably, organic material is normally poorly preserved, but due to the oxygen-poor conditions in the North Sea soil, it survives well here. A lot of bone and antler material is found on the beaches and in fishing nets.

[SHOWCASE 11]

Socketed adzes and picks

Socketed adzes were made from the metapodials (bones) of cattle and deer They were used, among other things, for woodworking.

1. Complete metapodial of a horse, Texel, 50,000-5000 BC.

2. Severed articular head, Rockanje, 9000-6000 BC.

3. Bone socketed adzes of various sizes, various North Sea sites, 9000-6000 BC.

4. Fragment of a pick with perforation, Brown Bank, 9000-6000 BC.

Antler axes and adzes

Axes and adzes made from antler were mainly used for felling trees and wood­working. Antler was an ideal material for tools: hard and tough. Often red deer antlers were used, which had been thrown away or were left over from the hunt.

5. Antler axes of different types, various North Sea sites, 9000-6000 BC.

Sleeves

To fix a sharp piece of flint or a tooth in the haft of an axe, adze or chisel, an antler sleeve or cuff was used. These act as shock absorbers during use, reducing tool breakage.

6. Red deer antler sleeve, Maasvlakte 1 or Rockanje, 9000-6000 BC.

7. Decorated sleeve of moose antler, Southern North Sea, 13,000-6000 BC.

8. Waste from antler working (partly cast-off, partly with skull fragment), Southern Bight North Sea, 9000-6000 BC.

Awls and needles

Awls were used to pierce hides and pelts. Thicker needles may have been used as fine needles to repair nets.

9. Dagger or awl-like implements made of vertebrae, among others Yerseke, 9000-6000 BC.

10. Series of awls and awl-like fragments of bone, Scheveningen, Rockanje and Maasvlakte 1, 9000-6000 BC.

Please do not touch

Experimental experience

Commonly unearthed objects include pieces of tools such as arrowheads or axe fragments. Some finds also have remnants of a haft. This is frequently the case with finds from the North Sea, whose waters preserve many organic materials such as bone, antler and wood. Replication in experimental research combined with archaeological studies allows us to understand how tools were made, used and looked. These replicas were made by Diederik Pomstra.

Left, from top to bottom

Adze

This adze is made of the metatarsal of a ruminant. The tool has been perforated on one side and chamfered on the other. An alder-wood haft has been inserted into the hollow. These extremely robust tools were used for woodworking and leatherworking.

Antler axe

Antlers are hard, tough and durable. This axe is made of red deer antler, with a hazelwood haft secured in the perforated hollow. The tool was used for centuries to make rough cuts.

Digging stick

A digging stick is used to search for food in the soil or dig pits. A stone weight (mace head) is used as a counterweight to make digging easier. This stone is often perforated in an hourglass shape. The stick is fire-hardened and used to dig, but it can also be used as a club, bludgeon or blunt weapon.

Middle

Combined adze

This is an adze, a horizontally braced axe made of wild boar tusk. The adze is secured in a shock-absorbing antler cuff. An adze was often used for fine paring work, including woodworking.

Right

Arrows and spears

The arrow is made of hazel. The arrowhead is made of red deer bone and is kept in place with lime tree bark. The goose quills are secured with tendon.

The spear tip is made of antler, which has been straightened through a process of heating. It is kept in place with cherry tree bark and mounted on a hazelwood (fishing) spear.

VIDEO: It requires great skill to make tools from a piece of flint. The Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sees the emergence of a technique using hammers (usually made of antler) and pressure to separate long flakes of flint (knaps) from a flint nodule. These flint knaps were then worked and sharpened to create a vast array of tools. Film © Gallo-Romeins Museum Tongeren

VIDEO: The groove-and-splinter technique is an effective way of making multiple tools from one piece of bone or antler. Flint knaps would be used to create notches in the material, causing it to break into semifinished products. These products were then fashioned into different tools. Film © Gallo-Romeins Museum Tongeren

Small but effective

In the Mesolithic, in addition to larger flint tools, small flakes called microliths were frequently used. These small pieces of flint were worked into scrapers, burins or drills. The use of small flint flakes was related to changes in hunting methods: with bow and arrow they hunted forest animals, fish and birds.

A special find is a lower jaw fragment of an adult red deer from Maasv­lakte 2: if you look closely, you can see a piece of flint sticking out of the bone. The red deer was once hit by a Mesolithic weapon. The force of the impact was so great that a small piece of flint was embedded in the bone.

[SHOWCASE 12]

Lucky shot

A micro-CT scan showed that the projectile in this lower jaw fragment of an adult red deer was not an arrow head, but a small blade. Apparently, it could be used just as well instead of an arrowhead. Perhaps the deer survived the attack, as the bone seems to have continued to grow after the hit.

1. Mandible fragment of a red deer with embedded flint arrowhead, Maasvlakte 2, 9000-6000 BC.

Microliths and small flakes and blades are frequently found on our beaches.

2. Flakes, Maasvlakte 2 and Zandmotor, 9000-6000 BC.

Hunting and butchering

Pieces of bone with clear butchering traces of flint tools are regularly found. Bones were also broken open for marrow. Cutmarks have been found on otter and beaver bones, indicating that they were slaughtered for their pelts.

3. Bones and bone fragments with prehistoric cutmarks, Maasvlakte and Rockanje, 9000-6000 BC.

4. Heads of broken metapodials, possibly for marrow extraction. One specimen has a shell stuck in it, Southern Bight, 9000-6000 BC.

Mapping a lost landscape

The isolated finds on beaches and in nets tell of an immense, unknown landscape. Since 2015, an international team of researchers have been gathering all known information about this landscape in the Europe’s Lost Frontiers programme. It blends archaeology, geophysics, molecular biology and computer simulations to study how Doggerland’s communities adapted to climate change and the encroaching sea. The researchers use models to determine the possible location of archaeological sites in the landscape. They are heavily reliant on geophysical and seismic data generated by the petroleum and wind industries, which can be used to map rivers, dunes, lakes and deltas.

The ‘core’ of a tsunami

Data from the seismic surveys prompted a large-scale coring project at two locations. The cores were dated and studied. The results showed signs of the impact of the Storegga Slide in the form of stone deposits and broken shells. The Slide triggered a catastrophic tsunami 8,150 years ago, spelling the end of Doggerland. The researchers discovered that three separate waves had hit the land and then retreated.

Suspicions confirmed?

In 2019, the research vessel Belgica embarked on an expedition as part of the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project. Its destination was the Southern River off the Norfolk coast, which geophysical surveys suggested would have been an ideal location for a Mesolithic camp. Grab samples yielded two pieces of worked flint, including a lapstone fragment. This was the first successful use of geophysical surveys to identify an archaeological site.

Brown Bank

Stretching over 30 kilometres, the Brown Bank’s sand ridges and gulleys are known to be some of the most fruitful archaeological sites in the North Sea. Since 2018, Brown Bank has been the site of a Belgian-British research project entitled Deep History: Revealing the palaeolandscape of the Southern North Sea. Acoustic mapping technology on board the Belgica research ship has been used to map the floor of the Brown Bank. With coring and dragging bringing wood, charcoal and unworked flint to the surface, it is only a matter of time before the first archaeological sites are found.

VIDEO: this video covers recent research by the Flanders Marine Institute (Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee), showing the various techniques being used to deepen our knowledge of Doggerland’s landscape.

IMAGES FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:

RV Simon Stevin: Flanders Marine Institute’s multidisciplinary research vessel. Photo: Flanders Marine Institute.

Doggerland circa 16,000 years ago. The photo shows the Southern River, a location currently being researched as part of the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project. Image: Europe’s Lost Frontiers.

Researchers at work on RV Simon Stevin. Photo: Flanders Marine Institute.

3D scan of a lapstone fragment found in the Southern River. Image: Europe’s Lost Frontiers.

Agassiz

The melting of the ice caps at the peak of last Ice Age, 22,000 years ago, caused sea levels to rise by 65 metres over the following 10,000 years. In our current epoch, the Holocene, sea levels rose by as much as one metre a century up to 8,000 years ago. Some changes occurred rapidly: 8,450 years ago, a few Canadian lakes, including Lake Agassiz, abruptly burst into the Atlantic Ocean following the melting of an ice cap. This triggered a 4-metre sea level rise over 200 years, submerging large parts of Doggerland. Doggerbank was islanded, and the coastline of the flat Rhine-Meuse valley near Rotterdam shifted 100 metres to the east with each passing year.

Storegga

Rapid sea level rises led to another catastrophe. Around 6150 BC, a 3,000-km3 land mass measuring 290 kilometres in length broke off the Norwegian coast. This caused a huge tidal wave reaching a height of 20 metres near the Shetland Islands and 5 metres along the Scottish coast. The Netherlands was hit by an unstoppable wave of muddy water, storming across the low-lying reed beds of Leiden and Rotterdam and into North Brabant’s swamp forests. The tsunami left an empty but still inhabitable landscape in its wake. Around 5500 BC, the last remnants of Doggerland were submerged under the waves, never to resurface.

Remembering Doggerland

Doggerland vanished under the waves thousands of years ago. Most people in Europe don’t realise that the North Sea used to be dry land. Other communities around the globe, such as the Yarra and Narungga of Australia, still actively share memories of a legendary land submerged thousands of years ago. Stories about Atlantis, the Great Flood in the Bible and the Gilgamesh flood myth might just refer to a land that was swallowed by the sea many moons ago.

This map of the continental plate shows the area of dry land that has disappeared over the past 20,000 years (source: Simon Fitch/Lost Frontiers Project, Bradford University).

Australia: Archaeological sites discovered 3 to 14 metres underwater. The Narungga people of Spencer’s Gulf (South Australia) say that the area was once part of a large river basin with freshwater lagunes, until it was flooded by the sea. This flood event took place between 12,450 and 9,550 years ago.

Doggerland and Europe: 2.5 million square kilometres of dry land, representing 40% of modern Europe’s surface area. Inhabited for centuries, now underwater.

Black Sea: Around 5600 BC, the Mediterranean Sea breaches a land barrier and rapidly floods an area of 100,000 km2 around today’s Black Sea. This may have inspired the Biblical story of the Great Flood.

Beringia: Land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska. Possibly inhabited between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, forming an entry point for the early settlement of North America together with the eastern coastline.

Sundaland: Two million square kilometres of low-lying land between Southeast Asia and Australia.

Doggerlanders

Human remains: this showcase contains human remains from prehistory. These are displayed respectfully from a scientific point of view. An important find category from beaches and fishing nets are human remains, several dozen bones and fragments are known. These remains literally contain a wealth of information. New methods such as isotope and DNA analysis enable us to learn a lot about prehistoric man from small fragments, such as age, sex, diseases, nutrition and the genetic group to which they belonged. We cannot get any closer to prehistoric Doggerlanders.

[SHOWCASE 13]

Well preserved

Throughout Mesolithic Europe, very little skeletal material has been preserved, but the North Sea appears to be the source of well-preserved material.

1. Upper arm bone with sample taken for 14C-dating, Brown Bank, 8271-7966 BC. DNA analysis showed that this was a man with a typical hunter-gatherer haplogroup.

The shape and characteristics of a bone can tell us about sex, age, injury or disease of the deceased. Mesolithic skeletal material is very robust. This can be seen, for example, in the jaw. Mesolithic people probably needed strong jaws and teeth for their food and work, in contrast to Neolithic farmers who ate porridge and bread.

2. Mandible fragment with sample taken for research, Brown Bank, 8422-8241 BC.

Fish on the menu

Stable isotopes like carbon and nitrogen in skeletal material tell us something about diet, among other things. By measuring carbon and nitrogen of more than 30 human fragments, it was discovered that the majority of Doggerlanders ate mainly freshwater fish, waterfowl, otters and beavers. The wetter it got, the less land animals were eaten and the more people switched to eating freshwater animals. The inhabitants chose to adapt to the changing conditions and did not move away. Research on strontium isotopes may also provide informa­tion on origin and mobility in the future.

3. Dremel for sampling, sample tube and pipette.

[HOLOGRAM]

Great Auk

No, this is not a penguin! What you see here is a Great Auk. This species belonged to the auk family, related to birds such as the guillemot and puffin. It was the largest member of the family, nearly twice the size of the common auk. But in fact, we should speak of it in the past tense. The Great Auk is no more. It holds the unfortunate distinction of being one of the only European bird species to have gone extinct. In 1844, the last two known living Great Auks were killed in Iceland.

One of the remarkable traits of the Great Auk was that it couldn’t fly. Flight wasn’t necessary for hunting fish underwater. They bred on low rocky islands along the coasts of the North Atlantic, and reaching these breeding grounds didn’t require flight either. Great Auks were excellently adapted to life on the open sea, but unfortunately, in ways that made them highly vulnerable to overhunting by humans.

This hologram is based on a detailed 3D scan of the (only) mounted Great Auk specimen in the collection of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) in Brussels. Through DNA analysis, scientists determined that this is the male from the last pair ever seen, on the island of Eldey off the coast of Iceland. Thanks to modern technology, we can now bring this rare specimen to life digitally, without putting the fragile original at risk.

[SHOWCASE 14]

Great Auck Beach Find

In October 2021, Sonja Luypaert found a bird bone on the beach of Ostend. Thanks to her many years of experience as a beachcomber, she recognized that it was an old bone and suspected it might be something special. The find was submitted to a number of experts. Bram Langeveld of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam identified it as the humerus (upper arm bone) of the extinct Great Auk, the first time a remnant of this iconic bird species was discovered in Belgium!

Sonja’s remarkable find highlights the importance of citizen science, where passionate individuals (amateur archaeologists and paleontologists) play a crucial role in discovering and protecting our natural heritage.

Later that same year, Sven Delandat found a second bone, this time on the beach of Blankenberge. In the Netherlands, dozens of skeletal remains of the Great Auk have now been found. This suggests that, after the last Ice Age, the species likely appeared regularly as a winter visitor in the southern North Sea.

The “Scheur”: a unique walrus graveyard off the Belgian coast

The “Scheur” is a shipping channel located north of Zeebrugge that connects to the Western Scheldt. For decades, fishermen have been retrieving fossil bones of extinct mammals from this area, most likely from locations where dredging operations maintain the channel. The vast majority of the bone material comes from walruses. Many skulls have been found with complete jaws, still containing teeth and tusks, although the tusks are often broken.

Research on the bone fragments has revealed that they belonged to at least 50 to 100 walruses, including adult males and females as well as juveniles. This indicates that we are dealing with one of the largest known fossil walrus colonies in the world.

Researchers from VLIZ (Flanders Marine Institute) have mapped the prehistoric landscape. The walrus bones likely date from the beginning of the last ice age, around 100,000 years ago, when the climate began to cool rapidly. As sea levels dropped, islands emerged, creating ideal habitats for cold-loving animals like walruses. However, as the climate continued to cool, the landscape transformed into a tundra-like environment with rivers, no longer suitable for walrus habitation.

[SHOWCASE 15]

Flemish walruses

Over the past decades, dozens of fossil walrus bones have been dredged up from the Scheur near Zeebrugge. Walruses are easily recognized by their impressive tusks, which continue to grow throughout their lives and can reach lengths of up to one metre. In most fossil skulls, the tusks are broken off, as seen in this specimen. However, the deep sockets where they were once anchored remain clearly visible.

Walrus molars are not well developed. These animals feed mainly on shellfish, which they suck out of their shells and swallow whole.

1. Skull fragment with upper jaw of an adult walrus, the Scheur (Zeebrugge), 100,000–45,000 years ago

2. Lower jaw of a walrus, the Scheur (Zeebrugge), 100,000–45,000 years ago

Collection: Natural History Museum Rotterdam

The sea is the sea

After the last ice age sea level rose a meter per century on average. Sometimes quicker, as for example after the breakthrough of a huge lake in current North America, when the sea level rose with four meters within 200 years.Around 6150 BC, the huge Storegga-tsunami followed. Though disastrous, it did not put an end to all habitation. Several centuries later the highest parts of the Dogger Bank finally disappeared under the waves. Farmers settled in the newly created coastal areas. For them, the North Sea was not a barrier, but a highway along which trade and the exchange of goods, ideas and people took place. Around 5000 BC, the North Sea was again a sea. Whether people at that time still remembered Doggerland is unknown.

The North Sea is still one of the busiest and most heavily used oceans in the world. Shipping lanes, wind farms, fisheries, cables and pipelines leave no place unused. It is an area of constant change. In the coming centuries, temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise. This time not because of an ice age, but because of us. It is the greatest challenge of our time.

[SHOWCASE 16]

A highway for trade

In the Neolithic and Bronze Age, trade and exchange by sea increased: people, knowledge and products travelled along the coasts. In the following centuries the North Sea was to assume an increasingly important position in trade networks.

1. Bronze axe, Yerseke, 1500-1100 BC.

2. Ivory Guanyin figure, Yerseke, c. 1600-1900 AD.

People and the sea

Human impact on the North Sea is a major threat to its unique ecosystem. Telling examples are stranded porpoises, contain­ers swept overboard, hundreds of thousands of cotton buds, the plastic soup and invisible microplastics. Organisations such as the Stichting de Noordzee and Greenpeace are docu­menting this.

3. Cotton buds and lighter with barnacles from the North Sea.

All these interventions provide a lot of information about Dog­gerland, as shown by the many finds in this exhibition. At the same time, this is also what threatens the heritage. Well-pre­served sites erode or are sucked up. Together with colleague organisations and stakeholders, the Cultural Heritage Agency is working on plans to better protect the prehistoric heritage in the North Sea. Our most important archaeology may well lie under water.

4. The in 2019 revised North Sea Prehistory Research and Management Framework (NSPRMF).

Lessons from Doggerland

Doggerland shows us: the world is changing and it always will be. Yet there is a major difference between past climate changes and those we are experiencing today. The current rapid warming of the climate, the extreme weather events, melting ice caps, and shifting ocean currents are not natural phenomena. They are largely caused by human activity and will have serious consequences for us, including a projected sea level rise of one metre by the end of the 21st century, and up to nine metres over the next 700 years. This poses a direct threat to many densely populated coastal areas around the world, including Flanders and the Netherlands.

Doggerland teaches us that, just like its early inhabitants, we must remain flexible in order to cope with ongoing change. It reveals that humans are only one element within a vast and delicate ecosystem. Greater awareness of the impact of our way of life, more respect for our environment, stronger connections, and action from a new perspective… That is the message of Doggerland.