Mapping The Lost Land Under North Sea

By Cernig

This is just way cool:

A lost landscape where early humans roamed more than 12,000 years ago has been uncovered beneath the North Sea.
A map of the underwater world reveals crisscrossing rivers, giant lakes and gentle hills around which hunter-gatherers made their homes and found their meals toward the end of the last ice age.

The region was inundated between 18,000 and 6,000BC, when the warming climate melted the thick glaciers that pressed down from the north. As the waters rose, the great plain vanished, and slowly, the contours of the British isles and the north-west European coastline were established. Now, the primitive landscape is submerged and preserved,tens of metres beneath one of the busiest seas in the world.

Scientists compiled 3D seismic records from oil-prospecting vessels working in the North Sea over a period of 18 months to piece together a landscape covering 23,000 square kilometres, an area equivalent to the size of Wales.

The records allowed them to identify the scars left by ancient riverbeds and lakes, some 25km across, but also salt marshes and valleys that would have played so crucial a role in shaping the early humans' lives. The map stretches from the coast of East Anglia to the edge of northern Europe.

The map will help identify possible archeological sites and, hopefully, steer underwater pipelines and such clear of them, preserving them for future scientific study.

And a not of caution. It took 12,000 years for natural warming to sink this lost land. Global warming scientists predict the same kind of temperature rise in just the next 100 years.