7,000-Year-Old Forest and Footprints Uncovered in the Atlantis of Britain

Ancient Origins

Ancient footprints as well as prehistoric tree stumps and logs have become visible along a 200-meter stretch of a coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland, in what is believed to be Doggerland, the Atlantis of Britain.

The Daily Mail reports that the forest existed in the late Mesolithic period. It began to form around 5,300 BC, and it was covered by the ocean three centuries later. The studies proved that at the time, when the ancient forest existed, the sea level was much lower. It was a period when Britain had recently separated from the land of what is currently Denmark. The forest consisted mostly of hazel, alder, and oak trees. Researchers believe the forest was part of Doggerland, an ancient stretch of a land, which connected the UK and Europe.

Doggerland: Stone Age Atlantis of Britain

Located in the North Sea, Doggerland is believed to have once measured approximately 100,000 square miles (258998 square kilometers). However, the end of the Ice Age saw a great rise in the sea level and an increase in storms and flooding in the region, causing Doggerland to gradually shrink.
Doggerland, sometimes called the Stone Age Atlantis of Britain or the prehistoric Garden of Eden, is an area archaeologists have been waiting to rediscover. Finally, modern technology has reached a level in which their dreams may become a reality. Doggerland is thought to have been first inhabited around 10,000 BC, and innovative technology is expected to aid a new study in glimpsing what life was like for the prehistoric humans living in the region before the catastrophic floods covered the territory sometime between 8000 - 6000 BC.

The area, which would have been home to a range of animals, as well as the hunter gatherers which stalked them, became flooded due to glacial melt, with some high-lying regions such as 'Dogger Island' (pictured right, highlighted red) serving as clues to the regions ancient past. (public domain)

Sunken Land Reveals its Secrets

The latest research was made by a group of archeologists and volunteers led by a team from Archaeological Research Services Ltd, which previously performed some other projects related to the Northumberland. The works were possible due to the lower level of water. The major excavations involved a total of 700 people and uncovered part of an Iron Age site dating from around 300 BC near the Druidge Bay.
Doctor Clive Waddington, of Archaeology Research Services said:

''In 5,000 BC the sea level rose quickly and it drowned the land. The sand dunes were blown back further into the land, burying the forest, and then the sea receded a little. The sea level is now rising again, cutting back the sand dunes, and uncovering the forest.''

Clive Waddington, project director of Archaeological Research Services Ltd at the prehistoric archaeological dig at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland (The Journal)

Ancient Footprints

Waddington maintains that his team also discovered the evidence of humans living nearby. They found footprints of adults and children. Due to the results of the analysis of the footprints, it is believed that they wore leather shoes.  Animal footprints of wild boar, brown bears and red deer also had been found.

Fossilized Forests

The remains of the forest of Doggerland do not belong to the oldest known forest. The oldest fossilized forest was discovered by a team from the Binghamton University in the town of Gilboa in upstate New York. The Gilboa area has been known as a tree fossil location since the late 19^th century. However, the first researchers arrived there in the 1920s. The most recent research started in 2004, when Linda VanAller Hernick, paleontology collection manager, and Frank Mannolini, paleontology collection technician, uncovered more intact specimens. According to the article published in 2012 by William Stein, associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton, the fossils discovered in this area are between 370 to 380 million years old.
See the 5,000-year-old forest unearthed by storms:

Featured image: The remains of an ancient forest in what is believed to have once formed part of Doggerland. Credit: North News and Pictures.
By Natalia Klimczak

'Extraordinary' 5,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Discovered

A 5,000-year-old human footprint discovered on the Danish island of Lolland.
Credit: Lars Ewald Jensen/Museum Lolland-Falster

by Elizabeth Palermo

When a pair of fishermen waded into the frigid waters of the southern Baltic Sea about 5,000 years ago, they probably didn't realize that the shifting seabed beneath their feet was recording their every move. But it was.
The long-lost evidence of that prehistoric fishing trip — two sets of human footprints and some Stone Age fishing gear — was recently discovered in a dried up fjord, or inlet, on the island of Lolland in Denmark. There, archaeologists uncovered the prints alongside a so-called fishing fence, a tool that dates back to around 3,000 B.C.
Archaeologists have found fishing fences before, but the footprints are the first of their kind discovered in Denmark, according to Terje Stafseth, an archaeologist with the Museum Lolland-Falster, who helped excavate the ancient prints. [See photos of the Stone Age human footprints]
"This is really quite extraordinary, finding footprints from humans," Stafseth said in a statement. "Normally, what we find is their rubbish in the form of tools and pottery, but here, we suddenly have a completely different type of trace from the past, footprints left by a human being."
For more than a year, Stafseth and his colleagues have been racing against the clock to collect artifacts and other historical objects from Denmark's past before they disappear forever. In the next year or so, construction is slated to begin on the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link, an underwater tunnel that will connect Lolland with the German island of Fehmarn. The tunnel will be built with several above-ground facilities that will cover up dried fjords, including the one where the footprints and fishing equipment were found, according to Lars Ewald Jensen, the Museum Lolland-Falster's project manager for the Fehmarn Link project.
Those dried up inlets, as well as other areas of Lolland, are a good place to look for artifacts because these areas weren't always dry, Jensen told Live Science. In fact, the fjords used to be the backdrop for Stone Age people's daily water activities, such as fishing and offering sacrifices to the sea, he said.
But in 1872, the Baltic Sea flooded, killing 80 people on the island of Lolland alone, Jensen said. To protect against future storm surges, a dyke was completed in 1877 that spans about 37 miles (60 kilometers) of Lolland's southern coast. The project left the fjords dry.
The Stone Age footprints were likely formed sometime between 5,000 B.C. and 2,000 B.C., Jensen said. At that time, the water level of the Baltic Sea was rising due to melting glaciers in northern Europe. Also at that time, prehistoric people were using these inlets as fishing grounds.
These individuals constructed elaborate traps, called fishing fences, to catch their prey. The wooden fences were built in sections several feet wide — thin switches of hazel suspended between two larger sticks — and the sections were lined up consecutively to form one long, continuous trap. The trap was placed in the shallow water of the fjord, which would be flooded with the incoming tide, the archaeologists said. When the fishermen wanted to move their gear, they would pluck the sections of the fence from the claylike floor of the fjord and move the whole apparatus to a new location. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]
"What seems to have happened was that at some point they were moving out to the [fish fence], perhaps to recover it before a storm," Jensen said. "At one of the posts, there are footprints on each side of the post, where someone had been trying to remove it from the sea bottom."
The footprints around the post, as well as several others in the general area, were likely preserved in time thanks to the stormy weather. As the fishermen struggled to move their gear, their feet sunk deeper into the floor of the fjord and were covered by sand stirred up by the incoming ocean surge. The recovered footprints feature fine layers of mud and sand, neatly positioned one atop the other, Jensen said.
The archaeologists said the footprints must have been made by two different people, since one set of prints is significantly smaller than the other. Jensen and his team are now making imprints, or flat molds, of the footprints to preserve these ancient signs of life.
In addition to the human tracks, the team uncovered several skulls belonging to domestic and wild animals on the beach near the fjord. The researchers said the skulls were likely part of offerings made by local farmers, who inhabited the region from around 4,000 B.C.
"They put fragments of skulls from different kinds of animals [on the sea floor], and then around that they put craniums from cows and sheep," Jensen said. "At the outermost of this area, they put shafts from axes. All in all, it covers about 70 square meters [83 square yards]. It's rather peculiar."

Live Science