Wol clement reed was a british geologist who became interested in the link between geology and climate change. The wetlands, which are so productive, may well have had the greatest concentration of population. So these are places most fertile for habitation. Wasn't surprising that he was attracted to areas where you could see clim climae change in action. He himself, itdme the first person, but he was well aware of the fact that below high, high water tites therewe there appeared to be forests,. These were often called noah's woods obviouslybibl the results of biblical floods.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the people, plants and animals once living on land now under the North Sea, now called Doggerland after Dogger Bank, inhabited up to c7000BC or roughly 3000 years before the beginnings of Stonehenge. There are traces of this landscape at low tide, such as the tree stumps at Redcar (above); yet more is being learned from diving and seismic surveys which are building a picture of an ideal environment for humans to hunt and gather, with rivers and wooded hills. Rising seas submerged this land as glaciers melted, and the people and animals who lived there moved to higher ground, with the coasts of modern-day Britain on one side and Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France on the other.
With
Vince Gaffney
Anniversary Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford
Carol Cotterill
Marine Geoscientist at the British Geological Survey
And
Rachel Bynoe
Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton
Producer: Simon Tillotson