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Josh Clark
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Hey folks, it's that time of year to connect with the people you love, even if they live a few states away.
Chuck Bryant
And here's a fun stuff you should know.
Narrator/Advertiser
Style fact Hearing someone's voice can trigger a similar emotional response as a hug.
Chuck Bryant
Brains are wild.
Narrator/Advertiser
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Chuck Bryant
AT&T welcome to Stuff youf Should Know.
Podcast Announcer
A production of iHeartradio.
Charles W. Bryant
Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a good old fashioned episode of Stuff youf Should Know. It's got history, it has geology, it has lost lands, it has abbreviations like kya. All sorts of great Stuff in it.
Josh Clark
Oh, boy. My friend, if I know Josh Clark loves something, it is submerged or lost lands.
Charles W. Bryant
It really is. I love it.
Josh Clark
I know. This kind of thing really floats your boat.
Charles W. Bryant
It does. It floats my submerged land. We're talking about Doggerland, by the way, everybody.
Josh Clark
That's right. We should probably just say kind of what it is first, right before we get into the details.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. And we've talked about it here or there. I could not for the life of me remember what episode. But it's come up once or twice, but I think it bears repeating. For sure.
Josh Clark
Yeah. It's a lost land, a submerged landmass off the coast of Europe. It's in the North Sea, probably anywhere from 50 to 60 to 100ft down. And it used to be a. You know, it used to be land. It used to connect. They pretty much firmly believe now connect the UK and Europe. And not only that, but was a land where that kind of flourished. Depending on when you're talking about with plants and animals and even people.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, they think that it's possible. So this was really populated during the Mesolithic area or era. They think that this area during the Mesolithic era was one of the most densely populated places in all of Europe.
Josh Clark
That's right. And by the way, did you ever see Taylor Swift on her Areas tour?
Charles W. Bryant
I didn't, but I can feel a Taylor Swift area coming on eventually in my life.
Josh Clark
Through the concert, she sort of walked the audience through all of her different areas.
Charles W. Bryant
This is my knee. The left one.
Josh Clark
Knees and toes. Knees and toes.
Charles W. Bryant
So, yeah, I mean, it sounds kind of like. Wait, that's it. There's like a landmass that once connected the UK and Europe.
Josh Clark
That's enough.
Charles W. Bryant
Like you can see somebody making an absurd or obscene hand motion talk thinking about that. Right. But no, listen.
Josh Clark
Exactly what you're thinking.
Charles W. Bryant
Stick with us because this is. It's fantastically interesting. Even though we know very, very little about it. The stuff we do know is so tantalizing that it's like the archeologists who are studying this are just. They want to just say, like so bad. There's so much stuff down there, we just know it. But they're. They're being deliberate and methodical, so they're not letting themselves say that. But we can say it for them.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And it's called Doggerland. And that's just cool. It sounds like a movie title or something.
Narrator/Advertiser
You know?
Charles W. Bryant
It does. Starring Lily Tomlin. No, the younger one.
Josh Clark
Alan.
Charles W. Bryant
No, not that young.
Josh Clark
Von Stupp.
Charles W. Bryant
No. What is her name? Con Taylor. Yes.
Josh Clark
Oh, really?
Charles W. Bryant
She was in a movie called maybe Dog Face or something like that. Or Dog.
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah, Dog. Dog fight.
Charles W. Bryant
No, it doesn't matter. We should probably edit this out. If we were a different podcast, we would edit this out.
Josh Clark
No, man, I came up with like four or five lilies. You got to leave that in.
Charles W. Bryant
Okay, true, true, dad, but I don't even remember how I got on the Lily thing.
Josh Clark
Well, I said it would be a good movie. And you reckon that Lily Taylor would be a good star of that movie?
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, because you were talking about. It's a cool name. And the name comes after the Dogger bank, which is a shallow fishing area, very productive fishing area in the North Sea. And the Dogger bank is named after a type of Dutch cod fishing boats that were used for hundreds of years in the area. So there you go, Doggerland.
Josh Clark
That's right. I hope we got all that right. But it's a pretty shallow sea as far as seas go. About 220,000 square miles. And it sits in between the UK and Europe, of course, because if there was a land bridge that connected those two, that's where the North Sea would be. It's a. Has long been a very crucial shipping route and trade route. And as for this story, you know, it's pretty key that in the 1950s and then 60s, gas and oil reservoirs were found there and companies started licking their chops. And they will come into play later, oil companies and gas companies, as being actually finally kind of key to helping out science and scientists in their explorations.
Charles W. Bryant
So, yeah, that will come in later. Also, there's a lot of shipping that goes on. Apparently that's a very ancient thing. People have been shipping things over the North Sea for a very long time, and then now it's become a really attractive site for renewable energy, as we'll see. So the North Sea is very important and it's been used for a very long time, but its depths were just unknown. Like. Like people hadn't explored it. They didn't have the means to. Really. Yeah.
Josh Clark
Even though it's fairly shallow, it's still deep for back then.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, 100ft. What are you going to do? Hold your breath?
Josh Clark
Exactly.
Charles W. Bryant
I mean, the moment you get down on the bottom, you have to come right back up. It's terrible for exploration. Holding your breath is.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
But there were some tantalizing clues that came up over the years that did strongly suggest that there was something down there that had once been above the sea's Surface.
Josh Clark
That's right. The first thing that happened, late 19th century, they started, you know, better fishing technology came along, and you could fish a little bit deeper. So they started fishing a little bit deeper, which is great, because you can get, you know, a lot more fish down there. But it was kind of a pain because they started dragging up what they called morlog, which is, you know, peat. This kind of nasty, clumped together peat. And in that peat, sometimes they would find animal bones, not fish bones, but, like, mammal bones. And I guess it was the 19th century, so it just sort of hassled their fishing progress, so they would just usually toss them overboard. Occasionally, if they had some, like, really well preserved, you know, skull or deer femur or something like that, they might keep it. But that's when the first sort of whisperings of, like, something used to be down there started happening.
Charles W. Bryant
Exactly. And then, in usual fashion, it's worth mentioning H.G. wells, who's probably one of the best speculators in the history of speculative fiction.
Josh Clark
This is pretty cool.
Charles W. Bryant
He heard about some of those finds, and he wrote a story called the Story of the Stone Age, which is basically like, there's a continent under the North Sea between the UK and Europe. Don't forget, this guy is the guy who, in the late 19th century, wrote stories about humans sending rockets up into space.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
And placed the launches at Cape Canaveral. Like, that's how. That's how smart this guy was. As far as seeing in the future goes. I love it.
Josh Clark
Yeah, he's pretty great writer, too.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah.
Josh Clark
Interesting dude, man. We should do1 on H.G. wells. He deserves his own show, I think.
Charles W. Bryant
Okay. All right.
Martine Hackett
All right, let's do it.
Charles W. Bryant
Moving on.
Josh Clark
As we crawl through Noah's woods Now, before the 19th century and those bones and that Morlog peat started coming up, there were whispers then. I said the first whispers came in the late 19th century. That's not exactly true because during low tide way back when, the water levels would drop, and some of these folks living in the UK at the time would see these tree stumps. And this is like medieval times, and they called it Noah's woods, with the idea that this was possibly the area where Noah from the Bible lived before God decided to flood the Earth because he was grumpy.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. And here was plain brighten your face evidence of it. So that had stuck around since the medieval age. And apparently, according to UK or early British lore, this is where Robinson Caruso, who is the model for Robin Hood, emerged from the water and gave Arthur the Sword in the stone.
Josh Clark
That's right.
Charles W. Bryant
So Noah's woods was just kind of like a local thing. I'm sure the churchy types really talked about it more than anybody else. But scientists hadn't paid much attention to it until a very forward thinking scientist and his wife, Clement and Eleanor Reed came forward and they started looking into it and they kind of were the first people to put together Noah's Woods. The fact that there are tree stumps, weirdly ancient ones in the sea, people are pulling up animal bones for terrestrial animals pulling up trees.
Josh Clark
Pretty obvious what's happening.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, they're like, there is something submerged that used to be above the water and we think it's a land bridge that connected the UK and Europe.
Josh Clark
Yeah, they and I noticed there were a couple of scientists, married couples that worked on this along the years.
Charles W. Bryant
It's kind of cool. This is a golden age for that. Yeah.
Josh Clark
In 1913 they published Submerged Forests, which was the very first study on those woods. And yeah, that's when they really kind of put it out there. And it was, you know, it was the kind of thing where they didn't have any hard evidence other than these peat samples. But when they started finding like willow leaves and hazel and birch and fern, they were like, hey, not only do I think there was something down there, but it seems to have existed at least partially at a time that was like maybe kind of nice.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, temperature wise sounds pretty nice. Actually. I'd like to live in Doggerland, but it wasn't called Doggerland yet, as we'll see.
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's right.
Charles W. Bryant
So the Reeds had this pretty great theory. Apparently. I read that they concluded that the only possible explanation for this was that sea level rise had flooded and sunken this land. So they were really right on the money. But this is a very obscure theory. People weren't paying much attention to it. Even in academic circles it was pretty obscure. But then there was a discovery in 1931 that really grabbed the archeologists in the area by the throat and shook them until their tongues turned blue and hung out of their mouths. And it said, look at this, this is important.
Josh Clark
That's right. Did you say 1931? Because that's when it was. That's when a trawler called the Kalinda was fishing off the coast of Norfolk came along and again a big old chunk of Morlog was hauled in in the net and they were digging through that. And this guy's got a great name. The skipper of the Klinda's name was Pilgrim Lockwood.
Charles W. Bryant
So good. I would say that's a hotel check in name, but it's just a little too eye catching.
Josh Clark
Too suspicious.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, yeah, it is pretty suspicious, actually. Yeah.
Chuck Bryant
Hi.
Josh Clark
Pilgrim Lockwood checking in. Yeah. Okay, buddy, what's your real name and who do you think you are?
Charles W. Bryant
Right.
Josh Clark
So Pilgrim Lockwood is busting up this Pete with his shovel. Just like out of a movie. He hits something hard, reaches in and finds. And this is the kind of discovery that all of a sudden, like you said, everyone's going to be like, okay, there's really something happening here. Because it was an 8 1/2 inch long harpoon head, a harpoon point carved with hands out of an antler. But here's the deal. At first they were like, okay, I mean, this is kind of cool. And they even offered it to the British Museum, but they said, nah, we've got some harpoons, we're all set. We got a couple of them. And the idea was that everyone thought like, hey, this is probably just was lost over the side of a boat or something, but what's the big deal?
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, they're like, pretty cool. I mean, like, don't throw it back. Hang on to it.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
Because it was very clearly fashioned by humans. I think in addition to just being smoothed out to, to be fashioned into a harpoon, I think it was decorated as well. So there's no arguing that it was. It was a human artifact. It had been found in a morlog, so a chunk of peat. And then somebody along the way, another married couple, Harry and Margaret Godwin, said, let us see that peat. We have a little hypothesis we want to test. And they looked at that peat and they said, everybody get this. That peat was formed in a freshwater environment, meaning that it could only have been formed above the sea's surface on land in a wetland, but on land. And the harpoon being in there means that a human was on land above the sea surface when they were using it in. They lost it in the peat.
Josh Clark
Yeah. I picture Margaret Godwin just storming in the room and saying, that didn't fall off of any boat.
Charles W. Bryant
And then, even better, the British Museum gets in touch with Pilgrim Lockwood after this. And he's like, well, well, well, look who's come crawling back.
Josh Clark
Yeah, that would have been pretty great, actually.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah.
Josh Clark
So they used a pollen analysis to figure this out. And later on they were able to date this thing. And this harpoo they found was about 14,000 years old.
Charles W. Bryant
Neat.
Josh Clark
Which would place it kind of squarely in the Mesolithic Era.
Charles W. Bryant
Well, about toward the beginning of it, I think, because this is.
Josh Clark
It's in the area.
Charles W. Bryant
It's a squishy one. And the other thing that's so exciting about Doggerland and finding stuff out about it is we have very little information about Mesolithic people of this area of the time.
Josh Clark
Okay, okay, everybody.
Charles W. Bryant
In addition to all that, Chuck, there were some more things that came up during the 20th century that were like this. This is. There's something really interesting down there. They were finding bits of textile.
Sophie Cunningham
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
They found a Neanderthal skull fragment that they managed to. It was between 70,000 and 40,000 years old. Okay, we'll talk about it a little later. But there's a facial reconstruction. You know, they love to do like the 3D.
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
They have the guy smiling, just a huge, big, sweet, goofy smile. And I thought that was a nice touch.
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's always nice. That's when, like when they recreated what they thought Jesus would really look like. And he looked like he was on the Simpsons or something.
Charles W. Bryant
Right. Or he's doing the eye wink and the double guns. I've seen that before too.
Josh Clark
Oh, yeah, that's classic. But despite all these finds, kind of throughout the 20th century, they still, the scientific community still were like, okay, so there were people there, but like, this was just. They were just traveling along the road.
Charles W. Bryant
Right.
Josh Clark
Like nobody lived there.
Charles W. Bryant
They were rambling on.
Josh Clark
They were rambling on through the area and the era and. Maybe we should take a break.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, let's.
Josh Clark
All right, we'll be right back with more on Doggerland.
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You know, AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why people love a good podcast or save voicemails from loved ones because everyone appreciates the sound of a familiar voice. And when you need a recharge or want some comfort, you call a family member or friend. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, call someone cause that convo is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything.
Martine Hackett
You know, everyone living with a rare autoimmune condition has their own story to tell. And that's why in season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics the you'll hear powerful real life perspectives.
Josh Clark
That's right. This podcast explores stories of what life is really like with MG or cidp. Host Martine Hackett sits down with people who faced it all, the early signs and symptoms, the search for answers, and the strength it takes to keep moving forward.
Martine Hackett
Yeah, and this season the stories go even deeper, showing us what resilience truly looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and the communities that make all the difference. So listen to Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever your podcast.
Josh Clark
All right, so you mentioned before the break at some point that Doggerland was not named Doggerland at this point. It would be, I think, 1998 before that name would finally be coined. And again, this was still like just sort of the scientific community that was getting pretty excited. Like, even the broader archaeological community was still not super pumped on this area yet. They were studying it in the 70s. But in 1998, a archaeologist named Briony Coles put out a paper called Doggerland A Speculative Survey wherein, and this is what made the scientific community kind of say, like, ooh, what's she talking about? She named it Doggerland after that sand bank, the Dogger bank like you were talking about. And she's the first one that said, you know what, everyone, I think people like, lived here and I think it was kind of pretty awesome.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, this wasn't a land bridge. This is essentially like it was an extension of the European continent and a lot of people lived there and a lot of stuff happened there Maybe she.
Josh Clark
Busted into the room and said that was no land bridge.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. So, yeah. And there's just this collection of archaeologists and scholars, and it's getting increasingly elbow to elbow in there and hot because there's no AC, for some reason, in this room. Okay.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
And it's July, and there's a lot of rotting fish in the room, too, for some reason.
Josh Clark
Yeah, That's a weird addition. Everyone wondered about those fish.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. And then somebody is eating leftovers of Vietnamese food, and that's loaded with shrimp paste.
Josh Clark
Oh, man, that's shrimp paste.
Charles W. Bryant
And then there's one guy who's got leather patches on his elbows and it's chafing the people on either side of him's arm.
Josh Clark
Oh, God.
Charles W. Bryant
Because they happen to be wearing short sleeves.
Josh Clark
Yeah, Neil always wears that thing.
Charles W. Bryant
So it's really difficult to get across how groundbreaking Bryony Cole's study was because she was working with really minimal information. I saw that she went to the extent of collecting anecdotes from old fishermen who had brought up stuff while they were trawling. And she took all this and put it together and not only just wrote a book like, hey, get this. This is what's really down there. She created maps of what Doggerland would have looked like, not just once, but throughout different areas of the time period that it was above water. So what she did was an amazing triumph of intellect. Like, it's really tough to get across, like, how big a deal what she did was. And that's why people started to get into Doggerling, because it was so convincing, too.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. You know, these. These different little pictures of different points in time. She said, hey, I think during the Paleolithic, it might have gone all the way from the Shetland Islands of Scotland to the Netherlands maybe. I think during the Holocene period, that sea began to rise and it became an island for a while. And then finally she put it at 5,500 BC, she figured it disappeared entirely. We've seen anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago is what people speculate. But she, even, despite all that, was like, hey, this is just. I'm speculating here, everybody. Much later, a archeologist named Vincent Gaffney, along with a graduate student named Simon Fitch. Fitch or Finch. Yeah, Fitch. In 2001, got on the scene, and after about eight years of work, Gaffney said, you know what? She was reasonably correct with all this stuff, like, nice work.
Charles W. Bryant
And Gaffney was in a really good position to say that, because, like you said, he worked for years and years and years on a project that he had come up with with Simon Fitch. That was pretty clever. Yeah. They were like, there are a lot of oil exploration companies that have been, like, mapping the sea floor of the North Sea for decades now. Surely they have some amazing data sets that they'll share with us. So they started going around to oil companies and they finally found one, actually. Petroleum Geoservices and PGS said, sure, we'll share. We'll share a little bit of our undersea mapping with you. And they gave them data for 23,000 square kilometers of the North Sea. And Vincent Gaffney fainted. But luckily, Simon Fitch was there to catch him. And that was just. That was what Simon Fitch is all about. He's always there to catch you.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And this was a situation where, like, to the oil company, they were like, let's just give them a little bit of our stuff and maybe they'll stop calling us. Archeology Magazine later called that the largest geophysical survey ever made available to archaeologists.
Charles W. Bryant
Pretty cool.
Josh Clark
So that's sort of the difference between the sort of the oil company sector and the scientific community and what they consider a little bit of data.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. And this was really groundbreaking for underwater archaeology. Cause this was. Underwater archaeology at this point was like, dive down in scuba gear, hope you find something there. There were some techniques where you can actually kind of excavate something that's close to the surface. They have big vacuums that they go through the silt that's taken up on board the ship above. So it's not like it was just completely. Just a concept at the time, but this really opened it up, this underwater mapping. But Simon Fitch and Vincent Gaffney found out these maps are. The resolution's not enough to be like.
Martine Hackett
There'S a site, there's a site.
Charles W. Bryant
Oh, look, that skeleton's waving at us. Let's go investigate there. But it was enough to give it a. Give them a big picture of Doggerland. And it was very clear that this was not just some land bridge. This was. Yeah, again, like, essentially a new country that they had discovered under the sea. And they were able to match that with existing finds. Yeah, like, they're like, well, there's this mastodon skull found over here. And that makes sense that it would be here. So let's kind of look for humans over there. That's. That's the kind of technique that they managed to come up with.
Josh Clark
Yeah, it's pretty cool. And in the end, they basically said, we think this was not only were there people here, but they think it was a, quote, a significant Mesolithic population. And, you know, it was, like you said, it was pretty groundbreaking. I thought we did an episode on underwater archaeology, but I think it might have just been that I wrote that article for howstuffworks.com back in the day.
Charles W. Bryant
Oh, we should do that then, eh? No.
Martine Hackett
Okay.
Josh Clark
I don't know if it was something I wrote. I'm not sure. It's.
Charles W. Bryant
No, you've written tons of good stuff.
Josh Clark
Oh, you're sweet. In 2022. Well, I guess we should mention in 2014, Gaffney started working at the University of Bradford and he founded the Submerged Landscape Research Group there because he was dogged about Doggerland. And then eventually in 2022, I guess 7ish years later, 8 years later, he joined the Unpathed Waters Research Project. And that was a pretty cool initiative to make the maritime history of the United Kingdom. Just kind of put it out there for the public to digest.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. So did you check this map out?
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
Josh Clark
It's cool.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, it is. So the resolution is. It's very like pitfall. It's that level of bit resolution. The reason why is because if they took all the data that they actually have and rendered it in some sort of way that looked kind of whiz bang, it would crash your computer the moment you started to try to load it. Right?
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
So they had to, because there's so much information that they have, they had to kind of narrow it back down into that kind of lower resolution version. But the stuff that it does is amazing. Like you can go forward in time, backward in time. You can see the sea level rise and fall. You can actually control people by setting up a camp and then sitting back and watching what they do. And if there's like a caribou or a moose or something nearby, they'll go kill it. And then they process the carcass and it just does all this different super cool stuff. It's definitely worth checking out. The unpathed waters, Undreamed shorelines, I think.
Josh Clark
Wow, that's a very pretty name.
Charles W. Bryant
It is.
Josh Clark
Should we take another break and talk about what was there?
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, let's take that break.
Public Investing Advertiser
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt from renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers, growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures you know.
Podcast Announcer
AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why people love a good podcast or save voicemails from loved ones because everyone appreciates the sound of a familiar voice. And when you need a recharge or want some comfort, you call a family member or friend. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, call someone. Cause that convo is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything.
Martine Hackett
You know, everyone living with a rare autoimmune condition has their own story to tell. And that's why in season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, you'll hear powerful real life perspectives.
Josh Clark
That's right. This podcast explores stories of what life is really like with MG or cidp. Host Martine Hackett sits down with people who faced it all the early signs and symptoms, the search for answers, and the strength it takes to keep moving forward.
Martine Hackett
Yeah, and this season the stories go even deeper, showing us what resilience truly looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and the communities that make all the difference. So listen to Untold Stories Life with a Severe Autoimmune condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Charles W. Bryant
All right, Chuck, so ever since Brian E. Coles came up with the Doggerland speculative Maps and Vincent Gaffney and Simon Finch and all of the projects that they've worked on have, you know, improved that information. In addition to all that, more and more artifacts have been coming up and apparently there's a good working relationship between archaeologists who are studying Doggerland and the trawling fishermen who bring in these finds. Because before it was like, hey, check out this, what they call them morlogs, this big chunk of.
Josh Clark
Yeah, more logs.
Charles W. Bryant
And look, there's a. Probably what, a mastodon tooth? Is that what that is? And they'd say, well, where'd you get this? And be like, I don't know, I was over somewhere in the East North Sea. And that didn't help very much. But now that they've kind of formed this relationship with these fishermen, the fishermen are like, well, here's the. Here's the GPS data for where we pulled that up. And now the. Our underwater archaeologists can go and look and say, like, yep, this. This seems like a good site to explore. The problem is this area is so covered in sediment that even for underwater archaeology, this is a challenging place to find artifacts because there's so many rivers that flow into the North Sea. And unlike rivers that flow into the ocean, that sediment doesn't just disperse. It gets trapped between the UK and Europe. So it just settles and there's a lot of sediment on top of the.
Josh Clark
Yeah, very messy scene. But nevertheless, they have persevered and learned a lot about what was there through these finds in 2017. They were trying to, you know, they were trying to figure out what plants and animals were there. And they figured, hey, during the Younger Dryas, which we all know now because we did that episode very recently on.
Charles W. Bryant
The Younger Dryas, that was a happy episode too.
Josh Clark
They said Doggerland was a tundra. It was just ferns and shrubs and grasses. The climate started warming over the course of thousands of years. And during the pre Boreal period, the Holocene, there were birch and pine trees. And all of a sudden it went from a tundra to a forest. And then later, during the actual Boreal period, birch got replaced by hazel. And you got these freshwater lakes, which is early on. Remember when they found that they did the pollen analysis and they found that freshwater evidence. So that kind of explains that. And as far as the animals living there, that is shifting along with the climate basically over the period of, you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of years.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, because those animals were adapted to the Ice Age. And so when the Younger Dryas was like, ice Age is back, those animals hadn't died out yet. So they're like, awesome. We got another 1300 years. But after the Younger Dryas ended and the Ice Age finally came to an end about 11,600 years ago, the things like the woolly rhinoceros and Mammoths and reindeer had really nowhere to go and largely died off or else migrated northward and they were replaced by wild boar. Birds came along, which is always a good thing. Otters showed up. Yeah, if you've ever seen an otter holding hands with another otter, you're glad that those otters showed up. Beavers. One of our favorite animal episodes. It was just a huge change in not only the vegetation, but also the animal life. And the animal life also included humans, too.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I mean, we mentioned there were people there and there were the first hominids there. Well, they weren't human, actually, so I sort of misspoke. But they were called Homo antecessor, which was the predecessor to humans. And they were there about 800,000 years ago. And then finally, you know, we mentioned that Neanderthal fragment, skull fragment. They moved in when Doggerland was a tundra, and I GUESS it was 2001 when they found that skull fragment. This is off the coast of the Netherlands, and they named this one. I love it when they name these, you know, ancient humans. But I'm not even going to try and pronounce it. It's K, R, I, J, N. Not sure how you would say that in Dutch.
Charles W. Bryant
I saw that it was one syllable, so I'm not sure either. But it's not Krigin. Like I was saying, Jay's gotta be silent, right? It does something weird.
Josh Clark
Yeah, it does something weird. But they reckon that fossil, they dated it to about 70,000 years old. And they said this guy probably ate a lot of meat as his diet, maybe some fish, but definitely was chowing down on some pretty good food. And then, you know, they found all sorts of stuff over the years on the coast of the Netherlands. Just like. Like a bone point or an ax or any kind of carved, pointed, you know, arrowhead or harpoon head would just wash up on shore.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, this is some of the evidence that we have that Neanderthals were pretty smart and actually well adapted or suited to cold climates. So they were still around during the younger Dryas. Humans had kind of come along before the younger Dryas. The younger Dryas came along, they beat them back. And then finally after the younger Dryas, Homo sapiens really start to show up. Yeah, I think as early as like 14,000 years ago. And again, this is the. The beginning of the Mesolithic in Europe, and they were hunter gatherers. They had just basically migrated westward from continental Europe because they could get there by walking from Europe to the uk and they were like this Doggerland place. Is pretty nice. We're going to stick around here.
Josh Clark
Yeah. So, you know, for a while, they were migrating around, following the animals, going where the food was. But they said, you know, they're basically like anyone else from that time in that place, from that era and area. Man, this is really just fitting together like a glove, you know.
Charles W. Bryant
I love it.
Josh Clark
They were, you know, carving things from stone, carving things from antlers. We have direct evidence of both. And animal bones. They were wearing animal skins. But they said they think eventually, like you said, they decided, like, hey, this place is nice.
Charles W. Bryant
Let's.
Josh Clark
Let's set up camp here and maybe even farmed there.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. So this is where the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic happens. It's pretty much what they consider the change or the beginning of the Neolithic was when people started farming, and that happened on Doggerland. This is where they essentially found the place that they could grow crops. It was warmer then, around this time than it was, than it is now in that area. So they were very easily raising crops, figuring it out as they went along. So that because they were raising crops, they were more sedentary, which means that their populations grew a little larger. So some of the things they're starting to find are, like, evidence of villages. There's a really amazing underwater archaeological site called Boldner Cliff off the Isle of Wight. And they've found what seems to be like, a dock that probably went out into an ancient river. There is, like, burials there, houses and pits. Like, there's a lot of really cool stuff. And this is a really tantalizing view of. And I can't use that word enough in this episode, tantalizing. But this is a tantalizing view of all the stuff that's probably underwater throughout Doggerland.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And I guess we should talk about why it's underwater. This. You know, I think we already kind of gave it away that it didn't happen all at once. It happened over hundreds of thousands of years. Little by little, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and there's, you know, like I said, estimates anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, or 7,000, rather, of when people think it finally, like, you know, was completely submerged. And it may not, you know, it may have become so uninhabitable, you know, long before that, maybe even thousands of years before that.
Charles W. Bryant
Why?
Josh Clark
Well, I mean, there's a couple of theories. There's a tsunami theory that says about 8,000 years ago, there were a bunch of massive tsunamis that pummeled the coast of Britain. And completely wiped out Doggerland. And they were caused by these submarine landslides in the Norwegian Sea called the Storega Slides. But Gaffney was like, I don't think it was that, actually. I think it was climate change, because I think Doggerland itself, like, he didn't doubt the tsunamis happened, but he said, I think Doggerland itself was kind of protected by the wooded, hilly terrain.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah. But still a lot of people would have died because they think that the tsunami swept 25 miles inland, which is a lot of settlements that you can take out 25 miles in. And I don't know if you remember, but in our Younger Dryas episode, we talked about isostatic rebound or adjustment, where the glaciers and ice sheets were so heavy that they actually pushed the earth downward. And it took some areas of land down with it, like Scotland, but it raised other areas up kind of like if you put a bowling ball on a mattress, which, you know, usually do. And one of the areas that got raised up was Doggerland. Right. So when the glaciers melted, Doggerland started to sink. And then in addition to that, the glaciers melting made the sea levels rise, which is why this stuff was happening so quickly. They think that possibly sea level rise was happening as fast as a meter over a century, which doesn't sound like much, but right now, the sea level rise we're worried about is happening, like 30 centimeters a century. So that is a really fast sea level rise. So it's not like it would have caught people off guard, but their way of life would have been disrupted pretty significantly by the tsunamis and the sea level rise.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I saw even, you know, potentially up to 2 meters per century. So that's, you know, super fast.
Charles W. Bryant
Super. That's like twice as fast, at least. So as the. As the sea levels rose and Doggerland sank, Scotland, by the way, is still rising. The land wasn't just some flat mass. There were Highlands, there were hills and all that. So little by little, it was submerged. And they think that the last bit was probably Dogger's bank, because it's one of the most shallow parts of the North Sea. And by the time it was completely submerged, all the people who had moved upward in the British Isles were now officially British. They were cut off from Europe now for the first time. And like you said, that was between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago.
Josh Clark
These days, there's sort of a new threat to the idea of a lot more science happening there because of those wind farms you mentioned early on. It's a pretty great area for wind farming. But it's threatening parts of the North Sea. Like we said, it's fairly shallow as far as seas go, and there's lots of great wind there. And the plan is by 2030, that the Southern part of the North Sea is just going to be riddled with wind farms. The downside of that, I mean, this great renewable energy, but the downside is that that stuff is really disruptive to the. The ecology there and certainly disruptive to all those Doggerland sites that they're still hoping to explore.
Charles W. Bryant
Yeah, I was reading that because the North Sea is so shallow, the. The kind of wind farms that they can put in can actually be bolted to the bedrock, which is way cheaper than, like, the floating version. So they're salivating over putting wind farms there. But again, that means that they're bolting wind turbines to Doggerland, which is nay good for the archaeological aspect. It's naked, right? That's exactly right. So they don't. I mean, it seems like these wind farms are going on. Stupid wind farms. Always ruining the environment for everybody.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
And I don't know that anybody's going to be able to change it, because everybody thinks Dargirland's cool, but not necessarily disrupt progress as far as renewable energy goes. Cool.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Charles W. Bryant
So I guess that's it for Doggerland.
Josh Clark
That's right.
Charles W. Bryant
Chuck said that's right. Which means, everybody, it's time for listener mail.
Josh Clark
This is from Andy. Hey, guys. Been listening since COVID 2020. I've heard your entire library, and I've almost agreed with everything that Chuck says. I think it was titled Brother from Another Mother. We're close in age, so we have similar childhood memories. And this morning, when Chuck brought up the guitar solo for My Sharona, I knew that we were made from the same cloth, because for many years now, I have touted that guitar solo as my most favorite solo of all time.
Charles W. Bryant
Wow.
Josh Clark
Glad to hear that I'm not alone. So thank you, Chuck, for being like a brother to me. On another note, you failed to mention the true father of AM radio, guys. Nikola Tesla. Tesla actually patented the technology before Marconi did, making him the actual father of radio. Marconi, Quote bothered. End quote. Tesla's technology and ran with it. And he was just a much better businessman than Tesla, so he was able to monetize the technology, earning him the notoriety that he has today as the father of radio.
Charles W. Bryant
So Jefferson Starship should have said, Tesla plays the mambo.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I guess so. Tesla played the mamba.
Charles W. Bryant
It works.
Josh Clark
It would have worked.
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
Josh Clark
Read many books on Nikola Tesla and his inventions and find him one of the most fascinating men of all time. Without him, we might not have had such things as the remote control, robotics and wireless transmission. Thanks for everything guys. You make my commute to work relaxing and educational three days of the week. And that is Andy McDonald.
Martine Hackett
Thanks Andy.
Charles W. Bryant
That was a good email. Surely then if you've listened to to our back catalog, you're aware of the the electricity wars we went over with Edison and Tesla. But I feel like Tesla could definitely stand his own episode too.
Josh Clark
Yeah, maybe.
Charles W. Bryant
Okay, well let's see. If you want to get in touch with us like Andy, you can do that. Send us an email. You can say whatever you want. Send it off to Stuff podcastheartradio.com Stuff.
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Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles "Chuck" Bryant
Date: December 18, 2025
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the history, disappearance, and continued allure of Doggerland—the vast stretch of prehistoric land now submerged under the North Sea that once connected the UK to continental Europe.
In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the fascinating story of Doggerland—a submerged landmass that once linked Britian and mainland Europe. They unpack its geographic, archaeological, and cultural significance, detail the discoveries that revealed its existence, and reflect on the challenges and intrigue it continues to present to scientists and explorers. With their trademark humor and curiosity, the hosts walk listeners through centuries of speculation and recent breakthroughs in understanding this lost world.
“It used to connect—they pretty much firmly believe now—connect the UK and Europe. And not only that, but was a land where that kind of flourished…with plants and animals and even people.”
—Josh Clark [03:04]
Fishing Bycatch and Ignored Evidence [07:46]
Fiction Foresees Fact [08:39]
"He wrote a story called The Story of the Stone Age, which is basically like, there’s a continent under the North Sea."
—Chuck Bryant [08:51]
Noah’s Woods – Medieval Lore [09:33]
Key Find: The 1931 Harpoon [12:55]
“A harpoon being in there means that a human was on land above the sea surface when they were using it…they lost it in the peat.”
—Charles W. Bryant [15:07]
Slow Acceptance & Major Theories
Bryony Coles & The Name Emerges [20:14]
“She … created maps of what Doggerland would have looked like, not just once, but throughout different eras…what she did was an amazing triumph of intellect.”
—Charles W. Bryant [22:06]
Vincent Gaffney and Simon Fitch — Big Data Approach [23:08]
“[Gaffney and Fitch] found out these maps…were enough to give them a big picture…it was very clear that this was not just some land bridge.”
—Charles W. Bryant [26:02]
Public Models:
Flora & Fauna Evolution [33:43]
Earliest Inhabitants [35:18]
“They were, you know, carving things from stone, carving things from antlers. We have direct evidence of both.”
—Josh Clark [37:41]
Move to Farming & Villages [37:59]
“This is where the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic happens...people started farming, and that happened on Doggerland.”
—Charles W. Bryant [37:59]
Underwater Archaeological Sites [38:30]
“As the sea levels rose and Doggerland sank…people who had moved upward…were now officially British. They were cut off from Europe now for the first time.”
—Charles W. Bryant [41:36]
“The plan is by 2030, the Southern part of the North Sea is just going to be riddled with wind farms…that stuff is really disruptive to all those Doggerland sites.”
—Josh Clark [42:15]
“If I know Josh Clark loves something, it is submerged or lost lands.”
—Charles W. Bryant [02:37]
“I picture Margaret Godwin just storming in the room and saying, ‘That didn’t fall off of any boat.’”
—Josh Clark [15:15]
“She...created maps of what Doggerland would have looked like, not just once, but throughout different eras of the time period that it was above water. What she did was an amazing triumph of intellect.”
—Charles W. Bryant [22:06]
“They were just traveling along the road...”
—Charles W. Bryant [17:10]
“You can go forward in time, backward in time. You can see the sea level rise and fall. You can actually control people by setting up a camp and then sitting back and watching what they do.”
—Charles W. Bryant [28:09]
“[Wind turbines] are bolting...to Doggerland, which is nay good for the archaeological aspect. It’s naked, right?”
—Charles W. Bryant [42:57]
Josh and Chuck remain playful, imaginative, and enthusiastic—balancing anecdotes, scientific detail, and moments of levity (see their speculation about films, repeated use of "tantalizing," and mock dramatics about scholar gatherings). Science is translated for a lay audience, always keeping the mystery and wonder of Doggerland at the fore.
Doggerland is more than a lost land bridge; it's a submerged chapter of human and natural history, now both tantalizingly revealed and increasingly threatened. From legend and science fiction to pollen analysis, seafloor scans, and high-stakes wind energy plans, the quest to understand Doggerland is an evocative blend of past, present, and future—one that continuously shapes our understanding of where Europe ends, where Britain begins, and what once lay between.