Very interesting article...thanks for posting. It had never occurred to me that the melting after the last glacial maximum would have inundated thousands of prehistoric coastal sites.
What puzzles me is the sea level rose over a period of 3,000 years. This isn’t Vesuvius-like cataclysm that froze people in their tracks. The inhabitants of these villages and cities had plenty of have time to move out of the way. Why wouldn’t they have taken their possessions with them? How hard would it be to move your boats and decorative paddles?
It’s refreshing, too, that this article doesn’t once mention the modern bogeyman of global warming and the threat of rising seas. If prehistoric man could adapt to sea level rises of up to 130 meters (!!), then I really think we can adapt to the faint possibility that modern sea levels might rise one meter.
Great points, great post!
They left their junk behind, especially things that were too big or too hard to move. They probably had plenty of waterlogged junk, having endured several years of tidal floods that they had not seen in earlier years.
Thor, I’ve had enough of these spring floods. Either we pack up and move the village, or I am going home to Mother. Her great grand daughter probably said the same thing at the new village some years later.
Storm surges.
Tsunami. Read the info in the caption under The Europe That Was in Post 10. I imagine if there was one Storegga Landslide there were probably more in the same area from an earlier time as well.