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According to Ben Urmston from the University of Bradford, magnetic fields could indicate the presence of archaeological features without the need for exploratory underwater excavations.Magnetometry has previously been used by terrestrial archaeologists but has not been used extensively to examine submerged landscapes.The pioneering technique could be applied in Doggerland, a submerged land mass beneath what is now the North Sea, that once connected Britain to continental Europe.The landscape of Doggerland was a diverse mix of gentle hills, marshes, wooded valleys and swamps during the later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods.Small groups of hunter-gatherers took advantage of Doggerland’s rich migrating wildlife, with...

Thousands of years ago, a swath of land along what is now the western coast of England served as a superhighway for humans and animals alike. Today, the ebb and flow of each passing tide reveals more of the ancient footprints that these long-gone travelers stamped into the once mud-caked route.Reminders of their travels can be seen along a nearly 2-mile-long (3 kilometers) stretch of coastline near Formby, England. The footprint beds show how, as glaciers melted and sea levels rose after the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago, humans and animals were forced inland, thus forming a...

Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies. "It looks for all the world like a map of a bit of a country onshore," said Nicky White, the senior researcher. "It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the seabed." So far, the data have revealed a landscape about 3,861 square miles (10,000 square km) west of the Orkney-Shetland Islands that stretched above...

One of the tunnel valleys revealed by the seismic data. (James Kirkham) The hidden scars left on the landscape during ice ages thousands to millions of years ago have now been imaged in spectacular detail. Using a technique called reflection seismology, a team of scientists has imaged enormous gouges carved by subglacial rivers, buried hundreds of meters below the floor of the North Sea. Called 'tunnel valleys', these features can help us understand how frozen landscapes change in response to a warming climate. "The origin of these channels was unresolved for over a century. This discovery will help us better...

Thousands of years ago the UK was physically joined to the rest of Europe through an area known as Doggerland. However, a marine inundation took place during the mid-holocene, separating the British landmass from the rest of Europe, which is now covered by the North Sea. Scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick have studied sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from sediment deposits in the southern North Sea, an area which has not previously been linked to a tsunami that occurred 8150 years ago... A number of innovative breakthroughs were achieved by the University of Warwick...

Deep beneath the North Sea, scientists have discovered a fossilized forest that could hold traces of prehistoric early humans who lived there around 10,000 years ago, before the land slipped beneath the waves a few thousand years later. The discovery gives the researchers new hope in their search for "lost" Middle Stone Age — or Mesolithic — settlements of hunter-gatherers, because the find shows that they have found a particular type of exposed ancient landscape.

Archaeologists in Germany have uncovered the bodies of children and of one adult man who was buried, strangely, standing upright. One of the oldest cemeteries in Europe has recently been discovered, with graves dating back almost 8,500 years. Two of the most intriguing finds are the skeleton of a six-month-old child and a mysterious upright burial of a man in his early 20s. The German cemetery, called Gross Fredenwalde after a nearby village, belongs to a time known as the Mesolithic, when Europe was populated by hunter-gatherers. At a press conference Thursday morning in Berlin, excavators announced that nine skeletons...

The remains of hazelnuts eaten by some of Skye's earliest inhabitants were found at a dig on the island, archaeologists have revealed. Hazelnuts were a favourite snack of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, according to archaeologists at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). The shells found at an excavation above Staffin Bay could be 8,000-years-old. UHI carried out the dig along with Staffin Community Trust, school children and volunteers. Dan Lee, lifelong learning and outreach archaeologist at UHI, said: "We have found lots of fragments of charred hazelnut shells in the lower soil samples. "They are the ideal thing to date...

A genetic study of snails, combined with other factors, suggests a migration of Mesolithic peoples from the Pyrenees to Ireland. A recent study of the mitochondrial DNA of the Cepaea nemoralis land snail, a snail curiously common only between Ireland and the Pyrenees region of Southern France, has led researchers to conclude the possibility that ancient Mesolithic people carried the fauna with them in a migration from the French region to Ireland about 8,000 years ago. This correlates with studies of human genetics and the colonization of Ireland, according to the research* published June 19 in the open access journal...

Underwater archaeologists are taking to Loch Tay to try to uncover more about a submerged prehistoric woodland. The stumps of about 50 trees were discovered in 2005 - some of them are thought to be about 6,000 years old. The experts are now aiming to find their root system and establish the depth to which the trees are buried. Meanwhile, a campaign has been launched to help restore the reconstructed crannog, an ancient loch dwelling, which attracts thousands of visitors. The Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology will spend the next two weeks inspecting the drowned forest. They will be focusing...

Southeastern Norway is the most populous part of Norway today. Based on an analysis of more than 150 settlements along Oslo Fjord, the area apparently also appealed to Stone Age people. Eleven thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age, Norway was buried under a thick layer of ice. But it didn't take long for folks to wander their way north as the ice sheet melted away. The first traces of human habitation in Norway date from roughly 9500 BC. Steinar Solheim is an archaeologist at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History who has worked...

The site of what is now Rotterdam's Yangtzehaven was inhabited by humans in the Middle Stone Age. At a depth of 20 metres, in the sea bed, unique underwater archaeological investigation found traces of bone, flint and charcoal from around 7000 BC. These finds are the very first scientific proof that humans lived at this spot in the Early and Middle Stone Age. Up to now, very little was known about this period in particular, the Early and Middle Mesolithic, so far to the west of the Netherlands... Some 9000 years ago, the area where the North Sea and the...

Excavations of a Mesolithic site on Skye could give new insights into the lives of some of the island's earliest residents. Archaeologists believe the location above Staffin Bay has the remains of a house that could be 8,000 years old. Mesolithic flints have previously been found in an area of eroded grazing land near the site. Archaeologists will work with Staffin Community Trust and volunteers in making small excavations. The University of the Highlands and Islands' Archaeology Institute will lead the investigation. Archaeologist Dan Lee said the dig at the site of "important prehistoric occupation" had "huge potential". Staffin Community...

'Scientists are set to reveal the secrets of Doggerland, an ancient landscape that was wiped out by a tsunami about 8,200 years ago, then fully submerged by rising sea levels following the end of the last Ice Age. Archaeologists, biologists and computer scientists will digitally reconstruct the prehistoric country following a €2.5m (£1.8m, $2.7m) advanced research grant from the European Research Council. Scientists expect to learn how it developed over 5,000 years, revealing clues as to how people living there moved from hunter-gatherer lifestyles into farming.'

As they map Germany's changing coastline, members of a research team called SINCOS are learning about settlements that were covered by water 6000 to 8000 years ago On a warm afternoon in September, archaeologist Harald Lübke looked out from the pilot house of the Goor, a bright red dive boat moored 200 meters off Germany's Baltic seacoast. Three meters below the water's glassy surface, divers in bulky drysuits were excavating a prehistoric hunting camp. A deafening motor mounted on the Goor's deck powered a pressure pump, which they were using to suck sediment from the sea bottom into mesh bags....

Early farming began in the Near East about 10,500 years ago. Farming first reached the Balkans in Europe some 8 to 9,000 years ago, and then crept westward. Locals in Britain, separated from the mainland by the relatively newly formed English Channel, did not start farming until about 6,000 years ago. But an analysis of sediment from a submerged British archaeological site called Bouldner Cliff found something unexpected. “Amongst our Bouldner Cliff samples we found ancient DNA evidence of wheat at the site, which was not seen in mainland Britain for another 2,000 years.” Robin Allaby of the University of...

Nature experts have discovered a remarkable submerged forest thousands of years old under the sea close to the Norfolk coast. The trees were part of an area known as 'Doggerland' which formed part of a much bigger area before it was flooded by the North Sea. It was once so vast that hunter-gatherers who lived in the vicinity could have walked to Germany across its land mass.

The mysterious end of Essex man Archaeologists now believe two groups of early humans fought for dominance in ancient Britain - and the axe-wielders won Robin McKie, science editor Sunday January 23, 2005 The Observer Divisions in British culture may be deeper than we thought. Scientists have discovered startling evidence that suggests different species of early humans may have fought to settle within our shores almost half a million years ago. They have found that two different groups - one wielding hand-axes, the other using Stone Age Stanley knives to slash and kill - could have been rivals for control...

Earliest British cemetery dated A cave in the Mendip Hills in southwest England has been revealed as the earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain. The age of the cemetery makes it an important European site The site at Aveline's Hole, near Burrington Combe, contained human bone fragments that have now been confirmed to be between roughly 10,200 and 10,400 years old. The specimens - representing about 21 individuals - were originally removed from the cave in the early years of the 20th Century and were held in a museum in Bristol. There, the collection was largely destroyed in a World...

Maeve Kennedy Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian A narrow cave in a gorge in Somerset has been identified as the oldest cemetery in Britain, used by generations of people from one area in the Mendips just after the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Scientific tests, released yesterday, showed it had been sealed and abandoned more than 6,000 years before the first stone of the pyramids of Egypt was laid. The site, Aveline's Hole, is unique in Britain and earlier than anything similar on mainland Europe. According to legend it was found in 1797 by two boys so determined...