Idea for May 2024: Doggerland

My idea of the month is Doggerland. I’ve only just come across it, and it’s an exciting thought: it’s a landmass that once connected Britain to continental Europe.

Currently submerged under the North Sea, it was once a stretch of inhabited land. We know this because in 1931, a trawler off the coast at Cromer hauled up an antler, possibly used as a harpoon between 8000 and 12,000 years ago: the first sign that humans lived here.

In the 1990s archaeologist Bryony Cole invented the name Doggerland - after the Dogger Bank, famous from the BBC radio shipping forecast. And there’s now a big international archaelogical investigation of the area.

It’s a nice physical manifestation of all the cultural things that make Britain and Europe indivisible.