Six minutes on… Doggerland: When Britain Wasn't an Island

Ten thousand years ago you could walk from Norfolk to the Netherlands. This is the story of Doggerland, the lost country under the North Sea, and how it slowly drowned. In 1931 the Lowestoft trawler Colinda hauled up a lump of peat 25 miles off the Norfolk coast. Inside was a barbed hunting point carved from red-deer antler, more than 13,000 years old. Whoever lost it had been standing on dry land. At the end of the last Ice Age, sea levels were around 120 metres lower than today, and Britain was joined to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark by a vast low country of rivers, marshes and hills. Neanderthals lived there, then hunter-gatherers who left behind the oldest known art from the North Sea. Then the ice melted, the sea crept in, and the Storegga tsunami struck. This film explains what Doggerland was, who lived there, what really finished it off, the 2026 ancient-DNA discovery that it was greener than anyone thought, and why its story matters now that the sea is rising again. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Colinda point 0:29 Britain wasn't an island 0:55 The Dogger Hills 1:14 Greener than anyone thought 1:48 Neanderthals and hunter-gatherers 2:31 The sea creeps in 3:01 The Storegga tsunami 3:39 A world lost slowly 3:56 Doggerland today 4:33 What Doggerland tells us Six Minutes on... short documentaries about the things you've heard of but never quite understood. Subscribe:    / @sixminuteson   Website: https://sixminuteson.com X: @sixminuteson Bluesky: @sixminuteson.bsky.social #doggerland #history #archaeology