Doggerland, a history: Part I (draft)
From
: "Ran's Home: Doggerland, A History,"
by Herr Doktor Professor Karl-Gustav von Schmetterling,
Chair of North Sea Studies, University of Heidelberg
…Doggerland became a true island sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 BC as the rising waters of the North Sea finally severed its long-standing land ties to Great Britain and to Continental Europe…Its basal Mesolithic population thus became isolated…We cannot at this time say definitely whether the first “Doggers” (forgive this barbarous Anglocism) were West Mediterranean stock or early Indo-Europeans, although my personal preference is for the latter…
…Archeological digs suggest that Doggerland went through its own sub-neolithic stage of development rather quickly…Certainly, by 4,000 BC, the island was fully Neolithic and clearly Indo-European in ethnos…Well-made fishing boats uncovered in chieftain graves on Doggerland dating back to this period illustrate the importance of fishing even at this early date…Agriculture was practiced, as evidenced by pottery shards and other crude implements… However, its utility was limited by Doggerland’s relatively poor post- glacial soil…
…By the end of the third millennium BC, Doggerland could be confidently identified as proto-Celtic…available evidence does not allow us to determine the strength of trade ties with Britain and the mainland at this time, although the very fact of those ties cannot be disputed…
…After 1800 BC or so, copper and bronze artifacts appear on Doggerland, as well as British tin and other items of probable British manufacture…Amber from the Baltic and grave goods of probable Scandinavian provenance have also been dated to roughly this period…
…After 1000 BC, Phoenician trade goods begin to appear in Doggerland digs…suggesting the island was now part of greater trade routes across Central and Northern Europe that led back to the advanced societies of the Mediterranean and the Middle East…
…the first iron tools and weapons on Doggerland have been dated back to around 500 BC…archeological evidence suggests a purely Celtic ethnos at this time…
…La Tene Gauls settled Doggerland in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, and form the dominant cultural and linguistic stratum after this time…the first evidence of Germanic (specifically proto-Frisian) settlements and trade goods in Doggerland also date back to this undoubtedly turbulent period…The first recorded mention in classical texts in fact comes in a 4th century BC Greek history that briefly mentions a war between what must be Gauls and their enemies (early Frisians?) on an island in the far north…most likely to be Doggerland...
… Greek, Phoenician, Roman, and Carthaginian trade goods are found on Doggerland in digs dating back to the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd centuries BC...The Mediterranean world was by now aware of its existence, but appeared to discount it as “a poor island of the mists lost in the northern seas,” in Herodotus’ cutting phrase…
…In the first century BC, there is strong evidence to suggest robust commercial and political contacts between Doggerland and the Belgae tribal confederation in northern Gaul…
…Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the mid-1st century BC brought the Roman world to the borders of Doggerland…Roman trade goods and money are thick on the ground in Doggerland digs of the period…
…Roman conquest of Doggerland was, like so many other Roman campaigns, quick and efficient…No more than one or two legions at most appear to have been used by Domitian to seize the island in the late first century AD…Most historians ascribe Rome’s conquest of Doggerland as part of a larger strategy of seizing defensive glacis against the wild Celtic and Germanic tribes north and east of the Empire…However, I would argue that Doggerland's growing strategic maritime import would not have escaped Domitian's attention as well...Roman Doggerland was placed , interestingly enough, under the authority of the governor of Roman Britain, most likely a testament to the relative poverty and isolation of the island in Roman times…
