The Doggerland archaeological conspiracy

Since the late 19^th Century there have been many discoveries of stone age artefacts and animal remains from the sea floor of the Southern North Sea between England and Northern Europe, often caught by fishermen drag netting in the area off the coast of East Anglia where the water is surprising shallow. Through the second World War and the development of sonar, underwater exploration and submarine technology there was an increasing interest in this region as the depth of water made submarine incursion of shipping routes much more challenging. Post war, work was carried out based on the undersea measurements taken during the war to establish why there was evidence of habitation in a region that appeared to have been under the sea for a very long time. The official explanation is that this area had been above sea level as recently as 15,000 years ago during the last ice age, when sheet ice from the north had blocked ingress by the Northern seas and left the area from England right across to Europe exposed as a large flat fertile valley criss-crossed by rivers and populated by Mesolithic megafauna such as Mammoths, Aurochs and Sabre Toothed Cats. The area was also a hunting ground for Mesolithic hunter gatherer tribes taking advantage of the ease of movement provided by having no barrier between England and Europe.

So far, so good, the evidence as it is presented appears reasonably sound, and there is a current ongoing archaeological study being conducted by St Andrews University in Scotland, part of a fifteen year project to establish exactly what was happening in this area and how the area came to be submerged at the end of the ice age and how this affected populations both in England and in Mainland Europe. The conspiracy comes in some rather unusual finds that are so far being kept from the general public, and indeed from fellow academics and archaeological journals and publications. Over the last five years there have been significant quantities of finds brought up from the sea bed and sent for analysis and preservation to the research facilities at the Natural History Museum in London and the facilities at the University of East Anglia. However there have also been a number of consignments of finds sent directly to facilities outside Inverness in Scotland and to a former World War II coastal fort located ten miles offshore East of Lowestoft. These finds, unlike those sent to the museums, have not as yet been reported, or catalogued with the other finds.

Based on descriptions leaking out these special finds fall into two tremendously interesting categories and are causing a lot of consternation amongst both historians and archaeologists. The first group is based around transport. Bearing in mind this region has been under water for 15,000 years we would expect transport technology to be very limited but instead it appears that there is evidence of wheeled chariot type vehicles, though previously to be at most 6,000 years old, and of complex multi-hulled sailing vessels that shouldn't be in evidence before 4,000 years ago. When they were first discovered it was assumed that these ships were later wrecks that were located by coincidence rather than being far earlier than thought, but this idea was scotched by the finds in the ships holds, the final reason for hiding this evidence. What the holds were found to contain were ingots of bronze, silver, gold and most surprisingly iron, but the form of the ingots and the purity of the metals is such that it can't be match to anything earlier than 200 years ago, a date that is completely impossible given the location and the vessels they are found in. The mystery continues, but it appears that there may be an awful lot of re-writing of mans early development yet to be done.