00:00Around 8,200 years ago, there was a massive population decline in Northern Europe.
00:09Experts have long wondered whether a change in climate caused a decrease in the number of
00:13humans in the area, or if it was some other catastrophe. And now they might finally have
00:18an answer. Around the same time as the population drop, there was a giant underwater landslide
00:23that occurred just off the coast of Norway. This caused a massive tsunami, and now researchers
00:27have built a computer simulation to see just how cataclysmic it was. The results indicate that
00:32tsunami waves could have reached upwards of 65 feet tall at their peak around Scotland,
00:37with 10 to 20 foot tall waves hitting a much larger area. We can see the signs of these
00:41massive waves by looking at sedimentary data that has already been collected from all over
00:45Northern Europe. What's more, ahead of a tsunami, the sea recedes considerably. Experts posit this
00:50may have drawn the Mesolithic peoples to collect shellfish from the revealed seafloor. And then,
00:55when the tsunami came in later, it may have drowned a significantly higher number of them
00:59than it would have otherwise. Recent data also reveals that a tsunami struck the Shetland coast
01:045,000 and 1,500 years ago, meaning the risk of another one is far more serious than experts
01:11as previously predicted.
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