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Join us on a journey through time to understand the profound effects of natural disaster.
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00:02Doggerland?
00:02No, it's not a country of dogs, as you probably first thought.
00:06It's a land the size of Great Britain in the north of Europe.
00:10But don't bother trying to find it on the map of the old continent.
00:14Your search will come back empty.
00:16Doggerland hasn't existed for thousands of years.
00:19But where was it exactly?
00:21And did humans live here?
00:23Scientists are doing their best to answer these questions.
00:28Let's start with the name.
00:30In the 1990s, a British archaeologist named the area Doggerland after Dogger Bank,
00:36a sandbank some 60 miles off the east coast of England.
00:40The word probably comes from Dutch.
00:42It was used for a fishing boat with two masts.
00:46Makes sense, since today the North Sea is a rich fishing area.
00:50But thousands of years ago, people living here had a different diet.
00:54Some 12,000 years ago, the last major ice age was slowly reaching its end.
01:00Doggerland didn't feature seawater, but marshlands, lagoons, forests, and gently sloping hills.
01:08At that time, Britain and Ireland weren't islands.
01:11They sat deep inland.
01:13You could set off in Denmark and walk all the way to the north of Scotland.
01:18There was a system of rivers that emptied themselves in the North Sea.
01:22Back then, it was more of a channel that separated Doggerland from Norway.
01:26The rivers were different too.
01:28The Thames flowed into the Rhine.
01:31The ancient river they formed flowed into the place of today's English Channel and emptied itself into the Atlantic Ocean.
01:38Doggerland even featured a lake.
01:40There were some glaciers as well, but the land was still inhabitable.
01:44So, who lived there?
01:48There were communities of hunter-gatherers from the Middle Stone Age.
01:52This was the time of human history when our ancestors mastered chipped stone tools.
01:57They used these stones with sharp edges for spears and arrowheads.
02:01This came in handy at Doggerland, which was the richest hunting area in all of Europe.
02:07It could have easily been the most populated region in the northwestern part of the continent.
02:11The hunter's prey likely consisted of reindeer, mammoths, oxen, wild pigs, brown bears, wolves, and many other species.
02:20In short, nobody went hungry here.
02:25Meat wasn't the only thing on the menu.
02:28Ancient residents of Doggerland collected hazelnuts and berries.
02:32They lived in wooden huts.
02:34They built them close to rivers.
02:36And they even constructed their settlements on hills.
02:39Remember Dogger Bank?
02:41It now sits underwater.
02:43But it used to be a mountainous region.
02:46Doggerland must have been prime real estate in prehistoric times.
02:49Its total surface area was over 18,000 miles.
02:53But things were about to go under.
02:56Literally.
02:58The last ice age was ending.
03:01All the water trapped in glaciers and ice sheets started to melt.
03:05You experience this process firsthand every time you order a cold drink.
03:10Even if you drink it bottoms up.
03:12After a while, the glass is full again.
03:15Why?
03:16Because the ice cubes have melted.
03:18Think of Doggerland as that glass.
03:21The sea levels started rising quickly.
03:24Every century, the sea flooded from three to six feet of dry land.
03:28Just imagine what this would mean today.
03:31Miami's elevation is just over six feet.
03:34The city would be flooded in less than a hundred years.
03:40But there was one event that speeded things up.
03:43The Storrages slides were a series of submarine landslides in the Norwegian Sea thousands of years ago.
03:49And what happens when huge chunks of earth shift suddenly underwater?
03:54Gigantic waves.
03:55You probably know what a tsunami is.
03:58Doggerland was likely pounded by several of them.
04:01They were so powerful that researchers believe they washed away Great Britain's land bridge to the rest of the continent.
04:08All that was left of Doggerland was an island the size of whales.
04:13Scientists estimate that the waves of this ancient tsunami were at least 40 feet high.
04:21Some 6,000 years ago, Doggerlanders were on the move.
04:25They were migrating to higher grounds, England and the Netherlands in their case.
04:30The ironic part is that when we literally translate the name of the country of Netherlands into English, we get
04:37Lower Lands.
04:39But thousands of years ago, this was higher ground for hunter-gatherers escaping the flood.
04:44Once it was all over, the continent of Europe got the shape we easily recognize today.
04:50But Doggerland was nowhere to be seen.
04:53It's been sitting under the waves of the North Sea for 8,200 years.
05:00Does the idea of Doggerland remind you of a more famous case of a submerged land?
05:05The lost city of Atlantis comes straight to mind.
05:08But there is an important difference.
05:10Atlantis is only a legend.
05:12Everything we know about it comes from the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato.
05:16Scientists have been searching for Atlantis for a long time.
05:20And up to this day, they can't even agree where exactly it was.
05:25Theories range from the Mediterranean to even Antarctica.
05:29Doggerland is not a myth.
05:31Everything science knows about this lost land comes from hard evidence.
05:37In 1931, a fishing boat was doing its thing off the coast of Norfolk in England.
05:43At the time, the crew would drag a net along the sea floor, sweeping everything in its path.
05:48And they caught something more than fish.
05:51It was peat.
05:53Like the stuff we find in Alaska and in Ireland.
05:56But what was it doing at the bottom of the North Sea?
05:59It didn't belong there, because seawater destroys peat.
06:03There was only one possible explanation.
06:06The area must have been dry land at some point in history.
06:09The final proof was that the peat contained a harpoon spear point, a sure sign of human activity.
06:19The idea wasn't new, though.
06:21Since the Middle Ages, there has been talk of submerged land with underwater forests.
06:27In 1913, a British geologist came forward with the idea of an undersea world in this part of Europe.
06:34Scientific evidence kept piling up.
06:37Local fishermen started pulling out human-made tools and animal bones.
06:41Researchers dated them to be around 9,000 years old.
06:45But the deep, murky waters of the North Sea made it impossible to send down divers.
06:50One archaeologist noted that they knew more about the surface of the moon than what lay at the bottom of
06:56this relatively shallow sea.
07:00The discovery of oil in the area in the 1960s was a real game-changer.
07:06Companies from the industry provided seismic survey data to scientists.
07:10This helped them piece together the full image of what Doggerland used to look like.
07:15Computer models soon produced images of river valleys, coastlines, freshwater lakes and hills.
07:22There are even footprints of nomadic tribes preserved on the sea floor.
07:26Today, marine biologists are using magnetic fields to map out this lost underwater world.
07:34But Doggerland isn't the only place on Earth that went under the waves.
07:39Beringia is another lost world of global importance.
07:42This used to be a land bridge between Asia and North America.
07:46It got its name from the Bering Strait.
07:49It is 53 miles wide at its narrowest point.
07:52But until the end of the last ice age, this was dry land that our human ancestors called home.
07:58Genetic evidence shows that Native Americans lived in Beringia for some 15,000 years.
08:06If you want to imagine what this land looked like, think of present-day Arctic Alaska.
08:12It was a shrub tundra.
08:14There were also small willows and birches.
08:17Sorry, no woolly mammoths.
08:19Large grazing animals simply wouldn't have had enough food in Beringia.
08:23Though there were probably elk and bighorn sheep in the area.
08:26But the ice age wouldn't last forever.
08:29Like in Doggerland, sea levels started to rise.
08:33This happened some 13,000 years ago.
08:36It wasn't all bad news, though.
08:39Scientific evidence suggests that around this time, people started moving south.
08:43They left the slowly sinking Beringia and crossed over into Alaska.
08:48From there, they populated both Americas.
08:51These were the ancestors of Native American tribes.
08:57Around 5.3 million years ago, a crucial event reshaped the Mediterranean region.
09:03It was a colossal flood that refilled the local sea, which had been extremely barren and salty up until that
09:10point.
09:10It got the name Zanclean flood, and it forever changed the geography of the area.
09:17The Mediterranean Sea is surrounded by Europe, Africa, and Asia, and connects to the ocean by the Strait of Gibraltar.
09:24This is quite a narrow passage, measuring about eight miles.
09:27It may not be that wide, but the Strait plays a crucial role in maintaining the liquid balance between these
09:33two bodies of water.
09:35About six million years ago, a bunch of things might have caused the Mediterranean to be cut off from the
09:40Atlantic Ocean.
09:42Some say it was an ice age.
09:44Others speak of tectonic movements, like earthquakes.
09:46Whatever the cause, it pushed the Mediterranean area into a period called the Mycenaean Salinity Crisis.
09:53For about 1,000 years, the sea slowly evaporated, leaving behind a dry basin that was several miles below sea
10:01level.
10:01This crisis really changed the landscape, creating conditions similar to those found in today's Dead Sea.
10:07What this means is that the lush Mediterranean beauty used to be a super salty environment, containing nearly ten times
10:16more salt than the ocean.
10:17Say you could have visited.
10:19You would have been able to effortlessly float on the little water you could find, even if you're not a
10:25skilled swimmer.
10:26The amount of salt and that mineral content would have made it challenging for most creatures to survive.
10:31However, some hardy microorganisms, such as bacteria, could have adapted to these harsh conditions.
10:38These days, at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, we can find holes as large as the Grand Canyon,
10:44and they seem to have formed during that same period of dehydration.
10:49Evidence suggests that massive rivers, such as the Nile and the Rhone, flowed directly into the Mediterranean back then,
10:56leaving behind canyons as they reached the bottom, thousands of feet below the sea level.
11:02People had to find some sort of explanation back in the day for the drying of the Mediterranean, so they
11:08came up with myths and legends.
11:10One such tale was told by the people of Southern Iberia, in modern-day Spain and Portugal.
11:16It was also recounted by a famous Roman writer called Pliny the Elder.
11:20What this legend said was that the Mediterranean used to be cut out from the ocean until the hero Hercules,
11:26with his mighty sword, carved a path.
11:28He did so between a fictional location in modern-day Africa and the Rock of Gibraltar.
11:34This allowed the ocean waters to flow in, transforming the Mediterranean into what we know today.
11:41Some fossils also seemed to confirm the unusually large flood.
11:46Remains of marine organisms were found in layers high above current sea levels.
11:51This means the areas were once submerged underwater.
11:55These fossils belonged to mollusks, fish, and marine mammals.
11:59Because of modern techniques, we now have at least an estimated timing of the Zanclin flood.
12:05Scientists used computer simulations to reconstruct the event, providing further evidence that it was real.
12:12What they also discovered is that there's a possibility the Mediterranean might change once more.
12:18The Strait of Gibraltar could close, most likely because of movements deep under the ground.
12:24This could lead to the Mediterranean becoming dry again, over a span of about a thousand years.
12:29The Mediterranean area could disappear altogether if the African continent keeps shifting north too, getting closer to Europe.
12:38Another one of those famous yet still a bit hypothetical large floods is called the Black Sea Deluge Theory.
12:45Some scientists think that around 8,400 years ago, water from the Mediterranean might have spilled over into the Black
12:53Sea through a narrow passage called the Bosporus Strait.
12:56This could have caused a massive disaster, forcing people living near the Black Sea to pack up their things and
13:03move further inside the continent, in both Europe and Asia.
13:07Along with them, they might have carried stories about this colossal flood.
13:11The specialists that came up with this idea also suggested that these migrating people might have brought along new ways
13:18of farming.
13:19Not everyone from the scientific community is convinced though.
13:23Some argue that while there might have been a flood, it likely happened earlier and was way smaller.
13:28They didn't think this flood could have caused, for example, the story of Noah's Ark.
13:33In this legend, a spiritual man was warned by a higher entity that a giant flood was on its way.
13:39The man went to gather pairs of animals and pack them all in a boat, to make sure these species
13:44would survive the devastating flood.
13:46There was also the concern among scholars that discussing real floods and ancient stories too much might blur the lines
13:53between science and fiction.
13:55There may be other reasons why these flood stories are so often found across different cultures all over our planet.
14:01One idea is that floods were incredibly destructive for early farmers, so they invented myths about them signaling the end
14:09of the world.
14:10Another idea is that people stumbled upon ancient sea creature fossils in unusual places, leading them to believe there was
14:18a significant flood in the past.
14:20The solution to future floods, though, might be floating cities.
14:25As sea levels continue to rise, coastal cities like Amsterdam, New Orleans, and Venice may go under.
14:31So, floating infrastructure may be the way to go, with buildings that can rise with the water levels, making them
14:38able to resist extreme weather too.
14:40Countries like the Netherlands, which have a history of managing water risks, are pioneering these floating creations.
14:47With cities running out of space for expansion, we might be forced to move on water anyway.
14:52By moving on the water, we can reduce crowding and create more interesting ways to feed ourselves, like floating gardens.
15:00These homes also come with great alternatives to our energy needs, through systems that use solar and wind power.
15:06Not to mention that these homes might turn out to be cheaper in the long run.
15:11One such floating city might pop up soon in the Maldives.
15:15Its goal is to host up to 20,000 people and will feature places to live and eat, but also
15:21shops and schools.
15:23Designed to look like coral, the region will include canals placed between some 5,000 floating pieces of land.
15:30The city will be constructed using modular units, put together in a construction site nearby.
15:35After they're completed, they'll be towed to the floating city.
15:38The next step is to secure them to a large underwater concrete hull, which is screwed tightly to the seabed
15:45on some steel stilts.
15:46All these pieces of construction let the modular units easily move as naturally as the sea.
15:52Even for those that are afraid of seasickness, there's a solution.
15:56That's what the nearby coral reef is for.
15:59It will surround the city, making a natural wave breaker.
16:03Human-made coral banks will also be placed underneath the city, which will also help coral grow naturally.
16:10The long-term goal is to make the establishment self-sufficient.
16:14It will have electricity, mostly from on-site solar power.
16:17Waste will be treated nearby and reused as plant fertilizer.
16:21Instead of air conditioning, the city will use deep-sea water cooling.
16:25This method pumps cold water from the deep sea to cool the area, saving energy.
16:31Earth is not the only planet that's seen some serious floods.
16:35In ancient times, Mars seems to have experienced them too, and they played an important role in shaping its surface.
16:42Recent research reveals that billions of years ago, Mars was heavily affected by some serious river flooding, which contributed to
16:51the formation of its valleys and canyons.
16:53The reason for these floods was heavy rainfall, which reshaped the Martian landscape in a jiffy, at times even within
17:00days or weeks.
17:01Unlike Earth, where rivers form pretty slowly, Mars experienced rapid changes because of these floods, particularly around 4 billion years
17:10ago.
17:11We've known for quite some time that there have been floods on Mars, but this study really showed us their
17:17extent.
17:17We now know they were more widespread and frequent than previously thought.
17:22We have been
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