New images of the North Sea floor have revealed a landscape that was once criss-crossed by river valleys and dotted with freshwater lakes and rounded hills, described by one archaeologist as “the best-preserved prehistoric landscape, certainly in the whole of Europe and possibly the world.”

The team of archaeologists from the University of Birmingham recreated the landscape by piecing together three-dimensional seismic records collected during the past two years by oil-prospecting vessels across a 23,000-square-kilometre area. Based on the findings, the scientists have suggested that the North Sea floor would once have supported a wealth of fauna and flora, making it an ideal home for hunter-gatherers – rather than just a bridge between northern Europe and Great Britain,as was previously thought.

“This was probably a heartland of population at the time,” said Professor Vince Gaffney, director of the university’s Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity.In a scenario that bears some resemblance to the current predicted threat from global warming, the area was, said Gaffney, inundated between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago in a relatively short space of time due to a warming climate. “The area we have mapped was wiped out in the space of 4,000 years,” he said.

June 2007