Every Then & Theory plate comes from a true story, and this card tells the one behind yours.

The Then & Theory team

The land under the North Sea

A hunter stands by a hut and a boat as the ice pulls back. At the end of the last Ice Age, Britain was joined to mainland Europe by a wide, low land now called Doggerland. As the ice sheets melted, the rising sea covered it. In 1931 the trawler Colinda hauled up a lump of peat from the Leman and Ower Banks, off Norfolk, with a barbed antler harpoon inside. Radiocarbon dating in 1988 showed the harpoon was older than the peat around it had suggested, from late in the Ice Age. It was given to Norwich Castle Museum in 1932.

Note. When Doggerland finally went under is still being worked out. A 2026 study found parts survived the Storegga tsunami of about 8,150 years ago and stayed dry until about 7,000 years ago.

Sources

1. Norfolk Heritage Explorer, record 11171: the Leman and Ower harpoon
2. University of Bradford (2026), on Doggerland’s forests and flooding