Storegga *

Storegga submarine slides are enormous underwater movements of glacial sedimentary deposits that were only recently identified. While many of these occurred following the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age some more recent movements have also been identified^(j)*. Either earthquakes or the decomposition of gas hydrates is their most likely cause. As many as three storegga have been identified that occurred off the west coast of Norway around 6000-5000 BC^(a).  The combined volume of material involved in the last two events has been calculated at 1700 cubic kilometres. As a consequence, gigantic tsunamis were generated which flooded a number of landmasses including Scotland.

Ulf Erlingsson suggests that one of these events, around 6100 BC, may have been responsible for the final submergence of the Dogger Bank in the North Sea, creating the impassable muddy shoals mentioned by Plato. This idea, if you’ll forgive the pun, does not hold water, as Plato clearly says that the muddy shoals were still a maritime hazard nearly 6,000 years later when sea levels had risen considerably and could no longer present a navigational barrier.

The dating of these events is discussed by Bernhard Weninger and his associates in a 2008 paper available online^(b).

Knut Rydgren and Stein Bondevik of Norway’s Sogn og Fjordane University have concluded that the flooding of Doggerland as a result of the Storegga event took place at the end of autumn^(g).

The evidence to date suggests that the flooding of the Black Sea coincided with a storegga event, which would require a catastrophe on a scale not previously considered. In a 2017 paper^(e), John M. Jensen offers additional evidence to support this contention.

In 2014, Dr Jon Hill revealed^(d) the results of a study of the impact of the 6,200 BC Storegga on the low-lying Doggerland stating that “We were the first ever group to model the Storegga tsunami with Doggerland in place. Previous studies have used modern bathymetry (ocean depth).” The study was commented on further by Axel Bojanowski in Der Spiegel with an English translation on the de Grazia website^(f). The scale of the landslide is graphically described there.

Yurii Mosenkis endorses this date proposing that it lay between 6225 BC and 6170 BC^(h). Further support for the 6200 BC date can be read in a 2008 paper⁽ⁱ⁾.

In 2015 the UK’s Daily Mail offered further details^(c) gleaned from articles in the respected journals Geology and Science Nordic.

A paper published in 2020 by Alaister Dawson et al of Dundee University^(l) refers to the studies in the Shetland Isles which indicate that the Storegga Slide tsunami run-up deposits have been identified between 8.1 and 11.8 metres above present sea levels. They add “It should be noted that the position of relative sea level ca 8 ka cited here as 20 m may have been as low as ca 30 m.”  This suggests a tsunami of between 30 and 40 metres, which must have been a terrifying spectacle. This paper should be read in conjunction with an earlier paper^(k) by Dawson.

^(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide

^(b) https://www.academia.edu/437214/The_Catastrophic_Final_Flooding_of_Doggerland_by_the_Storegga_Slide_Tsunami 

^(c) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3317451/Tsunami-devastated-Europe-8-150-years-ago-Huge-waves-swept-hundreds-miles-North-Sea-Ice-Age.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

^(d) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27224243

^(e) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2017&id=505

^(f) <tsunami submerged doggerland mesolithic paradise under north sea> (archive.org) *

^(g) https://www.q-mag.org/moss-betrays-the-season-of-the-storegga-event.html

^(h) (99+) HIGH PRECISION ASTRONOMICAL CHRONOLOGY OF ENEOLITHIC-BRONZE GREECE | iurii mosenkis – Academia.edu 

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228667700_The_catastrophic_final_flooding_of_Doggerland_by_the_Storegga_Slide_tsunami

^(j) shetland Tsunami hazards (archive.org) 

^(k) (PDF) The Storegga Slides: Evidence from eastern Scotland for a possible tsunami (researchgate.net)_

^(l) https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/38766820/Dawson_et_al_2019_Sedimentology.pdf