The moment Britain became an island (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Megan Lane
BBC News Magazine

Ancient Britain was a peninsula until a tsunami flooded its land-links to Europe some 8,000 years ago. Did that wave help shape the national character?

The coastline and landscape of what would become modern Britain began to emerge at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago.

What had been a cold, dry tundra on the north-western edge of Europe grew warmer and wetter as the ice caps melted. The Irish Sea, North Sea and the Channel were all dry land, albeit land slowly being submerged as sea levels rose.

But it wasn't until 6,100BC that Britain broke free of mainland Europe for good, during the Mesolithic period - the Middle Stone Age.

It is thought a landslide in Norway triggered one of the biggest tsunamis ever recorded on Earth, when a landlocked sea in the Norwegian trench burst its banks.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12244964

[aquart]

1. Cool.

[MBS]

2. Wow.

How did I not know all this time that this was such a recent event?!

[Thor_MN]

3. 6100 BCE? wouldn't that make it 2000 years older than the earth?

and the universe and everything?

[Kaleva]

4. Behind every cataclysmic event; there is a Norwegian of ill repute.

[dimbear]

5. Sceptical? Check this out..........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/18/geography.geology


Is the OP talking about ice bridges finally melting?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. No, the OP is about the flooding of the low-lying area between East Anglia

and, roughly, the northern Netherlands, called 'Doggerland' (now the Dogger Bank, underwater).

The formation of the English Channel, especially the Straits of Dover, which you link to, was earlier, and was caused by a freshwater lake bursting through the chalk formation that had linked Kent and France.

The OP is about the end of the last Ice Age - the Rhine (plus Thames) flowed into an estuary, and south through the Straits of Dover, but there was low-lying land the the north of that. This was gradually disappearing as sea levels rose from the retreat of the ice caps, but there was a sudden tsunami caused by landslides in Norway that flooded the coasts of the North Sea, including the north of Doggerland, and they think this was what finally broken the land bridge between Britain and the continent.

[dimbear]

7. Thanks for that.

Remarkable situation, but then again they tell me the land around here (NorCal) is a broken off part of Australia, so weirdness abounds.