Drowned Dogger: American Future

If you have an interest in ancient history, or our own short term future, check out the following article on The Guardian, Reconstruction’ begins of stone age lands lost to North Sea by Nazia Parveen. In it, Parveen looks at how today’s scientists are exploring and reconstructing the lost country of Doggerland.

Doggerland is the term given to a stretch of drowned land now under the North Sea. However, just 6000 years ago, during the last ice age when more of the world’s water was contained in ice caps, it was a green and flourishing place of gentle plains and low, rolling hills. It was also inhabited. Human beings occupied the area, hunting and gathering, probably farming and raising livestock too, and doubtlessly building towns and other settlements. We’ll never know just how sophisticated those people were, but they surely had a civilization or many civilizations that were at least as successful and complicated as were cultures anywhere in Europe (or even the world) at the time. Who knows? There may have even been cities or proto-cities that would have rivaled those of the ancient Sumerians.

But, then, the waters rose, and Doggerland drowned, its people died or migrated to drier lands in what is today Britain, France, and the Low Countries. It probably wasn’t a happy transition. Doggerland had been considerably more comfortable and productive, probably, than the uplands of Europe. In fact, there has been some speculation that stories of perfect fairylands, like Avalon in the King Arthur tales, are in fact distant memories of the happier life found in Doggerland.

The only thing left of Doggerland, now, is the Dogger Bank, a sandbank in the North Sea named after Dutch fishing boats (a.k.a, “doggers”) that used to frequent the place. So, you might well ask, what does Doggerland have to do with the liberal resistance and Donald tRump?

The answer: the stone age inhabitants of Doggerland were without ecological sin. They did not cause the flooding of their homelands. They were simple victims. We, however, aren’t so innocent. The melting of the ice caps, and the resulting flooding of low lying areas, is the fault of our carbon-belching industrial civilization. And we could stop that flooding anytime we like. All it takes is a little will, a little capital, and the courage to face the facts head on.

Ah, but there’s the rub…

With Trump and Fox News and Climate Change Denialists in charge of the country and our environmental policy, there is no way that’s going to happen.

So here’s to New York City, New Orleans, Miami, Savannah, Boston, and most of the Eastern Seaboard. It’s been good to know you.

But soon you’ll be gone…the victim of Donald tRump, the Koch Brothers, and millions of Deplorables.

The genuine authors of the Flood, with all its attendant terrors.