Pure Speculation

In prehistoric times what are now the British Isles was the western tip of the European peninsular. Go back far enough and the Americas were part of one vast land mass before they split off and moved away. Men and animals could roam at will throughout the area. Then it is reckoned that about 6000 years ago the North Sea and Channel were formed bringing about the present separation which allowed the population to develop in relative isolation.

The question that occurs to me is this. Was it a sudden catastrophic inundation or was it a slower process? The latter seems to me to be more likely. For one thing the people of what is now Holland had time to erect their dyke defences. For another the sea is now encroaching on the East coast of Britain at a measurable rate. It is reported that part of the long term problem with the Thames Barrier is that the East Coast and London are sinking in relation to sea level. For another we have the surviving Fenland of East Anglia and some knowledge of its history. Finally there is the Bronze Age boat, carbon dated to be 3550 years old, found and preserved at Dover.

What seems to me to be most likely is that the land where the North Sea now is slowly sank. A number of great rivers, notably the Rhine and the Elbe along with many smaller ones, drain into the North Sea. Their contact with the ocean must have been far from where it now is. As the ground level sank the vast volume of water which the rivers carried would have spilled over the land, creating perhaps an archipelago or delta in which the ratio of land to water gradually decreased, to become swamp before the sea took over.

It would not have needed more than a tiny shift in the East West inclination of the Eurasian tectonic plate, on which Europe and Asia stand, to allow the ocean to encroach upon land which was already low lying. That may have been how the North Sea the Baltic and the Mediterranean came into being.

This is where the boat comes in. The large part of the boat found is about 40 feet long, 6 feet 6 inches wide and flat bottomed. It has a lot in common with a punt on a much larger and heavier scale. It is not to my mind a sea going boat although one must take into account the limits of knowledge and techniques of the time. It would be ideal for crossing the type of terrain I have described. It could be slid over mud banks; it could be rollered across open ground; it might even have been carried although it would have been heavy.

The most interesting part of all this for me is the people who would have been few in number by modern standards. Whilst it was still possible they would have wanted to maintain contact for family reasons, for exchange of goods etc, possibly using such boats as I have described. They would have been blood related; they would have shared a language; they would not have been mutually hostile. Even today East coast towns like Newcastle, Hull, Kings Lynn, Harwich and Ipswich have historic links with the opposite shore.

More than that genetic studies carried out in London University have shown biological links across the North Sea which are usually ascribed to immigration in recorded history. They could go much further back than that.

One of the mysteries of modern archaeology is that whilst history indicates population replacement by continental invasion modern archaeology shows nothing but continuity. Ordinary folk seem to have got on with their lives without disturbance, which suggests that there was no threat, no foreign invasion.

Kinship may have been the key. There could have been no sense of community beyond the immediate surroundings; maybe no further than the extended family. There was no concept of nationhood, no ambitions of remote Kings and very little intercommunication. All these things developed later.

At the time of Caesar's expeditions into southern Britain the people on both sides of the Channel were Belgae and conscious of a blood relationship. This may have resulted in collusion when, trouble in Gaul behind him, gave Caesar a pretext to abort his adventures which were not going all that well anyway.

At a much later date the Frankish King of the Parisi gave his Roman Catholic daughter Bertha to the allegedly ‘pagan' King of Kent, Aethelbert, who just happened to have a Frankish name and in whose case the word ‘pagan' could have meant no more than that he was not a Roman Catholic. In his capital Canterbury there stood the Christian Church of St Martin, then almost 200 years old. This was the building made available to St Augustine and his retinue in AD 597 by that same Aethelbert. There was a relationship of some sort.

If the people of the Danelaw had no problem with Danish rule it may be that kinship was the key. Further south people may have had no problem with the Anglo Saxon regime for similar reasons. In neither case would they have been in any position to do anything about it had they wished. It could be that the Danes and the Anglo Saxons were an élite overlay just as the Normans became after them.

It just so happened that Alfred, the Anglo Saxon, came out on top and that could account for the language shift especially as Alfred was a writer, translator and educator. That at present lacks an accepted explanation.

There is another factor in play. The islands were very lightly populated. Even today in the area I come from, more or less on the banks of the River Don which was a route into the interior, the area is scattered with place names ending in "by" and they are still separated by miles of open country. Inland from the sea outlet at the Humber there is the small town of Thorne which was an inland port before the coming of the railways. Three miles upstream there is the smaller place of Stainforth. Three miles away again is an even smaller place, Barnby Dun. Four miles away is Doncaster, then Rotherham, then Sheffield. Although these last three are now 2 major towns and one city they are still separated by miles of open country. In origin all of these places could have been no more than single homesteads or family groups.

Much of what I have been discussing is relatively recent. The age of the Bronze Age boat in Dover is the marker. There are millennia of which we have no record beyond what is found and speculated about by archaeologists.

Returning to the record it must not be forgotten that from the time of the Roman departure in 410AD Christianity was present and had been for something like three centuries. St Martin's in Canterbury was built about 400AD. By then the Roman ban had gone. Emperor Constantine had paved the way for Christianity to become the established religion of the Roman Empire. It was no longer a secret thing persecuted by the authorities.

The Romans had introduced Law and the idea of the all powerful state. The Church (in Rome) carried on the idea of organisation and central authority. In Britain the extent of religious influence is indicated by the great monastic institutions at Glastonbury and Whitby.

Christianity as it came to Britain directly by sea from the Eastern Mediterranean in its purest and unadulterated form was a philosophy of sweetness and light. The ten commandments were a pattern for harmonious living together. The whole concept would have been very attractive to simple folk, offering as it did a blissful further life in exchange for obeying a rule amongst the difficulties and danger of the present.

In that form, and to the extent that it has been continued, undoubtedly Christianity has been a civilising force. It was only later that the Church became a tyranny, and now for very many almost irrelevant.

If there is anything at all in these musings the history of early Britain, the so-called Dark Ages, needs to be looked at again very carefully. I suspect that they will be found to have been not so dark after all.

ADDENDUM

As if to highlight what I have written the Environment Agency has, in recent days, brought forward its concerns about East Coast erosion. The truth is that the British Isles are listing to the East. They are not about to capsize. It may be no more than a continuation of the process which created the North Sea. The consequence is that low lying land on the East Coast is at risk. The Environment Agency has said that parts of Norfolk may have to be abandoned to the sea and that the salination of the Norfolk Broads may be unavoidable.

I see this as defeatism. Eight millenia ago the people of the Netherlands refused to accept a similar situation and successfully kept the sea at bay by building dykes. Not only that but during the 20th century they reclaimed land from the sea by building dykes and draining part of the Zuider Zee.

The problem facing the British Isles is not a temporary one. As the tilt develops more and more land will be threatened. How far will it be allowed to go before defensive action is taken? In the medium term the effectiveness of the Thames Barrier protecting London from flooding will be called into question.

In Britain there are vast quantities of spoil around a multitude of abandoned mines. The construction industry constantly produces volumes of hard core as it demolishes outdated structures. All this material could be used to create barriers against the sea. There is another hard core to be taken into account in the form of a large number of long term unemployed and unemployable who could be required to involve themselves in this work.

The area where I was born in South Yorkshire, towards the Lincolnshire border, was somewhat waterlogged in centuries past. Hatfield Chase and Thorne levels were great places for eel fishing. In the 17th century a Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, was brought in to advise on drainage. The works which he instituted created some of the most valuable agricultural land. Dutch engineers could advise on dyke construction.

In the first instance no doubt these barriers would not be pretty but as happened with the mine tips, over time, they can be landscaped. Eventually they would take on the appearance of natural features.

The elevation of the land necessary to eliminate the immediate danger is not great. Surely such a project should take precedence over pouring billions into the pockets of dubious African politicians or even of an equally dubious European Union.