I am reading this book because I learned that a human landmass lies submerged at the bottom of the North Sea.

I am reading this book because I learned that a human landmass lies submerged at the bottom of the North Sea.

I read a story like this.

https://wired.jp/?p=666045 Doggerland, the land submerged in the North Sea, may have nurtured humanity in its Ice Age forests.

It is a story about a landmass once called "Doggerland" that existed on the seabed of the North Sea.

Until about 8,000 years ago, the North Sea was not entirely ocean. A vast expanse of land stretched between what is now Great Britain and the European continent. There were forests there, rivers flowed, animals lived, and humans existed.

As the Ice Age ended, the climate warmed and sea levels rose. That land slowly sank to the bottom of the water.

The topography of that land still remains on the seabed of the North Sea today.

The memory of a slowly sinking land

What did the people living there 8,000 years ago feel?

It did not sink within a single generation. Over a span of hundreds or thousands of years, the sea gradually encroached upon the land. A hill that a grandfather played on as a child would be underwater by the time his grandchildren were born.

In what form was that experience passed down to future generations?

There are "Great Flood" myths all over the world. Noah's Ark. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Mayan mythology. Japanese mythology also has stories of floods. Why do so many cultures have stories of water swallowing the world?

For a long time, these were treated as "myths." Symbolic stories. Metaphors.

But the existence of Doggerland suggests another possibility. Perhaps the myths of the Great Flood are the result of memories of actual submergence experienced by humanity, passed down through thousands of years.

What was thought to be a metaphor was actually a fact

Reading this made me feel a bit strange.

The view that "myths are metaphors" and the view that "myths are memories." These two have long been in conflict.

But the existence of a place like Doggerland blurs that boundary. People actually experienced the rising water, that experience was passed down, and eventually, it took the form of a myth that "the world was submerged in water." If there is such a continuity between fact and myth,

I feel the question of "what is a myth" changes once again.

That is why I am going to buy this book.

"When the Great Flood Becomes Myth: A 5,000-Year Intellectual History of Humanity and Floods" (Kawade Books)

This book traverses mythology, geology, and archaeology to pursue the question of "why are flood myths found all over the world?" The table of contents includes a chapter titled "The Ice Age and the Great Flood," which felt directly connected to stories like Doggerland, making me want to pick it up.

It seems this book does not aim to answer the question of "did Noah's flood actually happen?" but rather asks "why has humanity dreamed of being swallowed by water in so many cultures?"

I wanted to read it on the same day I read about the land that still lies at the bottom of the North Sea.

It is said that traces of forests still remain at the bottom of the North Sea.

It did not sink; it is under the water.

I feel that the difference between those two things says something important.

Reference article

https://wired.jp/?p=666045 The land submerged in the North Sea, "Doggerland," may have nurtured humanity in its Ice Age forests