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Quaternary Addendum

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  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle  29/29 Blog Title:- Quaternary Addendum  " Archaeology in the North Sea " is intended to demonstrate that a spine of land connected Dogger Bank to a location in the northern North Sea that was accessible to Mesolithic people 10,000 years ago when sea-level was 50m below present. " Walkable Land in the North Sea " defines an area of land that would have been available for hunting, foraging, and transit for Neolithic people.  Here, I relate the geology of the North Sea to demonstrate that in a period between 60,000BP and 30,000BP,  a time in which an ice age is thought to have weighed heavily upon Britain,  in fact , although it was a bit chilly there were significant numbers of animals,  plants and people roaming the territory. The sequence of events that created the undersea landscape of the North Sea is roughly as follows :- Initially, in the last interglacial, 140,000 BP to 120,000BP, the North Sea may have been a r...
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Pentland Firth

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  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 5/29 Blog Title:- The Pentland Firth  The Pentland Firth is the channel of water that separates the Orkney archipelago from Caithness,  the northern most county of Scotland. It is deep, wide, and famously dangerous to cross,  even with modern boats and navigation systems. From the ferry crossing from Caithness to South Ronaldsay interesting surface phenomena indicate what is happening beneath the hull of the boat. Flat shiny areas of water commonly suggest an upwelling mix of currents , while whirlpools imply water being drawn down into the murky deeps.   "The Pentland Firth’s eastern approach hosts intricate sediment transport pathways. Time-averaging the modelled flow field revealed the recirculatory nature of the residual flow also reflected by the inferred sediment transport field identified via timeseries bathymetric analysis.  The Pentland Firth (PF), located between mainland Scotland and Orkney, is an area of the UK...
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Ice-sheet Britain

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  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle  28/29 Blog Title:- Ice-sheet Britain  This is an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of how the topography of Britain was created by the presence of thick ice-sheets on its surface through multiple cold periods, over many millions of years.  Understanding the geological processes of recent prehistory maps out where land may have existed; land which is now completely absent. This might suggest how people,  plants, trees, and animals may have been able to migrate across to Britain from continental Europe.  The map above  is a topographic rendering of the land surface of Britain.  It demonstrates that the group of islands that make up the British Isles are adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, at their northwestern approach. Significant features in the topography are the mountains of Scotland, Northern England, Wales,  Cornwall,  and Ireland. These mountains are sliced by valleys, and some locations...
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