An anthropologist warns: Beware the rising seas
The Impending Deluge
By BRIAN FAGAN, NYT
Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of the forthcoming “The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present and Future of Rising Sea Levels.”
Fifty thousand drowned, steamships aground with their bows among trees, cattle rolled head over heels by gigantic waves — stories of great sea surges from past centuries abound. Many of them cascaded ashore when coastlines were relatively stable, killing everyone in their path. Today, we live in a warming world of rising sea levels, where tens of millions of us live a few meters above the ocean. The potential for sudden cataclysm is greater than ever.
The record of history is sobering. On Jan. 16, 1362, a severe southwesterly storm swept across the British Isles. The wooden spire of Norwich cathedral in eastern England collapsed.
Hours later, the Grote Mandrenke, “The Great Killing of Men,” descended on the Low Countries at high tide. Huge waves carried everything before them. “An infinity of people perished,” fishing fleets became matchwood, entire herds of cattle and sheep perished in the raging waters. Three centuries later, in 1634, another cataclysmic storm surge brought sea levels four meters above normal to the Strand Islands off northern Germany. As many as 15,000 people and 50,000 livestock drowned.
These were but two of the savage attacks on the low-lying coasts of the North Sea, this from a patch of ocean that was largely dry land less than 8,000 years ago. The geologists call it Doggerland, a sunken landscape that once formed the North Sea. It was a land of sluggish rivers, lakes and extensive wetlands. A few thousand hunters thrived there, living off fish and small game, using antler-tipped spears.
(More here.)
Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of the forthcoming “The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present and Future of Rising Sea Levels.”
Fifty thousand drowned, steamships aground with their bows among trees, cattle rolled head over heels by gigantic waves — stories of great sea surges from past centuries abound. Many of them cascaded ashore when coastlines were relatively stable, killing everyone in their path. Today, we live in a warming world of rising sea levels, where tens of millions of us live a few meters above the ocean. The potential for sudden cataclysm is greater than ever.
The record of history is sobering. On Jan. 16, 1362, a severe southwesterly storm swept across the British Isles. The wooden spire of Norwich cathedral in eastern England collapsed.
Hours later, the Grote Mandrenke, “The Great Killing of Men,” descended on the Low Countries at high tide. Huge waves carried everything before them. “An infinity of people perished,” fishing fleets became matchwood, entire herds of cattle and sheep perished in the raging waters. Three centuries later, in 1634, another cataclysmic storm surge brought sea levels four meters above normal to the Strand Islands off northern Germany. As many as 15,000 people and 50,000 livestock drowned.
These were but two of the savage attacks on the low-lying coasts of the North Sea, this from a patch of ocean that was largely dry land less than 8,000 years ago. The geologists call it Doggerland, a sunken landscape that once formed the North Sea. It was a land of sluggish rivers, lakes and extensive wetlands. A few thousand hunters thrived there, living off fish and small game, using antler-tipped spears.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home