At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231126224848.htm … the Fens of eastern England were once heavily wooded – according to research at Cambridge University. Surprisingly, the woods were dominated by yew trees. It must have been a dark and forbidding sort of place. Even in winter. The research itself is fascinating as it is based on hundreds of tree truinks dredged up by potato farmers in the Fens. When they plough their fields, now mostly down to the soil beneath the peat, they find lots of intact tree trunks that are well preserved. It doesn’t say if the trees were shorn at the bottom, by a blast [atmospheric meteor explosion] as at Tunguska in 1908. Or in submerged forests that continue to come to light after storms in various locations around the coastline of Britain. Reading the full article at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379123004626 … we are told the tree trunks were between 2m and 8m in length – so blast from an atmospheric explosion is probably out of the question. At least, in the vicinity of the Fens. However, the scientists are putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with some interesting connections. What we need to know right now is that the trees have been carbon dated to the late 3rd millennium BC. It might be that some of them are dated somewhat earlier – but again, we shall have to wait for the full research paper.
What is clear is that around 2300BC [on Mandelkehr’s chronology} and possibly a bit later, around 2200BC, the Fenlands flooded – which is why the wood is preserved almost as it was when the event occurred. The date provided is BP and therefore requires adjustment to BC. As they used Bayesian methodology it is probably IntCal and 2500-2200BC. Mike Baillie says something similar about Ireland in one of his books. Baillie is quoted in the bibliography – along with Pearson and other dendrochronologists. It is blamed on rising sea levels in the North Sea. However, it is also clear that it was not confined to the North Sea as there is plenty of evidence of drowned landscapes on the other side of Britain – and in Ireland. It is the classic dilemma faced by Steve Mitchell in his articles published in our journal C&C Review over the years. Was it the sea levels going up or was it the land going down? We may also note that even earlier the Fens were positively much higher as far as sea level is concerned – prior to 3200BC.
The researchers are intrigued as it may have a global perspective. In other words, did something catastrophic occur and caused problems in different parts of the world. They point towards wet and flooding in NW Europe, particularly around the North Srea basin, and contrast this with problems elsewhere. In the Middle East there was a mega-drought, and in Egypt, a series of low Niles that also led to famine and societal collapse. In China, they had problems with flooding. And so on. It seems like the monsoon track had moved south – or was compromised in some way. In central America the tropical rainfall belt shifted – and this can be seen in detail in the Galapagos Islands as much as the Maya country. Hence, the researchers have a lot of loose ends to tie in with what was happening here in eastern England.
It seems farmers in the peat country have been encountering buried tree trunks for years and these have piled up at the field boundaries. Hence, the scientists were confronted with a vast cache of data which they have eagerly collected for further study in order to find out what was going on at the time flood waters overwhelmed them. It is in fact a perfact climate record as the trees contain rings that can provide information about environmental change. As they were yews, which are relatively long lived, they have a record going back several hundred years. We can only wait for the research to be written up in a journal.