502 31 JANUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6477 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
Homo antecessor, an early human thought
by many researchers to be an evolutionary
dead end. One set of footprints, found in a
layer of compressed sand on a beach in the
United Kingdom and dated by its geological
context, recorded children and adults appar-
ently migrating across a mudflat.
Long cold spells then covered parts of the
region in ice. About 100,000 years ago, small,
hardy bands of Neanderthals arrived on the
trail of megafauna such as mammoths and
woolly rhinoceros. Hundreds of tools and a
lone skull fragment offer evidence of a popu-
lation living on the fringes of habitable Eu-
rope, resourceful enough to eke out a living
in small groups under what Amkreutz calls
“extreme” conditions on the edge of glaciers.
Neanderthals died out about 45,000 years
ago—about when anatomically modern
humans entered Europe. A few flint tools,
found among stones dredged from the sea
floor to create artificial sea walls for the
Rotterdam harbor, suggest H. sapiens may
have been active in Doggerland even as
early as 40,000 years ago, when it was still
an icy steppe. (More conclusive tools have
turned up in the United Kingdom and Bel-
gium, on each side of Doggerland.) About
20,000 years ago, a severe cold spell made
the entire region too cold to be habitable.
But the end of the last ice age, about
15,000 years ago, brought a brief idyll: Pollen
samples, DNA evidence, and fossilized wood
fragments recovered from the sea floor sug-
gest a fertile landscape of forests and rivers,
with plentiful birds, fish, and mammals. Hu-
man remains and finely worked stone, bone,
and antler tools suggest modern humans
made the most of the area, occupying it even
as rising waves transformed large parts into
a coastal wetland.
The seafloor bones are filling in the pic-
ture of Europe’s genetic past. Studies of an-
cient and modern DNA indicate that certain
groups of hunter-gatherers entered northern
Europe from the south and east perhaps
about 14,000 years ago, after much of the ice
had melted; modern European populations
still carry their genetic legacy.
The trove of human bones that amateurs
turned over to Altena for sampling promises
to add to the picture. Of the bones amassed
in June 2019, 90 were well-preserved enough
for radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis.
Altena and researchers from the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History
(SHH) in Jena, Germany, identified teeth
and bones between 8000 and 10,000 years
old, when modern human hunter-gatherers
occupied Doggerland. They have started to
extract DNA, and so far have recovered it
from more than five individuals. “In some
ways the context is limited, but we can
still do so much more than anyone ever ex-
pected,” Altena says.
Drawn from the outer limits of hunter-
gatherer expansion in the fringes of Europe
at that time, those samples “are fascinat-
ing,” says Cosimo Posth, an SHH geneticist.
He notes that the DNA could illuminate
how these early populations mixed with
others in Europe.MOST DOGGERLAND FINDS have been acci-
dental. A long-term goal is to learn enough
about the past landscape so researcherscan go to sea and look for sites instead of
waiting for evidence to wash ashore. “Until
you have reliable maps, you can’t do much,”
Gaffney says. “We’re dealing with a com-
pletely unexplored country we can’t visit.”
More than 10 years ago, Gaffney set out
to do the next-best thing, persuading oil,
gas, and wind power companies to pass
on data gathered in seismic surveys done
to plan offshore oil and gas wells. Initial
maps were coarse, but over the past sev-
eral years, Gaffney and colleagues used
€2.5 million in funding from the European
Research Council to deploy side-scan sonar
and other undersea imaging technologies
to make their own maps, in what they call
the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project. Maps
in hand, the researchers looked for ancient
areas suited to human habitation.
More than a decade of work paid off last
year when Gaffney and Belgian researchers
headed to the Brown Banks, about 50 kilo-
meters off the U.K. coast. Mapping had sug-
gested that between 7000 and 13,000 years
ago, the spot was an elevated area 30 kilo-
meters long, overlooking a river.
Researchers aboard the Belgian research
vessel Belgica took core samples, scooped
up sediment, and made “grabs” with a
metal claw. Among the finds were traces
of a fossilized forest 32 meters beneath the
waves, including tree roots, terrestrial snail
shells, and peat—plus a small flint flake and
part of a broken flint hammerstone shaped
by hunter-gatherers. “We went to the place
where we thought [human artifacts] would
be and recovered them,” Gaffney says.
“ T h a t ’s a f i r s t .” PHOTOS: MANON BRUININGANEWS | FEATURESArchaeologist Luc Amkreutz cultivates contacts
with local beachcombers, who bring him finds like
this Neanderthal tool with a birch tar grip (left).Published by AAAS