Middle Stone Age · About 10,000-6000 BC

Doggerland: the land under the North Sea

Hunters once walked from Britain to Denmark. Students turn on the Ice Age Seas layer and watch the North Sea swallow Doggerland, then ask what rising water meant for the people who lived there.

Teach it live New Open on the map
Length
45 minutes
Ages
10–13
On the map
3 steps, 10000 BC to 9000 BC
Live lesson
7 rounds, 3 on the map
Worksheet
Two A4 pages, with Classroom
You need
A projector; phones for live

Live lesson · new in Classroom

Teach it live. The class answers on their phones.

Put the board on the projector. Students join with a six-digit code, no account needed, and tap the map: where was the frontier, where did the grain come from. Their pins drop in together when you reveal, and the closest student takes the round.

€19 per month: every lesson live, every worksheet, cancel anytime. Rome at its height runs live for free.

A live lesson on the projector: the class's pins on the map around Alexandria, the closest students listed beside it A student's phone: the question and a map to tap
7 rounds
3 places to find on the map, quiz questions, a class vote and a one-line answer.
About 15 minutes
Run it as the map step, or to open the discussion. You move on with the space bar.
A report
Every answer, per student and per round, to read back or print after the lesson.
1

Introduction

5 min

Read aloud

Hunters once walked from Britain to Denmark. Students turn on the Ice Age Seas layer and watch the North Sea swallow Doggerland, then ask what rising water meant for the people who lived there.

By the end of the lesson, students can

  • Locate Doggerland and explain why it disappeared after the Ice Age.
  • Describe how hunter-gatherers lived in and around Doggerland, using Star Carr as an example.
  • Explain how Britain became an island and what that changed.
2

Explore the map

12 min

Project the map, or let students follow on their own devices. Each step opens the map at the right year and place.

a

10000 BC

A drowned land

Open the map in 10,000 BC and turn on Ice Age Seas. Find Doggerland in the North Sea. Could you walk from Britain to Denmark? What lies under the water there today?

Open this view on the map
b

8000 BC

Watch the sea rise

Keep Ice Age Seas on and drag the time slider slowly from 10,000 BC to 5000 BC. Watch the coast move. Roughly when does Britain become an island?

Open this view on the map
c

9000 BC

Star Carr

Zoom in on the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire. At Star Carr, hunters lived by a lake about 11,000 years ago and made headdresses from deer antlers. How far was it from here to the plains of Doggerland?

Open this view on the map
3

Class discussion

14 min

Pick two or three. They run from what happened to why it mattered.

  1. People lived on Doggerland for thousands of years. Why is it so hard for archaeologists to study?
  2. The sea did not rise overnight but over many lifetimes. Would people living there have noticed? How?
  3. How do you think becoming an island changed life in Britain?
  4. Fishing boats have pulled up animal bones and tools from the bottom of the North Sea. What does that tell us?
  5. Sea levels are rising again today. What can Doggerland teach us about living with a changing coast?
4

Game round

9 min

No Rule History ruler lived in the Stone Age. Play one round as Hatshepsut, the earliest, and notice how many of her choices depend on the river and the sea. Then discuss: what choices did the rising sea force on the people of Doggerland?

Open Rule History
5

Worksheet

5 min

This worksheet comes with Classroom

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