A Land ‘Bridge’? 

It must have been decades ago that I first came across the idea – that England had once been physically connected to mainland Europe by a ‘land bridge’. Now in my mind at the time, and until very recently, I’d envisaged some sort of causeway, maybe a mile or two wide, connecting say Dover and Calais over which the earliest colonisers of Britain migrated. It would’ve been much easier than, say, trying to cross the Channel or the North Sea in a primitive boat before the age of sail. As many people (and potential invaders) have found to their cost, crossing the 26 miles between Britain and the European continent is no easy feat. So, land bridge.... 

As you can see from the map above the ‘bridge’ was anything but! As you can see, as recently as 16 thousand years ago the WHOLE of the British Isles as well as Ireland could be WALKED to from Belgium. To be honest this map has been totally blowing my mind since I downloaded it a few months ago. Just try to imagine what things looked like from the Normandy ‘coast’. Apparently, people lived, farmed and had communities where it’s now the North Sea. Fishing ships regularly pick up peat deposits and artifacts from the Dogger Bank area where, I’ve heard, it was possible to STAND on the surface with your head above water at certain times of the year. Yes, parts of the North Sea are that shallow still. I now appreciate why the Royal Navy doesn’t like having its submarines there – just too dammed shallow! 

Naturally, my imagination went into overdrive when I saw this map. Not only from the point of view of people 16-8 thousand years ago, but from more recent history. Imagine, if you will, the possibility that the ‘land bridge’ could have persisted into the present. Maybe to its full extent or maybe to its 7000BC limit. With Britain directly connected to Europe along a substantial front just how different would world history have been.  Would the Roman Conquest of Britain have been much easier? What about Napoleon or Hitler? Imagine no ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ but instead the Blitzkrieg rolling across the ‘Dover Straights’ right into the heart of Southeast England. Would Britain have become a great maritime power so cut off from the remnants of the North Sea and so far from the Atlantic? What a world such a place would be..... What a very STRANGE world!