Undersea voyage to find first Irish settlers
IT Sligo, along with University College Cork (UCC) and the Irish Marine Institute are all part of the University of Bradford’s “Europe’s Lost Frontiers” research team, which have set out on an expedition to explore the extensive submerged landscapes that exist between Ireland and Great Britain.
Following the last Ice Age, large areas of habitable land were submerged following climate change and sea level rise across the world.
Globally, the sea level rose around 120m and an area more than twice that of the modern US was lost to the sea.
Beneath the waves of the Irish Sea is a prehistoric palaeolandscape of plains, hills, marshlands and river valleys in which evidence of human activity is expected to be preserved.
This landscape is similar to Doggerland, an area of the southern North Sea and currently the best-known example of a palaeolandscape in Europe.
Doggerland has been extensively researched by Prof Vince Gaffney, principal investigator of the Europe’s Lost Frontiers Project, who said that valuable clues to the first settlers of Ireland could be found under the waves.
“Research by the project team has also provided accurate maps for the submerged lands that lie between Ireland and Britain and these are suspected to hold crucial information regarding the first settlers of Ireland and adjacent lands along the Atlantic corridor,” he said.
To provide this evidence, sediment is currently being taken from 20 sites by the Irish Research Vessel RV Celtic Voyager in Liverpool and Cardigan Bays.
The research started on Wednesday and will continue until Sunday and the findings will be studied by an international research team.
