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UK storms strips beach of sand to reveal ancient sunken forest
Surreal seascape revealed by the storms: Ancient oaks and pines from 5,000-year-old forest rise as Welsh beach is washed away
- The ancient forest was covered in peat before eventually being swallowed by the sea
- Legends say trees and nearby township were flooded after a priestess neglected a magical well
- Conditions inside the peat, devoid of oxygen and slightly alkaline, have meant the stumps survived
- They were uncovered by the latest set of storms which washed away the peat layer
Rising from the beach in a surreal seascape, the remains of these ancient trees have been revealed by the storms.
Thought to date back to the Bronze Age, the shin-high stumps became visible for the first time when the peat which once covered them was washed away in torrential rain and waves pounding the shore.
Now they stud the beach near the village of Borth, Ceredigion, Mid Wales – an area already rich in archaeology, opposite the alleged site of Wales’s own take on the lost city of Atlantis.
Folklore has it that Cantre’r Gwaelod, or the Sunken Hundred, a once-fertile land and township, was lost beneath the waves in a mythical age.
The land is said to have extended 20 miles west of the present Cardigan Bay, but disaster struck and Cantre’r Gwaelod was lost to floods when Mererid, the priestess of a fairy well, apparently neglected her duties and allowed the well to overflow.
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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/20/prehistoric-forest-borth-cardigan-bay-wales
Last month archaeologists also found a timber walkway nearby, exposed by the storms. It was discovered by Ross Cook and Deanna Groom, from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, who went beach walking in the wake of the storms to check for any new finds. It was made from short lengths of coppiced branches, held in place with upright posts.
It has been dated to between 3,100 and 4,000 years old, built as the local people found ways to cope with living in an increasingly waterlogged environment.
Two years ago human and animal footprints were found preserved in the hardened top layer of peat, along with scatterings of burnt stones from ancient hearths.
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The location of Borth's submerged forest is a well known secret. It stretches intermittently for two to three miles along the shore between Ynys-las and Borth and lies about half-way between high and low water. What makes it a secret is that it is normally hidden under a layer of sand and is only exposed under certain circumstances.
On the rare occasions when it is fully exposed a flattened expanse of peat containing the remains of numerous prostrate trees is revealed. Pine (Pinus), alder (Alnus), oak (Quercus) and Birch (Betula) have all been identified. The root systems of the larger trees are generally spread horizontally, though some also grow downwards. This is typical of trees growing in fen woods where the high-water table keeps all the tree roots with the exception of alder in the aerated surface layers of the peat.
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Located in the stretch zone, Borth's submerged forest shows what happens when the Altantic is pulled down during a pole shift, sinking the land with only the tales of former settlements remaining in myths and legends.
This mirrors the other side of the Atlantic, the eastern US seaboard which also loses elevation during a pole shift, sometimes leaving only the tree stumps on the beach there too.
Like Jenness Beach, NH (above) and Odiorne Point State Park, NH which have both been dated at around the time of the last pole shift
Odiorne Point
Near Odiorne Point State Park in Rye, this sunken forest is referred to as the “Drowned Forest”. The roots of different coniferous trees (including white pine and hemlock) are visible at most low tides. Core samples taken from the roots indicate that the trees are about 3,500 – 4,000 years old. Scuba divers commonly explore the Drowned Forest to learn about these ancient remains.
Jenness Beach
The Jenness Beach forest, much larger than Odiorne Point, is rarely sighted above sea level. Sightings have occurred in 1940, 1958, 1962, 1978, 2007, and 2010. The trees, eight to ten feet in circumference, have been carbon dated from 3,400 to 3,800 years old. Currently, only 56 stumps remain, but due to the circumference of the trees, it was likely to have been a much vaster forest. The seafloor on which it sits was probably submerged after the Wisconsin glaciation. Some estimates say that the coastline of New England used to extend 75 miles (121 km) east of its current position; a Native American of the era could have walked from Nantucket to southern Cape Cod without touching the Atlantic Ocean. Another estimate states that New Hampshire's shore could have been a few miles inland.[citation needed] The former estimate is more likely. Fishermen have hauled up mastodon and mammoth teeth miles offshore, suggesting that the forest extended quite far from its western shoreline boundary. The last few yards of the transatlantic telegraph cable laid in 1874 may have gone through the sunken forest.
Source: http://poleshift.ning.com/xn/detail/3863141:BlogPost:966679
