Around 8,200 years ago there was a massive population decline in northern Europe. Experts have long wondered whether a changing climate caused a decrease in the number of humans in the area or if it was some other catastrophe and now they might finally have an answer.
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00:00Around 8,200 years ago, there was a massive population decline in Northern Europe.
00:10Experts have long wondered whether a change in climate caused a decrease in the number
00:13of humans in the area, or if it was some other catastrophe, and now they might finally have
00:18an answer.
00:19Around the same time as the population drop, there was a giant underwater landslide that
00:23occurred just off the coast of Norway.
00:25This caused a massive tsunami, and now researchers have built a computer simulation to see just
00:29how cataclysmic it was.
00:31The results indicate that tsunami waves could have reached upwards of 65 feet tall at their
00:35peak around Scotland, with 10 to 20 foot tall waves hitting a much larger area.
00:40We can see the signs of these massive waves by looking at sedimentary data that has already
00:44been collected from all over Northern Europe.
00:46What's more, ahead of a tsunami, the sea recedes considerably.
00:50Experts posit this may have drawn the Mesolithic peoples to collect shellfish from the revealed
00:54seafloor.
00:55And then, when the tsunami came in later, it may have drowned a significantly higher
00:58number of them than it would have otherwise.
01:01Recent data also reveals that a tsunami struck the Shetland coast 5,000 and 1,500 years ago,
01:07meaning the risk of another one is far more serious than experts previously predicted.