Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
FIG
124.
The ancient Solent River drainage before the Flandrian sea-level rise.
Flint tools and ancient trees dating from before the Flandrian rise in sea level have
been found towards the middle of the Solent, providing evidence to support the ideas
described above. However, worldwide sea level largely stopped rising about 6,000
years ago, yet much younger artefacts have also been found submerged below the
present sea. For example, Saxon sheep pens, perhaps 1,000 years old, have been found
offshore between the Isle of Wight and the English mainland. The main Flandrian glob-
al sea-level rise due to ice-sheet melting cannot account for this, because most of it was
over long before Saxon times. This implies that some younger downward movement
of the bedrock, due to changes within the Earth, must have taken place very recently in
some local areas.
