Mega Tsunami Devastated Medieval English Coast
Scientists investigating risks to the UK from tsunamis have found evidence that a huge legendary flood once hit our shores.
Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes at sea – sending walls of water long distances in a circle around the fault zone – but they could even be caused an asteroid impact. And now there are new indications that massive tsunami hit Britain more than 1,000 years ago.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles report that in 1014 AD a wall of water devastated much of the western coast, sweeping away homes many miles from the coast.
The cause of the flood has never been pin-pointed and the event has passed into legend – but some researchers claim it could have been caused by an asteroid landing in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Recording the event, the medieval chronicles’ author William of Malmesbury wrote ‘a tidal wave…grew to an astonishing size such as the memory of man cannot parallel, so as to submerge villages many miles inland and overwhelm and drown their inhabitants’.
However the chronicle also records elsewhere ‘fiery dragons flying in the sky’ in accounts of Viking raids – raising questions about whether the accounts should be taken seriously.Phill Teasdale, a senior lecturer in Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Brighton set out to investigate whether there was any evidence in the flood legend.
He told the British Science Festival in Brighton that at two vastly distant sites research colleagues have found initial signs that the account was more than a legend at two separate sites – Fleet Lagoon at Chesil Beach in Dorset, and Marazion in CornwallDr Teasdale said that while the cause of the waves were not known, ‘asteroid impacts have the capability of causing large scale ocean disturbance.’
He said that as the Earth is 70 per cent sea, and only 30 per cent land ‘an asteroid impact is more likely to hit the ocean than land.’
However, he said it is possible that an asteroid may have hit more recently – and was recorded by British scribes – both in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles as well as in Welsh bardic accounts. Dr Teasdale said: ‘Interestingly, there is a documented account in 1014 AD in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles where catastrophic flooding was recorded all along the west coast.
‘I had a couple of students dredging around in coastal lagoons, estuaries and in marshes to look for evidence of high energy events.
‘We think we have two tsunami deposits in two sites, in Marazion Marsh, and Fleet Lagoon, at Chesil Beach.’
Dr Teasdale said he thinks they are ‘tsunami deposits’ because they contain microscopic sea creatures called foram that are only naturally found in the deep mud off the coast – suggesting they have been swept inland by a powerful wave. Dr Teasdale estimates – by calculating the rate of sedimientation – suggests they were deposited around the same time as William of Malmesbury’s unparalleled wave.
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