What if Britain Wasn't An Island?

the island of great britain home to a nation that has prided itself for centuries on being apart from the mainland and having the naval power to keep any mainlanders away even more so in recent years in fact britain being an island is somewhat new during the last ice age what we thought of as the british isles and even the danish peninsula just didn't exist due to vast glaciers and lower sea levels oceans dropped so low that the north sea as we know it was instead dry land one large landmass connected to the european peninsula what we call today doggerland what if that just never went away say in some alternate timeline this land mass just never went underwater even if all the glaciers melted and all the coastlines of the world remained exactly the same the only thing that changes is doggerland is still around and well protected now i can hear you saying but cody what about science what about logic i just made britain disappear from the face of the earth and you're questioning my decision other than obliterating the english i think this is an actual curiosity the fact that this only existed so recently really gets the noggin jogging how different would european history be if doggerland just never sank due to the nature of how glaciers work the rise and fall of sea levels and constant climate change what exactly doggerland looked like was always in flux atlas pro has a very informative video on the specifics of how all that works which i recommend you go watch so we're all on the same page long story short there was once a period of time after the glaciers retreated but also before the sea levels rose that humans lived and thrived on doggerland a flat open landscape of wild grasses and roaming ice age animals home to herds of mammoths irish elk and even predators we don't associate with europe at all like lions and hyenas yes that's right only a few thousand years ago much of western europe looked like the african savannah to the people that lived on it for generations this land was just as permanent as we'd imagine britain or ireland or denmark today what we think of as islands were just highlands a majority of the population resided on coastlines and river valleys that are now long gone alternate geography is always fun to imagine as it's so far different than simply a historical figure dying or some war being lost land shapes history this isn't simply england and denmark are now connected to he thousands of years of alternate intermingling between culture groups we'd call the germans or celts or gulls doggerland itself would be home to languages and tribes just as unique as any i previously mentioned adapted to an environment we never actually saw in western europe grasslands i decided to have some fun with this let's pretend that this region never went away this is a vhs from the perspective of a historian looking back on the history of europe's great northern plain this land is never called doggerland as that's derived from the name dogger bank dogger was a name for a type of dutch fishing boat in this alternate timeline this land would be under an entirely different name one that nobody could actually predict so we have to make some fun creative guesses thousands of years ago greek maps vaguely label the far side of the continent a region hardly seen by mediterranean eyes they call this region levitia greek for grassland hello i am history man here to teach you the quick history of levitia a generalized term for what we call the northern european plains la vida is unique compared to the typically wooded western europe it can really only be compared to regions like ukraine the great plains or the african savannah a region of flat grassland thanks to the warm ocean air from the atlantic current much of this region is actually temperate with temperatures dramatically dropping the farther from the sea we go this is why areas like eastern europe are so sparsely populated yet this cult did very little to stop migrations of people from the eurasian steps into the continent the indo-european migrations not only fundamentally altered the genetics in people native to the region but introduced a technology that would change life on the planes forever the horse before the horse there is evidence that ancient hunter gatherers largely use rivers to travel the grasslands acting almost as an ocean in itself yet with the horse that changed levitia is essentially a flat bowl surrounded by highlands and thanks to that lack of elevation it created a culture where horse riding was the norm this region was split between a few distinct societies the celts in the west mainly stuck to the hills of albion they had migrated to the region by the 3rd century bc yet they never fully settled in the grasslands the general rule was the closer to gaul a tribe was the more celtic influence there was this was a region with an extensive trading network tribes in this time would often switch between raiding warbands to trade caravans this not only spread technology but also ideas and culture which is why the southern and western levati had far more celtic influences than their river dwelling cousins like the gerhardy and marcums the marcums were far more influenced by the germanic tribes and frequently traded with them their more sedentary lifestyle allowed them to adopt agriculture however due to their colder climate many often stuck to fishing the term levati is actually a pretty messy term it began as an exonym by the invading romans and since their society for the most part didn't have written records it's difficult to know what the levati called themselves what we do know is the people of the northern plains had their own distinct identity away from celts and germans while also exchanging and adapting ideas from their neighbors such as the general pantheon of what we'd call pagan gods one that appeared to be of particular reverence was the horse goddess ionan while celts and the norse had their own version of a horse goddess she was of particular importance to nomadic societies deities were not the only exchange that would occur in levitia often dress would differ as well as riders in the south would often paint their bodies in bright colors much like their gaelic and highland neighbors while the river people adopted the ironworking and more settled life of their germanic neighbors including their use of stronger armored infantry this gradual divide has led to frequent historical clashes mostly due to levati raids against their northern cousins this type of frequent raiding though wasn't simply against the tribes of the north but also against a new force from gaul the romans if there is anything an empire loves its nomadic horsemen right on their border the immediate confrontation between the romans and lovati set the stage for their relationship bloody despite the planes being capable land to settle and farm roman colonies in the region would often be the target of raids these were attacks in warfare that the heavy infantry of rome wasn't equipped or prepared to deal with this would be comparable to what the chinese faced in the northern steps while for china the solution was to erect a massive wall to keep the mongolians out the romans wouldn't need to invest in such infrastructure as they got sort of lucky by the nature of geography the grand river is one of the largest river systems in the world and historically is always acted as a barrier for any people aiming to cross it the river itself is practically in a canyon the elevation dramatically drops once leaving gull making any trek down and back up this river valley a dangerous task this makes any reasonable invasion into the north pretty difficult for rome which is why its borders never really went farther than here rome mainly cared about exploiting the warmer coast then heading further into a grassland surrounded by enemies the river for the most part acted as a natural defense against any nomadic invasion at least for a time eventually rome would fall from a combination of factors the migration and invasions of the levati and other northern people certainly didn't help for the most part this region wasn't too dramatically affected by the rise and fall of rome this really might as well have been a different world and as for the ramifications of rome's collapse well i think that's a story for another time this has been a history of lavidia in the roman era thank you for watching so uh yeah now we're back in our own timeline but you can see that things get pretty off the rails relatively quick in fact the main reason why i didn't go further in that is because by the medieval age very common things that we think of just wouldn't exist the very foundation of kingdoms that came to define western europe well none of those would exist in fact the tribes that preceded all of those kingdoms wouldn't exist these are entirely new societies living in an entirely different environment evolving and surviving in a grassland not an open sea it's like imagining how the russians might develop if they originated on a tropical archipelago and i will admit it's hard being incredibly specific when so much of history has changed but there are still general rules just by looking at a map and knowing how humans settle and develop civilizations that we can go off of now me personally i would like to live on the irish coast this would be a natural lowland with a hilly to mountainous border to its east think of this as the equivalent of the po valley a settled river people living in a more temperate climate interacting with the gulls and most likely romans when the time came historically this would be its own culturally distinct region with the highlanders being seen as both a threat and barbarians by a potentially more latinized population this region would always remain a target for invasion the highlands on the other hand will just give you a guess what those are home to the scots picks and britain's separated in part from the rest of europe by a massive river in grassland sea this river actually did exist by the way it was so large in fact that you may be familiar with its tributaries the thames rhine and sien had it still existed this feature more than anything would divide europe perhaps not as prevalent as an open sea but it still influenced the spread of kingdoms and cultures more than we'd imagine to the east the geography would get flatter and the climate would get colder along the coast the temperate climate remains in doggerland it's likely this region would be culturally similar to the germans and norse perhaps even using seafaring to trade as well as without a major water barrier dividing the nordic world with the slavs it's likely that a slavic invasion may actually occur driving deeper in a central europe rivers would determine territory here and i could imagine that come the medieval age the raiders would become more settled and less nomadic and this creates an interesting scenario western europe never had a kingdom of primarily horse riders essentially it's rohan but i mean come on like this didn't exist in europe and perhaps the magyar and the cossacks but in terms of a western people being primarily based on horse riding that didn't exist and oh no there's a kingdom by the coast surrounded by mountains oh god it's not just gondor where's hobbit town is wales hobbit town if the germans and norse did spread out it wouldn't be by boat but by land meaning that what we think of as britain never would have any interaction with anglos nor saxons yet there may be raiding by horse or by river perhaps the bane of europe wouldn't be seafaring dangers but horse mounted raiders perhaps just in the same way that vikings worked as mercenaries for empires and kingdoms levati riders would get the same work their writing skills renowned all over and their horses bred to be the best in europe without that warm atlantic air much of the temperature for central and eastern europe plummets bringing sub-polar to polar climates further west with less geographic boundaries the stability that kept these nations alive for millennia doesn't exist meaning this could be a far more chaotic and ever-changing region it'd be very possible that nords celts and lovatis would have a long-standing rivalry and hatred towards one another the ultimate thing i'm saying for all of this is you know while britain uses the sea as a defense against any pesky invaders not many of us are so lucky especially when we go online i don't know why you would need an ocean to protect you online this analogy is falling apart pretty fast this video has been sponsored by nordvpn a virtual private network that helps keep your ip address secure from any near due wells and scoundrels online including even the ones who put up those firewalls from your own country truly it's as if the land itself has dried up for you and you can now cross the ocean 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only that we also had a very interesting conversation about what type of civilizations would actually be on these islands so if you want to check that out i also recommend that

Channel: AlternateHistoryHub

Views: 1,280,541

Keywords: Doggerland, What if Doggerland Remained?, What if Britain Wasn't An Island?, History of Doggerland, Europe Prehistory, What if Britain Didn't Exist, No Britain, No North Sea, History of the North Sea, Alternate History, Britain history, paleontology, alternate history, rohan, rohan history, alternate history doggerland, Atlas Pro

Id: ssoKkvDbJpE

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022