(left to right) archaeologists Letty Ingrey, Dr Matt Pope, Dr Chantal Conneller and volunteer Pippa Kergozou trek across the Violet Bank
( left to right ) archaeologists Letty Ingrey, Dr Matt Pope, Dr Chantal Conneller and volunteer Pippa Kergozou trek across the Violet Bank - A UCL-led team of archaeologists found spear tips and other stone tools that have been submerged under the English Channel since the last ice age, providing new clues about our Neanderthal past. Submerged below the waves of the English Channel lies an important scientific record of undiscovered Neanderthal artifacts dating back to the last ice age. Collecting them from beneath the channel's cold waters is no easy feat, but UCL researchers found a way to get a brief peek at the otherwise hidden landscape. In May, when tides dropped to their lowest levels of the year, a team of archaeologists led by Dr Matthew Pope (UCL Archaeology) searched the briefly exposed seabed for stone artifacts left behind by Neanderthal people tens of thousands of years ago, as part of a project on. To take full advantage of the short tidal window, they camped in an isolated, 18 century stone tower perched more than a mile offshore from the Island of Jersey. When the tides fell, the team emerged from their refuge to scour the exposed rocky reef for spear tips and other stone tools dating to an age when Neanderthal people and woolly mammoths could walk from Kent to Calais. A changing landscape - Though the English Channel has divided Britain from continental Europe throughout recorded history, it hasn't always been the barrier it is today.
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