At https://phys.org/news/2026-09-prehistoric-coastal-northern-adriatic.html … without mentioning sea level rise in other parts of the world at the same time, or sea level decline if that is appropriate, the new study focuses solely on the northern Adriatic – in isolation. As far as the press release goes. There were dramatic sea level rise in the region that changed the coastline of Italy, Slovenia and northern Croatia, we are told. Reshaping coastal features – drowning low lying areas of land, including coastal marsh. One immediately thinks of Doggerland, the southern basin of the North Sea. It may also have been relevant to the northern basin of the North Sea, as we shall see. It occurred in a series of steps – just as it did in the drowning of the continental shelves of NW Europe and NE North America. It was, in other words, contrary to the idea of a constant sea level curve as favoured by mainstream. The time period given is between 9000 and 4000BC – the early to mid Holocene.
We are told there was a series of ‘staggered’ rises in sea level that swallowed coastal areas. For instance, what is now the Venice lagoon was formerly dry and positioned well away from the sea. Some kilometres away. See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.110206 … There was a rapid rise in sea level around 8400BC. This coincides with the severing of a land link between Britain and Ireland and changes in the northern basin of the North Sea. It also affected the continental shelf system around NW Europe – and various other locations around the world. A further rise in sea level occurred around 6600BC which may be the 6200BC event in the new dating system using Bayesian methodology. At this time large sections of Doggerland in the southern basin of the North Sea were drowned, as well as land off the northern coast of Ireland and southern England. It involved a two to three hundred year cold period, which may have involved oscillations in temperature. There was another significant encroachment by the sea in the period following 6000BC – as much as 4m it is suggested. Lagoons formed after 5800BC, for example, and this homes in again to mainstream dates of sea level changes elsewhere. At this time there was a steep rise in the sea level of the Persian Gulf, as one example elsewhere. It was obviously all part and parcel of sea level rise globally. At the moment I have not come across any paper on sea level decline in the early to mid Holocene. However, the last events ushered in the Mid Holocene Climatic Optimum. This lasted to perhaps 3000BC, or a little earlier, at 4000BC. Hence, if sea level was caused by higher global temperatures the rate of rise should have gone up much more in the period that followed. That does not seem to be the case. I may be wrong but the complete submergence of the continental shelf systems around western Europe and North America seem to place the rise in seas to prior the mid Holocene warmth. The other option, or one of them, is that the Earth’s dipole shifted following a wobble event. This should coincide with electro-magnetic anomalies. Why that might have happened is an unknown at the present. It would also have involved enhanced auroral activity – reaching lower latitudes than in the modern world. In other words, we have a study that catalogues a series of step changes in sea level without dwelling on why this might have occurred.