Submerged Stone Circles

At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ultimate-adventure-story-submerged-stone-circles-reveal-perilous-migration-of-prehistoric-people-to-far-northern-scotland-11-000-years-ago …  as a result of sea level changes around the continental shelf all around NW Europe a lot of evidence of hunter gatherer activity was lost – drowned. We know that at the end of the Ice Age, or at least at the end of the Younger Dryas episode, large parts of the continental shelf system was dry land. You could walk from France to Scotland, from Ireland to Scotland, and from Denmark to Scotland.  It seems the writer of the headline was unaware of this fact. So, you can ignore that. What caused the sea levels to change is another matter that has been the subject of earlier posts. What we have  in this story is the discovery, at two sites in NW Scotland, of hunter gatherer activity which is comparable to similar activity elsewhere in post Ice Age Europe. Both sites are now submerged. One is a cache of stone tools which allowed the archaeologists to align the find with a particular tool repertoire known from other regions of northern Europe. The second find is of a circle of stones. No, they are too early for circles of stone that look up at the sky. The archaeologists concerned compare them to stone circles of the same age found in Norway – representing hut circles or hide covered tents secured by the stones. The beauty of this is that it puts humans in Scotland at a very early date. Then again, the weather was more pleasant than it is now, it would seem, and boats no doubt plied along the edge of what is now the continental shelf – as even the Orkneys were connected to the mainland at this time. There were of course big rivers. The Rhine and its tributaries exited near what is now a trench system between Scotland and Norway. There was another big river running through what is now the English Channel. Boats could have navigated rivers and the not so big rivers. We also know that hunter gatherers crossed to North Africa from southern Europe – presumaby also using boats, as early as the Ice Age. There is an awful lot to learn of the topography of Europe in the early Holocene and marine archaeology may come up with some surprising finds in the future.