A study has revealed that a prehistoric tsunami that occurred more than 8,000 years ago may have destroyed Stone Age coastal communities. This event, known as the Storegga tsunami, affected a wide area in northern Europe and its surroundings, leaving traces in the form of sediment deposits in distant regions such as northern Norway, northern England, western Scotland, the Shetland Islands in Scotland, and eastern Greenland.

This tsunami, which was triggered by a massive submarine landslide off the west coast of Norway between 8,120 and 8,175 years ago, produced waves as high as about 40 feet along the Norwegian coast and 10-20 feet on the mainland of Great Britain. In the Shetland Islands - a group of islands located more than 100 miles north of mainland Scotland - waves are estimated to have reached heights of over 65 feet.

"For this research, Sharrocks and his colleague Jon Hill, who is also affiliated with the University of York, used a supercomputer to model the Storegga tsunami and then assess its potential impact on the human population living in the area. Specifically, the researchers studied the tsunami's impact on the coast that is now Northumberland, a region in the far northeast of England bordering Scotland."

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The researchers also found that the impact on Mesolithic people in the area is likely to be "significant" with models indicating high death rates in Howick, as a direct result of the tsunami. In Howick, mortality estimates vary but reach up to 100 percent for prehistoric humans within the resource-rich intertidal zone.