• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Long-Lost Medieval Church Found In Sunken Town That Vanished In 1362

May 26, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The remains of a long-lost medieval church that sunk over 600 years ago have been found beneath the mud of northern Germany’s coast. 

The submerged site of Rungholt is located in the Wadden Sea, the world’s largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats, running from the Netherlands to Germany. 

Advertisement

Sometimes known as the “Atlantis of the North Sea,” the sunken settlement was drowned beneath the waves of the North Sea by a storm surge in 1362 CE. For some time, people suspected that Rungholt might just be a fanciful local legend – but hard evidence is now showing that the town existed and really did suffer an untimely demise. 

Thanks to a recent survey, researchers were able to locate traces of the Rungholt church. The discovery was made by a team of archeologists from Kiel University, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, and the State Archaeology Department Schleswig-Holstein.

They used a range of geophysical imaging techniques to survey over 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of mudflats. This revealed a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) long chain of medieval terps, artificial mounds that were built to protect settlements from high tide and surges. 

Among these terps, the team found the foundations of a large building, measuring around 40 meters by 15 meters (130 by 50 feet), which almost certainly was a church. 

Advertisement

“The find thus joins the ranks of the large churches of North Frisia,” stated Dr Bente Sven Majchczack, archaeologist in the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University in the UK, said in a statement.

Archeologists using sediment cores to record settlement remains and to reconstruct landscape evolution at selected sites on the tidal flats.

The researchers also used sediment cores to record settlement remains and to reconstruct landscape evolution at selected sites on the tidal flats.

Image credit: Justus Lemm

“Settlement remains hidden under the mudflats are first localized and mapped over a wide area using various geophysical methods such as magnetic gradiometry, electromagnetic induction, and seismics,” added Dr Dennis Wilken, a geophysicist at Kiel University.

They suspect the church was perhaps the center of the city of Rungholt. According to some accounts, the medieval settlement was once a lively trading port where merchants traded fish, nets, and oysters amidst bustling streets lined with taverns, brothels, street musicians, inns, and churches. 

All of this came to an end in January 1362 CE when a violent storm hit modern-day Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Denmark. It became known as “Grote Mandrenke” in Germany, which means “the great drowning of men,” and “The Great Wind” in England. 

Advertisement

In the Chronicle of Anonymous of Canterbury, a monk in England described it as so: “Around the hour of vespers on that day, dreadful storms and whirlwinds such as never been seen or heard before occurred in England, causing houses and buildings for the most part to come crashing to the ground, while some others, having had their roofs blown off by the force of the winds, were left in the ruined state.” 

Other than the odd written source, not much evidence of this cataclysmic storm exists. However, research such as this shows that physical traces of the disaster can still be seen today. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canadian PM Trudeau not sorry for snapping at protester who insulted his wife
  2. Cricket-Kohli becomes first Indian to reach 10,000 runs in T20 cricket
  3. Congo’s $6 billion China mining deal ‘unconscionable’, says draft report
  4. Man Waggling His Willy At Leopards Found On World’s Earliest Narrative Art

Source Link: Long-Lost Medieval Church Found In Sunken Town That Vanished In 1362

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Reindeer Bring A Gift Greater Than Any Of Santa’s – Hope Of A Stable Climate
  • If Deep-Sea Pressure Can Crush A Human Body, How Do Deep-Sea Creatures Not Implode?
  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version