When mammoths roamed in Brighton, and Britain wasn’t an island

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Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe has dominated political debate for the last three years. But whatever your views on the UK’s membership of the European Union, look back far enough and we can see that it has always been a changing relationship.

500,000 years ago the landmass that we now identify as Britain was linked by land to Continental Europe. Since then different geological stages have affected the formation of Britain as an island. It was only 8,000 years ago that Britain became an island again. 

The video below was commissioned for the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery in Brighton Museum. It shows how the landscape has changed over thousands of years.

Aside from demonstrating these major geological changes, the video features animations depicting prehistoric Brighton. It shows mammoths, woolly rhinos, hyenas and other prehistoric creatures in what is now the central valley leading down to where the Old Steine is situtated today.