East Anglian Fen's yew trees disappeared 4,200 years ago after the rapid rise of saltwater in the North Sea in England.
Over 4,200 years ago, the flat landscape of East Anglian Fens was dominated by dense woods of ancient yew trees.
East Anglian Fen's Yew Trees Disappear
Fenland farmers dug hundreds of tree trunks and discovered the disappearance of the yew trees in East Anglian Fens. According to the researchers, the yews declined as the region became wetter, but their major disappearance began during an abrupt rise in sea level.
The fragments dug up and discarded at field edges were known as 'bog oaks.' But when the scientists from the University of Cambridge tested the logs, they found more than 400 yew trees that were 400 years old when they died.
Tatiana Bebchuk, the lead author of the paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews, said that the Fenland farmers' struggles were usually their equipment caught in big pieces of wood buried in the soil, which always happens during the planting of potatoes since they were planted a little deeper than other crops.
"When I first saw this enormous pile of abandoned trees, it was incredible just how many there were. But when we got them back to lab, we were even more surprised: these trees were so well-preserved, it looked as if they were cut down just yesterday," she said.
The scientists gathered data from the growth rings within tree trunks, which contain information about temperature and climate for each growing season. The trunks collected were preserved in brown fenland soils, which showed up to 400 years of irregular tree rings.
The combined dendrochronological (tree-ring) analysis and radiocarbon dating discovered the ancient yews from about 5,200 to 4,200 years ago. The analysis showed those years when dense native woodland, including oak and yew, covered the Fens.
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Yew Tree's Disappearance Led to Climatic Events
The disappearance of the yew trees coincided with significant climatic changes elsewhere in the world, including a mega-drought in China and the Middle East that could have caused the collapse of civilizations, such as Egypt's Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.
Bebchuck said they want to know if the rapid rise in sea level in northern Europe was linked to these climatic events, especially on the mega-droughts in Asia and the Middle East, or if the events were just a series of unrelated regional changes.
She still has no evidence of what caused these climate events, but she said these trees could be an important part of solving the cause of climatic changes.
The ancient yew has been one of the longest-lived species in Europe, which can reach up to 20 meters in height.
Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the Fens were primarily a wetland before being drained using artificial drainage and flood protection.
