Origins of Ameland
"Opgeweld uit wier en zand, Gans omspoeld door zilte baren, Moge God het steeds bewaren: ons plekje, rijk aan duin en strand, het ons zo lieve Ameland!"
Those are the first lines of the Ameland anthem. For a long time the origins of Ameland and other wadden islands weren’t clear.
Only the last decades, the image has become clearer because of research. One thing was sure for a long time: Ameland is a young island. It is risen from the sea only in the youngest era of geological history of the earth, the Holocene (the geological epoch from 11,700 years ago to the present).
But we don't have to dig deep to go further back in the past. Because of the unpredictable turn of fate natural gas is processed from a layer of earth of several hundred milion years old. Andt that on an island that got its first inhabitants only 1000 years ago....
The early signs of the origins of the wadden island Ameland came into being after the last ice age. The temperature rose, the icecaps melted, the sea level rose and for our surroundings that meant the North Sea advanced towards our land.
Ameland consists of three islands that grew together. The islands are joined because of the building of drift dikes in the 19th century. We may assume that Ameland was inhabited in the second half of the eighth century.
