Sven Mildner proposes a dramatic geodynamic and climatic rupture in the 6th century AD, most likely triggered by cosmic events in the form of impacts or airbursts. These events reactivated the ancient Caledonian Deformation Zone (CDF) and the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), resulting in large-scale crustal deformation throughout Germania Magna through inversion tectonics. Old extensional basins and zones of weakness were uplifted, folded, rotated and shortened by north-directed compressive forces linked to the Alpine orogeny. The Lausitz Block functioned as a rigid tectonic anchor that channeled and localized these stresses, compelling neighboring crustal blocks—including the Fläming, Harz and Thuringian Forest—into characteristic rotations and bends. The outcome was catastrophic flooding, firestorms and the widespread deposition of a distinctive “Event-Dark-Earth” (ED-E) sediment layer. Simultaneously, the Oceanus Germanicus (North Sea) experienced a northward regression that fundamentally altered coastlines and decoupled the ancient, more compact shape of Germania Magna from its present-day geography. This geodynamic and ecological transformation directly explains the sudden collapse of ancient settlement structures.

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by Sven Mildner
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31223/X5313T

In this draft of a new interpretation of Germania Magna, the author presents his hypothesis that Germania Magna underwent a far more extensive landscape transformation in geologically recent times than previously assumed. This was presumably caused by post-glacial isostatic rebound during the Holocene, or by a possible reactivation of the Caledonian Deformation Front (CDF) during a late phase of the Alpine orogeny, along with the associated tectonic activity in the upper crust (see following section). There is also the consideration whether a cosmic impact event could have been the cause of such a reactivation of the CDF. The conditions that would be expected in order to sufficiently substantiate the process described below would probably also involve previously misattributed or incorrectly dated major fault events. These could have repeatedly triggered stronger earthquakes in Central Europe over several centuries and may even have been recorded in written sources from the later Middle Ages.[1] Read more