Filr: <climate.htm>
TEMPERATURE CHANGES ON EARTH DURING
THE PAST 18,000 YEARS SINCE 2005
80,000 B.C. --------- Modern
humans appear in southern Africa (judged from jewelry production) 80-40,000 B.C. ---- Several
catastrophic climatic changes decimate human population 40,000 B.C. --------- Small
group of modern humans cross Red Sea to Yemen 39,000 B.C. --------
Artistic cave paintings appear at
diverse locations 28,000 B.C. --------- Small
carvings of human females appear from Europe through Asia 16,000 B.C. ---------The
climate begins to warm 12,000 B.C. --------- Flooding
over vast areas of the earth intensifies 10,000 B.C. --------- Development of reliable ocean navigation
opened up the world around 9,000
B.C. --------- Mini Ice Age
lasts a few hundred years. Seafarers
from Morocco and northern
Spain explore entire west coast of Europe. Caucasian race appears in Libya Specialized trades expand,
longevity increases. Ireland to
Scandinavia colonized. 5,500 - 6,000 B.C.-- Language becomes more organized and
developed (see Linguistics) 6,000-3,500 B.C.---- Migrations out of North Africa to
points east and north (as desert expands) 4,000 B.C. ----------- The
Holocene Maximum warm period 1,700 B.C. -----------
Peteroborough, Canada petroglyphs
carved (see Bronze Age) 1,420 B.C. ----------- Isle of Thera
volcano erupts, devastating Crete & other areas 1,290 –1,180 B.C. -- Major attacks by
Sea Peoples on Egypt
(attempt to reestablish Goddess religion) 1,100 B.C. -------- Hebrews leave
Egypt 597 A.D. ---------- Benedictine clerics expand Christian
conversion activity in Europe 600-700 A.D. ----------Horsecreek
Petroglyph carved in West Virginia ? (see Horsecreek) 635 A.D. ---------- Roman Catholic sponsored Invention of
modern European languages expanded 1000-1350 A.D. ---- Medieval
Warm Period 1400-1860 A.D. ---- Little
Ice Age 1870 – present –---Industrial Age Global Warming ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Earth has been ice-free (even at the poles) for most of its history. However, these iceless periods have been interrupted by several major glaciations (called glacial epochs) and we are in one now in the 21st Century. Each glacial epoch consists of many advances and retreats of ice fields. These ice fields tend to wax and wane in about 100,000, 41,000 and 21,000 year cycles. Each advance of ice has been referred to as an "ice age" but it is important to realize that these multiple events are just variations of the same glacial epoch. The retreat of ice during a glacial epoch is called an inter-glacial period and this is our present climate system. The existing Plio-Pleistocene Glacial Epoch began about 3.2 million years ago and is probably linked to the
tectonic construction of the Isthmus of Panama which prevented the
circulation of Atlantic and Pacific waters and eventually triggered a slow
sequence of events that finally led to cooling of the atmosphere and the
formation of new ice fields by about 2.5 million years ago. Thus far, the Earth has had around 15 to 20 individual major advances and subsequent retreats of the ice field in our current glacial epoch. The last major advance of glacial ice peaked about 18,000 years ago and since that time the ice has generally been retreating although with some short term interruptions (see diagram). ------------------------------------------------------------------ See Paleontological Science Center, http://www.lakepowell.net/sciencecenter/paleoclimate.htm |
