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An associate professor at Arizona State University.
Is it possible for humans to live through one of the ice ages?
What is the name of the ice age? Ice sheets and glaciers are formed when the Earth has cold temperatures for a long time.
At least five major ice ages have taken place on the planet. About 2 billion years ago, the first one took place. About 2.6 million years ago, the most recent one started.
The Earth is not covered in ice. We are in a period called an "Interglacial." In an ice age, the temperature will vary between cold and warm. Interglacials are when ice sheets and glaciers expand and melt.
The last warm interglacial period began about 11,000 years ago.
The last ice age started about 115,000 years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago with the beginning of the current interglacial period.
The planet was cooler back then. When ice sheets covered most of North America, the average global temperature was about eight degrees Celsius. It is 11 degrees cooler than the global average.
Most of the world was covered in ice sheets because of that difference. Most of the Earth's water was trapped in the ice sheets and thus the sea level was lower. savannas, or warmer grassy plains and deserts, were also included.
Brown bears, caribou, and wolves are some of the animals that would be familiar to you. At the end of the ice age, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and giant ground sloths were extinct.
Some people think that the animals went extinct due to something. Humans hunted them into extinction when they met the megafauna.
People lived through the ice age. We have spread around the world since our emergence 300,000 years ago.
Some people in Africa did not experience the full effects of the cold. Others moved to other parts of the world.
They were not the only ones. At the beginning of the ice age, there were other species of hominins, like the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. The groups went extinct before the ice age ended.
Our hominin cousins did not survive the ice age, but there are many theories about how our species did. Some people think that it has to do with how we use our social and communication skills, and how we are able to adapt. Humans didn't hunker down during the ice age They moved into new places.
Humans didn't enter North America until after the ice sheets started to melt. Humans have been in North America for at least 23,000 years, according to footprints found in New Mexico.
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