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 |
