Originally posted by AlexofSkye
Byrd, please note that although the last ice age was ending 11,000 years ago, don't forget that it wasn't global.
The term, "ice age" doesn't mean "one place that got covered by glaciers." It means, instead, a period (sometimes lasting millions of years) of
cooler temperatures, characterized by cooler summers and the advance of glaciers. Yes, this really WAS global.
Were there warm areas? Of course! In fact, there were even hot deserts and tropical climates. But the average temperature during those periods was
7 degrees cooler than during the Hypsithermal periods (a fancy archaeological and geological term meaning "the warm period between ice ages")
But no, "ice age" doesn't mean the whole planet was covered over by ice.
For example, the ice sheets covered only about half of North America. There was lots of planet Earth left for human activities.
And, in fact, we find plenty of this evidence at places such as Monte Verde and other pre-Clovis sites in the new world and many many sites in the old
world.
Also, the melting ice made for a number of catastrophic floods that would have washed away a lot of evidence of earlier
civilizations.
Okay, let's look at modern-day deglaciation: Glaciers have retreated significantly in the past 100 years. How many of our coastal cities have
drowned? How many floods have you seen caused by the deglaciation?
We know, in fat, that the sea level has risen an average of about an inch per year as the glaciers rapidly retreated for the past 20,000 years.
Within your grandparents' lifetime, the ocean levels rose about 90 inches (nearly 7 feet.)
How many great floods have you observed?
www.all-science-fair-projects.com...
Now -- there WERE some localized Great Floods on the continents as ice plugs on large lakes in the mountains melted (this is how Lake Tahoe was formed
and accounts for the topology and sedimentation of Eastern Washington state.
www.whitman.edu...
Also, some caution about repeating what you are learning at university... they tend to teach orthodoxy...
Is there something wrong with teaching material based on good evidence?
Is there something wrong with teaching theories based on evidence that's repeatable or testable?
Is there something wrong with refusing to teach material that's based on someone's dreams -- dreams that have been disproved by research?
Do you think that my prof should be teaching me material based on someone's "teachings from an angel of the Akashic Records" rather than from the
fieldwork that he and thousands of other geologists, climatologists, paleobotonists, anthropologists, and archaeologists have discovered?
You might enjoy reading up on glaciation and geology during the period that you're interested in (and learn how to distinguish one kind of stone from
another and one kind of sediment from another)? Looking at the earth in light of the things you learn while reading up on geology really gives you a
different picture of things.
And taking geology "road trips" to places to look at what the land is actually saying is pretty neat, too.
[edit on 3-10-2004 by Byrd]