The Pleistocene was a cold epoch with glaciations and megafauna, including mastodons and mammoths. Humans emerged and caused extinction of many species. Sea levels dropped during ice ages, revealing land that was later inhabited by humans. The end of the Pleistocene may have inspired Biblical flood stories.
The Pleistocene is an epoch of the longer Neogene period. It spans from 1,808,000 to 11,550 years ago, when the Earth warmed from its most recent ice age. In terms of human progress, the end of this era is also the boundary between the Early Stone Age (Paleolithic) and the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic). This is when modern humans emerged and basically took over the planet.
Like the rest of the Neogene, the Pleistocene was a relatively cold period. The world experienced a cycle of glaciations, with highs like the current climate and lows where much of modern Canada, Europe and Asia were under thousands of feet of ice. The era was characterized by a large fauna of mammals, such as mastodons, mammoths, cave bears and many others. These are called megafauna and humans are thought to have made most of them extinct when they spread around the world 100,000 to 30,000 years ago. The decline of large animal fossils syncs up perfectly with human migration patterns. Most efforts to attribute the extinction to other causes, such as “hyperdisease,” have been relatively futile.
During major ice ages, glaciers were 0.9 to 1.8 miles (1.5 to 3 km) thick, similar to Antarctica today. This blocked massive amounts of water, leading to temporary sea level drops of 328 feet (100m). Lowering sea levels has opened up some stretches of land that are currently under water, such as the North Sea (called Doggerland), the Bering Strait (Beringia), and the area around Indonesia (Sundaland). All of these regions were eventually inhabited by humans and helped make it possible for ancient people to colonize Australia from Asia.
During the Pleistocene, higher latitudes had increasingly large lakes due to glacial runoff and decreased evaporation from low temperatures. Lake Agassiz, a prehistoric lake in present-day Canada, was larger than any contemporary lake, including the Caspian Sea. When the ice age ended, it may have drained into Hudson Bay in as little as a year, raising world sea levels by as much as 3.2 feet (1 meter). This is one of many events cited as a possible inspiration for the Biblical flood stories.
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