Ice Age
Posted on Wednesday 21 November 2007
Here's a map of the world during the peak of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago when sea level was 110 meters below its present level. Click the image for an extremely high resolution version (3 arc-minute per pixel).
Some observations:
- North America is connected by land to Eurasia although blocked by impenetrable glaciers. Human settlement of the Americas is thought to have begun 12,000 years ago when these glaciers had begun to recede although theories and evidence for an earlier arrival, particularly via a coastal route, continue to be hotly debated.
- Sri Lanka is connected to India (well there's Rama's Bridge for you).
- Australia and New Guinea are connected but separated from Asia. A series of short hops are needed to reach it by boat. This is the earliest evidence we have for the invention of boats and sea navigation because settlement was achieved between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.
- Tasmania is connected to the Australian land mass. Aborigines walk there only later to be stranded and forget how to make boats (or how to start a fire, make a boomerang, an axe or even catch a fish...).
- Japan is an arc of land ringing an inland sea, people walk there too. The first pottery in the world is developed there 7,000 years later.
- Britain is connected to Europe and its first inhabitants walk there as well.
- The Mediterranean, the Red and Black Seas are all inland freshwater lakes.
- South East Asia, both insular and mainland form one enormous peninsula.
