What Are Ice Ages? When Was The Last Ice Age?
Ice ages are periods when there are extensive glaciers stretching away from the North and South Pole towards the equator? Because there are more continents closer to the North Pole, the glaciers tend to be more extensive in the north. There are also glaciers that form on mountains in tropical latitudes. For about the last 900,000 years, Ice Ages have occurred about every 110,000 years. They are separated by warm periods, called interglacial, which are of shorter duration. The last Ice age lasted between about 70,00013,000 years ago. Ice Ages probably moved people around (away from the pole, towards the equator, and to lower elevations) but our species actually underwent a dramatic expansion of our geographic range during the last Ice Age. At 70,000 BP humans lived only in Africa, the Near East and possibly some parts of Southern Asia. By 13,000 years ago, we were present all over Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
