The Holocene begins
The ice age releases its grip and the climate turns unusually stable
See it on the timeline →In depth
Greenland ice cores show the transition was astonishingly fast: up to ten degrees of warming in under fifty years. What followed was not only warmer but more *predictable* than any climate of the previous hundred thousand years. Farming requires being able to count on next year. That it arose independently in at least eleven places shortly after this stabilisation is unlikely to be coincidence.
For children
In just a few decades the Earth warmed by several degrees. The glaciers retreated northwards, the sea rose, and forests followed. Everything humans have built since — cities, fields, countries — happened within this one warm spell.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org