The ice ages begin
Ice advances and retreats with the wobble of Earth's orbit
See it on the timeline →In depth
The rhythm is set by Milanković cycles: variations in Earth's orbital eccentricity, axial tilt and precession, which change how much sunlight reaches high northern latitudes in summer. Small changes are strongly amplified by feedbacks in ice, CO₂ and vegetation. Glaciers carved the landscape we see in Norway today — the fjords, the moraines and the thousand lakes. The human lineage evolved inside precisely this climatic rollercoaster, which many researchers think favoured flexibility and learning over specialisation.
For children
For the last couple of million years Earth has swung between cold ice ages and warmer spells, roughly every hundred thousand years. During the ice ages, ice kilometres thick covered Norway and northern Europe. This is the world in which humans evolved.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org