Abstract
Since hominids began producing archeologically recognizable stone tools about 2.5 million years ago in tropical Africa, the world has undergone some two dozen transitions between glacial and interglacial conditions. (Shackleton and Opdyke 1973). Each time, there were major increases in global temperature, whole-scale shrinkage of continental and montane glaciers, rises in sea level of more than 100 m, significant changes in weather patterns and precipitation, and massive shifts in vegetation types and faunas. With each glacialinterglacial transition, the world was in effect remodeled, with the most striking changes occurring in the middle latitudes.
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© 1996 Plenum Press, New York
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Straus, L.G. (1996). The World at the End of the Last Ice Age. In: Straus, L.G., Eriksen, B.V., Erlandson, J.M., Yesner, D.R. (eds) Humans at the End of the Ice Age. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1145-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1145-4_1
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