When was the last ice age and how many ice ages have humans lived through?

Question

Simple question

Answer 1

Four major continental glaciations are recorded in North America. The last (Wisconsin) began about 70,000 years ago, and ended 10,000 years ago. At the peak of the last glaciation, approximately 97% of Canada was covered by ice. Animals and plants that once lived in glaciated regions survived in refuges in Alaska and the Yukon, possibly on Banks Island, and in the northern United States. Probably the thickest ice (approximately 3,300 m) occurred over Hudson Bay. We are presently in an interglacial phase that could last for another 10,000 or more years.

Answer 2

As you can see the period and number of "Ice Ages" is quite difficult to determine. merely because there is evidence of lots of snow and glaciers, these could be isolated on the tops of mountains or over the south pole etc. There are "Manklovich" cycles supposedly related to the wobble of the earth. These wobbles bring the earth closer or further to the sun (and lots of other factors) that cause ice ages. I forget the period of these but I'm sure you can google it.
However during this age the ice doesn't just advance over the earth and then retreat and end the ice age. There are a number of advances and retreats so an "ice age" tends to be based on sea level. We probably are still at the end of the last ice age depending how you define it.
A rough sort of answer though is that at about 9000 years ago a lot of ice retreated, England was mostly freed of ice. There were some "Homo sapiens" around at the time co-existing and perhaps cohabiting with Neanderthal man. Men frozen in ice at the top of mountains would have thought they were in an Ice age as the snow covered them. However any early Egyptian travelling far enough north would reach the Arctic circle with permafrost long before they left France.

Answer 3

We are currently living through an ice-age. At the moment the Earth is experiencing a relatively warm phase called an interglacial. The last period of extensive glaciation ended about 10 000 years ago, having reached it's maximum extent roughly 20 000 years ago. In fact the ice-age we are living through right now actually began somewhere in the region of 40 million years ago - so given that anotomically modern humans emerged about 130 000 years ago, you could argue that if the ice-age were to come to an end tomorrow, then as a species we would have lived through 0.325% of an ice-age.

Answer 4

The present cycle of glaciations, with periods of cold and ice advance interspersed with warmer periods, appears to have begun about 2.8 million years ago. The pattern is complex, but in simple terms there have been about 4 major advances in that time, the last ending about 10,000 years ago.

If by humans we mean modern sub-species of Homo Sapiens, we were certainly present during the last advance from about 80,000 to 10,000, as artifacts including paintings of wolly mammoths, wooly rhinos etc. prove.

More archaic Homo sapiens goes back well into the middle of the previous warm spell.

Whatever the outcomes and causes of the current global warming it won't last forever. The ice will return, and if we haven't annihilated ourselves, people will see it.

Answer 5

The last ice age is in Pleistocene (1,808,000 years to 11,550 years before present). Humans, as you see them today, came at a later date - so no human has lived through any ice age.

Answer 6

Technically we are still in an ice age as there are still ice formations (glaciers) that are not situated at the polar regions. Other than this 1 there has been 1 other that has been witnessed by man

Answer 7

there is a school of thought that insists that we are currently in the tail end of an ice age . if so then that would make the total 1 since the the last one was when the dinosaurs were wiped out

Answer 8

the last ice age was 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. the ancestors of modern humans have been around about 100,000 years. p.s. dinosaurs were wipe out about 64 mya. the last ice age was NOT when the dinosaurs were wipe out.

Answer 9

10,000yrs ago. This is the Wisconsin glaciation when extensive glacial fields covered Europe and N. America.
The peak was 18,000BCE.

Answer 10

There is only evidence that there has been one ice age.
And it ended around 4000 years ago

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