Pleistocene Ice Age
c. 2.6 million - 12,000 years ago · Event
The epoch of the ice: for two and a half million years the planet swings between glacials and brief warm interludes, with sheets of ice grinding as far south as London and Chicago and sea levels rising and falling by a hundred metres. Every human species evolves inside it — the entire hominin story from Homo habilis to the first farmers plays out against its advancing and retreating ice.
On these timelines: Human Origins & the Ice Age, Master
More from Human Origins & the Ice Age
- Emergence of Homo sapiens (300000 BCE)
- Split between humans and chimpanzees (7000000 BCE)
- Extinction of the Neanderthals (40000 BCE)
- Homo floresiensis, the island 'hobbits' (100000 BCE)
- Last woolly mammoths die on Wrangel Island (2000 BCE)
Around 2580000 BCE
- First stone tools (Oldowan) (2600000 BCE)
- Homo habilis emerges (2400000 BCE)