Hey there!
Welcome to Life Noggin.
We’re going to try our hand at surviving in another famous period of history— the
ice ages!
So, just how hard would it have been to survive during an ice age?
Well, just step outside and find out!
That’s because the Earth is in an ice age right now — one of at least five that we
know about.
Well… kinda.
Depends on who you ask and what your definition of “ice age” is.
A general definition of an ice age is a period of time — potentially lasting millions of
years — where you have colder global temperatures and glacial expansion across the Earth’s
surface.
Within that, you have cycles of “glacial periods” and “interglacial periods”.
Glacial periods are colder and have a greater ice sheet presence, while the interglacial
periods are warmer and more like the Earth is now.
We’re currently in an interglacial period called the Holocene.
The confusion here is that some people refer to the combination of these glacial-interclagical
cycles as ice ages, while others specifically just call the glacial periods ice ages.
But either way you slice it, I bet you’re more concerned about surviving those glacial
periods.
So let’s look at the Pleistocene Epoch — the most recent glacial period.
If you were living back then, the first thing you’d probably have to deal with is the
weather.
On average, global temperatures were about 5 to 10 degrees Celsius colder than they are
today.
That might not seem like a lot at first, but that can mean the difference between the snow
melting or not during the summer, especially in the more northern regions.
According to the CDC, there were over 1500 hypothermia-related deaths back in 2010 in
the US alone.
Imagine how much surviving the cold would have been a problem back in a glacial period.
After you try and keep yourself warm, you’d probably need to be concerned about the animals.
There were some animals that didn’t really pose a threat, like deer and squirrels not
too dissimilar from the ones we have now.
Maybe you could use those for food or clothes to keep warm if you broke out your hunting
skills.
But with the rather… limited tools of the time, even the best hunters would find it
hard to survive against the infamous saber-toothed cats that used to roam the Earth.
Saber-toothed cats were similar in size to the lions and tiger of today, but with more
muscular builds and long, dagger-like canines.
If you do manage to escape, you better watch out for the giant short-faced bears.
These ice age bears had stumpy faces and broad muzzles to go along with their extremely large
bodies.
They likely stood over 3 meters tall on their hind legs and weighed in at around 700 kilograms.
These bears were the largest land carnivores of their time, though there is some speculation
on whether or not they were actually omnivores.
Hey, even if they did also eat plants, still not somebody you want to mess with!
And just like how your hunter’s tools back then weren’t up to the caliber of today,
the lack of medicine and antibiotics left you pretty open to bacteria and diseases.
What’s really quite terrifying is that due to rising global temperatures, you might not
even need to step back in time to come into contact with some of the biological threats
of the Pleistocene.
That’s because ice and permafrost soils, which have been frozen for thousands of years,
are melting, releasing ancient bacteria and viruses.
For instance, scientists recently uncovered a giant virus that had been buried for 30,000
years in Siberian ice only to find that it was still infectious.
Luckily for you humans, it only infects amoebae, but the implications are still pretty scary
for what else could be dormant down there in the ice.
Oooh look at that!
We've uncovered a frozen sponsor in the ice!
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Thanks guys!
So, is there another time period that you want us to explore?
Let us know in the comment section below and your suggestion could become a future episode.
Curious to know the dangerous thing that’s hiding in the North Pole?
Check out this video!
this was one of the most distant sightings of this type of pollution up north — only
around 1,600 kilometers from the north pole itself.
We’re only really learning about this now because scientists couldn’t get to the area
before because of ice in the sea blocking the way.
As always my name is Blocko!
This has been Life Noggin!
Don’t forget to keep on thinking.