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Thursday 30 July 2015

Sea level 20,000 years ago


 I came across this very striking image which shows in red the area which is currently inundated but which was dry land at the peak of the Devensian glacial episode c 20,000 years ago.  In Britain, the North Sea, Scandinavia and the Baltic, large parts of this "dry" area were ice-covered, and because of the isostatic depression of the land surface under the weight of ice, the sea was actually able to penetrate across the boundary between the area shown in red and the area shown in light blue.  As ever, things in reality were a good deal more complex than they appear in nice simple illustrations like this one.......

3 comments:

Ali Gür said...

Persian Gulf was dry land at that time. Your incomplete map prevents us to understand the "food myth" of Mesopotamian origin.

BRIAN JOHN said...

Not my map -- as I say, things were a great deal more complex in reality, especially if to try to factor in tectonic uplift and downwarping....

Ali Gür said...

Sorry for typo above... it would be "flood myth"... There is nothing complex in Persian Gulf in "reality"... We've thousands of tablets about life, culture, climate and geography of pre-Sumer era... Ziusudra, Atra-hasis, Enugma Elish and Gilgamesh epics tell us a lot more than "modern" bloggers if you know how to read them...