Last Glacial Maximum

The Last Glacial Maximum was the period in the most recent ice age when ice sheets reached their greatest extent and global temperatures were at their lowest. Vast ice sheets covered much of Canada, northern Europe and parts of Asia, and glaciers expanded in mountain ranges around the world. So much water was locked up in ice that sea level stood well over a hundred meters below today's, exposing land bridges such as Beringia between Siberia and Alaska and joining the British Isles to the continent. The climate was cold, dry and windy across large regions, and human populations retreated into refuges and adapted to harsh steppe-like landscapes. Warming began slowly afterward, and the ice sheets retreated over the following ten thousand years or so.

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