The Ice Age
The term "Ice Age," known technically as the Pleistocene, refers to a period of marked climatic cooling that began some time before 1.5 million years ago. Within this period, there were many fluctuations between warmer and cooler conditions. The cooling trend was more intense during the past 500,000 years, when massive ice sheets descended from the polar region at intervals, only to retreat during subsequent warmer periods. The last major glacial advance, known in Europe as the Würm glaciation, began about 75,000 years ago and ended about 12,000 years ago. It is the last half of this advance that interests us here and that we will refer to as "the late Ice Age."
