Archaeologists Recognize Past Climate Change

Geologists are not the only scientists who study and measure past climate change. Archaeologists continually learn more about climate change and how it greatly influenced human evolution and the growth of civilization. The following article is an excellent example of this.

Of course the cause of these often dramatic and rapid climate changes, both warming and cooling, had little to do with human activity and certainly nothing to do with the burning of "fossil fuels" like coal, oil, and gas. How these indisputable facts escape modern climate "modelers" who predict "catastrophic" global warming or climate change is a shocking oversight. Carbon dioxide emissions from "fossil fuels" had nothing to do with these changes, not then, and not now.

The following article adds to our knowledge of how ancient man evolved during the last Ice Age and followed the melting glaciers northward, dealing with constant climate change and rising sea levels. As these early humans moved they followed the animals they hunted for the meat needed to survive. This is all clear beyond a doubt. Sorry PETA, but humans evolved and survived by eating meat.
Peter

14,000-year-old hunting kit found in Scotland
Tools may have been used to hunt and prepare big game from the region
By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery Channel (source)
Archaeologists have just identified the oldest evidence for humans in Scotland, a fairly sophisticated 14,000-year-old toolkit that may have been used to hunt and prepare big game from the region.

According to a report in the latest British Archaeology, the flint artifacts constitute the most northern evidence for the earliest people in Britain.

Alan Saville, senior curator of Earliest Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, worked on the project. He told Discovery News that the toolkit find is "exciting" for two main reasons.
"Firstly, it pushes back the earliest occupation of Scotland by some 3,000 years, and is the first real evidence for Upper Paleolithic open-air settlement occupation north of the English Midlands," he said.

"Secondly, it appears to represent a technological variant which has not been recognized anywhere else in Britain," he added, explaining that the style of the tools matches hunting implements from southern Denmark and northern Germany.

It's now believed people from those regions made their way to Scotland via a large land bridge called Doggerland, which connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during the last ice age. The individuals in this case likely belonged to the Hamburg culture, known for its reindeer-hunting prowess.

Early Scotland supported herds of reindeer, along with mammoths, rhinos, horses and other large animals. The climate "fluctuated wildly" at the end of the ice age, resulting in more moderate temperatures, but also icy cold snaps that caused the reappearance of glaciers in the highlands.

Scientists unearthed the prehistoric tools in a field at Howburn Farm, Elsrickle, South Lanarkshire, in the southern part of Scotland.
"The tool types involve particularly a couple of tanged points (projectile heads), but also burins, end-of-blade scrapers, and a piercer of so-called Zinken-type, as well as there being evidence for a certain type of blade-core preparation technique known as en eperon," Saville said.

A burin was a flaked rock tool with a chisel-like edge probably used to remove flesh from bone. "Eperon" means "spur" in French. Here it refers to a blade with a thick-ended butt at one end.
The toolkit suggests there were at least two major technologies in early Britain: Hamburgian and Creswellian. The latter was characterized by "Cheddar points," tools with trapezoidal-backed blades.

Saville thinks early hunters followed migrating herds of big game beasts, "and that human groups would follow these migrations of what was a major food source for the time."
He added, "We have no way of calculating numbers or densities, but the general assumption must be that inhabitation was low-level and sporadic."

Archaeologist Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, suggested to Discovery News that the nature of this find — researchers simply digging up flint tools at a Scottish farm — shows "what you can do without a lot of expensive technology or lengthy project designs." He said he made similar discoveries "while still at school walking over ploughed fields."
Residents and visitors to Scotland might therefore do well to look downward while walking, as they could stumble upon the next big archaeological find.
"In Scotland now," Pitts said, "the search is on for sites of this age with well-preserved stratigraphy that would hold out hope for seeing just what these people (the first Scots) then were doing."

What Causes Ice Ages To Begin And End?

Here is an excellent summary of the causes of the beginnings and endings of ice ages. Since Ice Ages and their associated warming periods, or interglacials, are the most extreme climate changes the Earth goes through, it is important to note that there is NO mention of atmospheric carbon dioxide playing a role.

It seems the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere responds to changes in temperature. When the oceans warm, they release CO2 and it increases in the atmosphere. When the oceans cool, they absorb more CO2. Mankind's miniscule contribution of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels seems to literally have no affect at all on climate change. The author of this short essay is a very accomplished glacial scientist and ecologist and author. I wonder why he isn't speaking out about the myth of man-caused global warming?
Peter

source:

What causes ice-ages?
Fluctuations in the amount of insolation (incoming solar radiation) are the most likely cause of large-scale changes in Earth's climate during the Quaternary. In other words, variations in the intensity and timing of heat from the sun are the most likely cause of the glacial/interglacial cycles. This solar variable was neatly described by the Serbian scientist, Milutin Milankovitch, in 1938. There are three major components of the Earth's orbit about the sun that contribute to changes in our climate. First, the Earth's spin on its axis is wobbly, much like a spinning top that starts to wobble after it slows down. This wobble amounts to a variation of up to 23.5 degrees to either side of the axis. The amount of tilt in the Earth's rotation affects the amount of sunlight striking the different parts of the globe. The greater the tilt, the stronger the difference in seasons (i.e., more tilt equals sharper differences between summer and winter temperatures). The range of motion in the tilt (from left-of-center to right-of-center and back again) takes place over a period of 41,000 years. As a result of a wobble in the Earth's spin, the position of the Earth on its elliptical path changes, relative to the time of year. This phenomenon is called the precession of equinoxes. The cycle of equinox precession takes 23,000 years to complete. In the growth of continental ice sheets, summer temperatures are probably more important than winter.

How does the ice build up?
Throughout the Quaternary period, high latitude winters have been cold enough to allow snow to accumulate. It is when the summers are cold, (i.e., summers that occur when the sun is at its farthest point in Earth's orbit), that the snows of previous winters do not melt completely. When this process continues for centuries, ice sheets begin to form. Finally, the shape of Earth's orbit also changes. At one extreme, the orbit is more circular, so that each season receives about the same amount of insolation. At the other extreme, the orbital ellipse is stretched longer, exaggerating the differences between seasons. The eccentricity of Earth's orbit also proceeds through a long cycle, which takes 100,000 years. Major glacial events in the Quaternary have coincided when the phases of axial tilt, precession of equinoxes and eccentricity of orbit are all lined up to give the northern hemisphere the least amount of summer insolation.
What makes the ice melt when the glaciation is over?

Major interglacial periods have occurred when the three factors line up to give the northern hemisphere the greatest amount of summer insolation. The last major convergence of factors giving us maximum summer warmth occurred 11,000 years ago, at the transition between the last glaciation and the current interglacial, the Holocene. During the late Pleistocene, the Rocky Mountain regions of Canada and the regions farther west were almost engulfed in the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, while most of Canada east of the Rockies and the north-central and northeastern United States were covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The divide between the two ice sheets lay east of the Rockies, with the two ice bodies meeting near the U.S.-Canadian border in eastern Montana. The Laurentide ice sheet is thought to have been as much as two miles thick at the center.
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Scott A. Elias is a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, and a research associate of the University of Alaska Museum. He is the author of Ice-Age History of Alaskan National Parks (1995) and Quaternary Insects and their Environments (1994), published by Smithsonian Institution Press.