Recent Ice Age

This site tells the story of the history of the universe. Click Earlier and Later to follow the story.
Note: Many facts have been simplified to make them easier to understand.
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30 million years ago, Antarctica drifted over the south pole and ice began to cover it, while India hit Asia to make the Himalayan Mountains.
Perhaps these were the events which started the climate on its long downward drift towards the ice age.We do not really know what causes an ice age.

By 25 million years ago much of the Earth was too cool and dry for trees and many forests were replaced by grassland.
Cows, sheep and goats evolved to live on grass and they spread. The horse family also evolved but with fewer types of animal.
The weather grew colder until an ice age started 3 million years ago. Glaciers spread from the north pole and from the mountains to cover much of the northern land. With so much water frozen into ice on land, sea level fell and dried out a lot more land than we see today.

Mammals evolved which could live on the ice. Woolly mammoth and other cold-loving mammals spread over northern lands.
More importantly from our point of view, humans began to spread across the Earth.

There were several interglacials within this ice age, like the one we are living through now. Most of the ice melted about 11 thousand years ago, starting this interglacial. The climate reached its warmest about 5000 years ago, when it was much warmer than today. Since then (except for a recent warming probably due to human produced greenhouse gases) the weather has been getting colder.