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Would civilization be possible during ice age

galahad

galahad

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Civilization as we know it begun about 8-10 thousands years ago. But modern humans have existed far longer than that. And we had been out of Africa since over 70000 years ago. This also conicides with the ice age, for most of our history the Earths climate was very different. Permanent settlements, agriculture only started after end ic the ice age.

Which make me wonder why was there no civilization during the tens of thousands or years we lived in the ice age. Would it been posdible that late neolithic or early bronze age cultures would been possible ar least 25000 years ago?

Or is civilization a product of the unique conditions of inter glacial era. Without it we would still be neolithic hunter gatherers.
 
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The ice age climate was less stable than the interglacial climate; there were significant climate shifts on the order of centuries to millennia.

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercEUROPE.html

Interstadials. Sudden warm and moist phases occurred during the timespan of the last glacial phase, often taking the European climate from full-glacial (stadial) conditions to a climate about as warm as at present. Between 115,000 and 14,000 years ago, 24 of these warm events have so far been recognized from the Greenland ice core data (where they form part of a warm-cold pattern known as 'Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles'), although many lesser warming events also occurred (Dansgaard et al. 1993). From the speed of the climate changes recorded in the Greenland ice cap (Dansgaard et al. 1989), and by observation of the speed of change in sedimentation conditions on land, it is widely believed that the 'jump' in climate occurred over only a few decades. The interstadials lasted for varying spans of time, usually a few centuries to about 2,000 years (though the earliest ones, at Marine Isotope Stages 5a and 5c, lasted rather longer), before a rapid cooling returned conditions to their previous state.
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Stadials: brief intense cold phases

A number of sudden, intense cold and dry phases punctuate the climate history of Europe during the general period between about 110,000 and 11,000 14C y.a. against a background of relatively milder (though still generally colder and drier than present) conditions. The cold, arid phases show up in pollen records in both northern and southern Europe as sudden decreases in the percentage of tree pollen, and an influx of plants indicating cold, dry semi-desert or dry steppe conditions (e.g. in Spain; Burjachs & Julia 1994).
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Table 1 Timing of major Heinrich events during the last 130,000 years (ages in calender years after Bond et al., 1997 for H0- H3; after Bond et al., 1993 for H4- H6). These cold, dry phases in the North Atlantic probably each affected the European mainland too.

YD or H0 12.2 ka (calendar age)
H1 16.8
H2 24.1
H3 30.1
H4 35.9
H5 50.0
H6 66.0
YD: Younger Dryas
H: Heinrich event
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I suspect these climate shifts would have been very disruptive to any emerging farming culture, and to the sort of settled high population density gatherer culture that would be a logical precursor of a farming culture.
 
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Underwater archaeologists are starting to find evidence of settlements during the last glaciation. Sites off the coast of India have already yielded artifacts for study. The sad state of things though, is that mainstream archaeologists are derisive of evidence that disproves the current timeline of man. Until more open minded historians and archaeologists fill important positions the evidence to show this will continue to decay.
 
Probably not, the Cave hyenas would eat us all. That and the massive unstable climate and just how freaking dangerous nature was at the time. Even the Sloths could probably kill you.
 
I'm more curious as to the previous interglacials:

They didn't last that long, but they shouldn't need to. Agriculture got going basically as soon as the Holocene Interglacial began if not earlier, so presumably the same would've been possible previously... or was humanity being limited to Subsaharan Africa simply too restrictive?
 
Civilization could kick off from animal domestication pasturing and fishing without being reliant on cropping, much more resistant too climactic swings than crops.
 
What about ice age in southern hemisphere or near tropics ? Like south Africa or the Sahel region.
 
galahad said:
What about ice age in southern hemisphere or near tropics ? Like south Africa or the Sahel region.
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It's not just the cold, it's the dry. Arid areas generally expanded in colder climates, though there were exceptions (e.g. USA Southwest, Mousterian pluvial). This happened in the equatorial regions as well. A climate that was less stable in terms of temperature would presumably also have been less stable in terms of rainfall.
 
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