© MPI f. Evolutionary AnthropologyThis boulder in the gravel pit Rehbach in Saxony, Germany, was transported from Scandinavia by glaciers 450,000 years ago.
New chronological data for the Middle Pleistocene glacial cycles push back the first glaciation and early human appearance in central Germany by about 100.000 years.
Using state-of-the-art dating techniques researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have obtained new chronological data for
the timing of the Elsterian and Saalian glacial cycles in central Germany. They found that the first Quaternary glaciation, which covered huge parts of Europe in ice, occurred as early as 450,000 years ago and not - as previously thought - around 350,000 years ago. The researcher further showed that
once these glaciers had retreated, the first people appeared in central Germany around 400,000 years ago.
Comment: While unseasonably cold weather, erratic seasons and extreme weather events don't always effect the average person, for a farmer it can mean delayed planting and therefore a shorter growing season, and worse, their entire crop destroyed by an unexpected frost. Increasingly this has been leading to food shortages which will very soon become a serious problem for the average person. This and much worse is to be expected as we enter an ice age: