Volta
Naturec. 11,700 years ago

End of the last ice age

Also called: Holocene, Doggerland

About 11,700 years ago the last ice age ended and the present warm epoch, the Holocene, began. Meltwater raised the sea and drowned Beringia, the Yellow Sea plain and Doggerland, making today’s coastlines.

The Bering Strait from orbit — dry land joining Siberia and Alaska in the ice age
The Bering Strait from orbit — dry land joining Siberia and Alaska in the ice age

NASA/GSFC/JPL/MISR-Team · Public domain · Source

The ice sheets began to melt about 19,000 years ago, and after a brief cold snap (the Younger Dryas) the present interglacial, the Holocene, began about 11,700 years ago.

Meltwater raised the sea by nearly 120 m over some ten thousand years. Beringia was drowned about 11,000 years ago, separating America from Asia; the Yellow Sea plain became sea and Korea took roughly its present shape; Doggerland, between Britain and the continent, sank step by step and was almost gone by 8,000 years ago.

In the warm, stable climate farming began in several places, first in the Fertile Crescent of western Asia, and wandering hunters settled in villages.

Show on the map

The map in c. 11,700 years ago

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

Before and after

Earlier
c. 26,000 years ago Last Glacial Maximum
Later
AD 96 Pax Romana and the Five Good Emperors

Themes that include this event

  • The Human Journeyc. 300,000 years ago – 1300

    How modern humans, who appeared in Africa some 300,000 years ago, left Africa, met the Neanderthals, crossed the sea to Australia and the ice-age Bering land bridge to the Americas, and finally reached the remotest islands of the Pacific