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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Ice Age
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Term commonly used to mean the most recent of several glacial periods in which the cooling of the earth resulted in the polar ice cap extending far southward. A related and equally significant effect was the sinking of the sea level, as more of the earth's water was piled high as ice. In the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago, the ice cap reached almost to the south of Britain (to a line roughly between the Bristol Channel and East Anglia) and dry land joined England to France between Dover and Calais. Humans crossed from the continent and lived in caves, hunting the large hairy mammals such as the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros which thrived in those conditions but became extinct with the thaw. The cycles of ice ages are not fully understood, but the current estimate is that the next one will begin in about 23,000 years.
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