The Ice Age

You may have watched and enjoyed the Ice Age movies and gotten a chuckle out of them.  But what was the Ice Age?  What did the terrain look like?  Why were animals so big?  Why did all the large animals go extinct?  Were there cavemen living during this time?  How did people populate North and South American?  When did people first arrive and what are the current theories of the peopling of the continents?  Join archaeologist Jeremy Freeman as we explore these questions and more on a journey through the Ice Age.

The Ice Age (also known as the Pleistocene Era) was a time when Earth’s climate was very different than today; the climate was significantly colder and drier.  During this period ice sheets covered about 30% of the globe with some parts of the ice being as much as 2 miles thick.  This period is also characterized by large animals known as megafauna.  This included animals such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, ground sloths, glyptodonts, large bison, and many others.  In this class students will learn about the geological events that led up to the Ice Age.  Students will learn about the evidence of glaciers and the causes of the Ice Age. Students will learn about the Great American Biotic Interchange.  Students will learn about Pleistocene megafauna and why size matters.  Finally, students will learn about the first people that came to North America and the archaeological evidence.  Students will learn about new evidence that is changing the previous theories about the first people in the western hemisphere as the dates continue to get pushed back.  And we will look at some of the archaeological sites with surprisingly old dates and what it means about the first people in North and South America.  This is a live version of the class.  The class will consist of a Powerpoint lecture, a video documentary about new and compelling evidence that is changing our perspective on the peopling of the New World, and a lab activity.

Topics include:  
From Pangea to Beringia
Evidence of glaciers
Causes of the Ice Age
Why size matters
Ice Age megafauna 
The peopling of a continent:  The archaeological evidence