Ice Age

Most people believe the ice age ended 13,000 years ago. The truth is that we are still in an ice age. At present we are in an interglacial period of the Pliocene-Quaternary ice age, which began over two million years ago. At any rate, this interglacial period did indeed begin some 13,000 years ago. The Earth began to warm and human tribes began to emerge from the refugee areas they had occupied in Europe and Asia.

Unlike the other animals moving over the face of the warming earth, man was armed with three
technological advances not shared by any other animal. He could do more than simply throw sticks and stones-he could fashion complex tools from many different materials. He could control and recreate fire. He had also acquired the skill of domesticating other animals using them for his own purposes.

With these skills, achieved primarily because of man's unusual brain capacity, the human race quickly conquered the entire world. While many species have gone extinct over the millennia for a variety of reasons, man is undoubtedly responsible for the extinction of numerous creatures which disppear from the fossil record at this time. He had undergone a metamorphosis and no longer needed to hide from any other animal. Now every other animal would fear him.

But these three advantages were only the beginning of a concatenation of developments which would continue right up to the present time in ever increasing rapidity.