Ice doom of DOOM!

[james_davis_nicoll]

The previous ice age lasted some 110,000 years and ended about 11,000 years ago. In other words, some 4,000 generations of humans knew of nothing but harsh winds and eternal snows. The apparently "normal'' periods between ice ages, like the present one, have averaged between 8,000 and 12,000 years. In short, the next ice age is overdue. The key question is when it will come. Can space be colonised by a sufficiently large population so that, when the next ice age strikes, it will not threaten the survival of the race?

Comments

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was bemused by how he basically ignored how all but a handful of our ancestors were wisely living well south of the "harsh winds and eternal snows." We hear a lot about the ice-enduring mammoth hunters because they lived in Europe, and European anthropologists can be kind of self-centered. But for every ice age mammoth hunter, there were probably 10 or 20 ice age people living in nice balmy places like Africa, India, South Asia, and so on.