The Holocene begins
The Younger Dryas ends in a decade or two, and the warm stable epoch that allows everything else starts.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Greenland ice cores record the end of the Younger Dryas as an abrupt jump — around 10 degrees of warming within a few decades, with the change formally placed at 11,700 years before 2000. What follows is unusual: roughly 11,000 years of climate more stable than any comparable stretch in the ice core record. Agriculture, cities, writing and everything after them happen inside this window, and it is reasonable to think none of them was possible during the wild swings that preceded it.