The Ice Age: An Introduction

Description of the Ice Age
The Ice Age was a time when much of the northern hemisphere was covered with ice. In North America there was the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of Canada and parts of the United States. This ice sheet was probably 1-2 miles thick. The Cordelleran Ice Sheet covered the western coast of Alaska, and Canada. In Europe there were the Scandinavian Ice Sheet and the Barents Ice Sheet and the Kara Ice Sheet. The Antarctic was covered with its own ice sheet. Over the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic, ice covered the water. The high mountains were capped with ice and glaciers came down their sides. Even in the tropics this was true. Most of the world was drier than today, but some places were wetter. These included southern California and North Africa.

Evidence for an Ice Age
So how do scientists know where the ice was? Today, glaciers are remnants of the great ice sheets of the past. Glaciers and ice sheets leave behind similar geophysical characteristics. These include seven different items. Striations are scratches left behind by the rocks that are carried along under the ice as it moves. Moraines are the rocks that are pushed ahead of the ice and left behind when the ice retreats. Erratics are boulders that are carried on top of the ice and left behind on high ledges when the ice melts. Drumlins are places where the ice pressed the ground down and the hole remains after the ice leaves. Eskers are formed by dirt that was carried along by water melting off the ice. Drumlins are piles of dirt that were deformed by the moving ice into a teardrop shape. U-shaped valleys are flat bottomed valleys formed by the moving ice.
There are also hints in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica and in the sediment cores of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Cause of the Ice Age
Evolutionists have a difficult time explaining the Ice Age. The problem is that there are two conflicting conditions for an Ice Age. First you need cool summers so that the snow and ice from the winter does not melt. Secondly, you need warm weather so that the water will evaporate and give lots of snowfall. With uniformitarian ideas, this is almost impossible.
However, the Flood of Noah’s day explains this well. The volcanoes during and after the Flood would have left much dust in the atmosphere. The earth’s surface would have been almost bare of vegetation. The wind which dried the surface of the earth would also have cooled it off. Together these three things would make the land much cooler than today.
At the same time, the volcanoes and the tectonic activity would have greatly warmed the oceans. The warm oceans would create a great deal of moisture which would be blown over the cold land. Warm moisture over cold land would fall as snow or ice. This could cause the Ice Age. Probably the Ice Age began soon after the Flood and reached its maximum in 500 years. It then began to melt and was basically at today’s levels in 50 years.

Impact of the Ice Age
Job lived about 300 years after the Flood. This would probably have been during the Ice Age. In Job 38:22-30, God talks about hail, snow, ice, and the freezing of the deep (ocean). If Job lived during the Ice Age, he might have known people who had seen the great walls of ice in Northern Europe
As the people traveled away from Babel, anyone traveling northward would have soon found the climate becoming inhospitable. The cold would have made it difficult for plants to grow, and the animals would probably migrate making hunting hard. Lack of sunlight combined with a shortage of fruit would have caused rickets, the disease that shaped Neandertal’s body.
The water in the ice sheets would have come out of the oceans, lowering their level and forming a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. This would have allowed the Native Americans to travel from Babel to North America. It is possible it also made migration throughout the Pacific islands easier also.
The area around Babel, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt for example, would have had excellent climate for rapid growth, as is seen in the early civilizations in this area.