The
warm Interglacial Epochs as a rule took 10 % from the time of the Glacial Epoch. But they
still were a part of the Ice Age, therefore their climate was rather cold, and significant
ice masses were saved in high mountains and poles. The climate of the
Interglacial Epochs was more cold, than the climate of the earliest period of the
planet history.
The Holocene - period in which we are living now - is considered as Interglacial
Epoch too. It began, while the climate of the Earth began to warm and the glaciers began
to thaw, 16-18 thousand years ago. The territory of Siberia released of ice 10
thousand years ago. Just at this time the beginning of new period became, which
suddenly changed the Human life and the Nature, surrounding him.
And the warming of the climate continued up to the Holocene. In connection with a
warming still before the Holocene the vegetation of tundra and steppe began to disappear,
and on its place the wood zone from coniferous (fir, pine, cembra pine, larch) and
deciduous (birch, asp) species of trees was formed.
In the further warming of the climate in the Holocene the wood zone took also most
northern areas of Siberia. Then, when it became a little cold, tundra became woodless
here. In the place of wood-steppe and southern part of modern taiga in the
south of Siberia, steppes with dry hot summer and cold dry winter widely
extended. Many small-sized lakes dried up, even large lakes reduced their sizes, the
rivers became shallow, many of them at this time built new channel.
The large herbivorous animals of the Pleistocene - mammoths, rhinoceroses, bisons
– begun gradually to extinct because of thawing of glaciers and warming of the
climate. They could not survive neither in woods, nor in steppes, as there was not
enough forages for them. They went to the north after the glacier, but also in the north
the nature changed too, and 10 thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Holocene, the
mammoths completely died out in Siberia.
At this time, the very favorable period happened to Man in Siberia, he
succeeded in settling on the whole territory of Siberia, and he arrived at the
shores of the Ice Ocean. And many kinds of human activity were changed also. Bows and an
arrows, fishing tackles and a boats, a new skill of stone processing appeared in
Siberia. The new stage came, the Neolithic, that in translation means "the new
stone age ".
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