Holocene in the context of Geological event

The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in humans. It is followed by the Mesolithic.

Anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) are believed to have emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago. It has been argued by some that their ways of life changed relatively little from that of archaic humans of the Middle Paleolithic, until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked increase in the diversity of artefacts found associated with modern human remains. This period coincides with the most common date assigned to expansion of modern humans from Africa throughout Asia and Eurasia, which may have contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals.

The South Aegean Volcanic Arc is a volcanic arc in the South Aegean Sea formed by plate tectonics. The prior cause was the subduction of the African plate beneath the Eurasian plate, raising the Aegean arc across what is now the North Aegean Sea. In the Holocene, the process of back-arc extension began, probably stimulated by pressure from the Arabian plate compressing the region behind the arc. The extension deformed the region into its current configuration. First, the arc moved to the south and assumed its arcuate configuration. Second, the Aegean Sea opened behind the arc because the crust was thinned and weakened there. Third, magma broke through the thinned crust to form a second arc composed of a volcanic chain. And finally, the Aegean Sea plate broke away from Eurasia in the new fault zone to the north.

The extension is still ongoing. The current southern Aegean is one of the most rapidly deforming regions of the Himalayan-Alpine mountain belt. It is approximately 450 km long and 20 km to 40 km wide and runs from the Isthmus of Corinth on the Greek mainland to the Bodrum peninsula on the Turkish mainland.

The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known as the last glacial cycle, occurred from the end of the Last Interglacial to the beginning of the Holocene, c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago, and thus corresponds to most of the timespan of the Late Pleistocene. It thus formed the most recent period of what is colloquially known as the "Ice Age".

The LGP is part of a larger sequence of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation which started around 2,588,000 years ago and is ongoing. The glaciation and the current Quaternary Period both began with the formation of the Arctic ice cap. The Antarctic ice sheet began to form earlier, at about 34 Mya (million years ago), in the mid-Cenozoic (Eocene–Oligocene extinction event), and the term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase with the current glaciation. The previous ice age within the Quaternary is the Penultimate Glacial Period, which ended about 128,000 years ago, was more severe than the Last Glacial Period in some areas such as Britain, but less severe in others.

The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.

Archaeological data indicate that the domestication of various types of plants and animals happened in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene around 11,700 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age. It was humankind's first historically verifiable transition to agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of foods available, resulting in a decrease in the quality of human nutrition compared with that obtained previously from hunting and foraging. However, because food production became more efficient, it released humans to invest their efforts in other activities and was thus "ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth".

An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environments and are an example of an ecotone. Estuaries are subject both to marine influences such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water, and to fluvial influences such as flows of freshwater and sediment. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world.

Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea level began to rise about 10,000–12,000 years ago. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns. They can have many different names, such as bays, harbors, lagoons, inlets, or sounds, although some of these water bodies do not strictly meet the above definition of an estuary and could be fully saline.

Planetary boundaries are a framework to describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system. Beyond these limits, the environment may not be able to continue to self-regulate. This would mean the Earth system would leave the period of stability of the Holocene, in which human society developed.

These nine boundaries are climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, biogeochemical flows in the nitrogen cycle, excess global freshwater use, land system change, the erosion of biosphere integrity, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading.

The Holocene or Anthropocene extinction is an ongoing extinction event caused by human activity during the current geological epoch, impacting diverse families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, as well as both terrestrial and marine species. It is sometimes also called the sixth mass extinction (or seventh if counting the Capitanian and End Permian extinctions separately).

Current extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates and are accelerating. The Holocene extinction was preceded by the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions (lasting from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago), in which many large mammals – including 81% of megaherbivores – went extinct, a decline attributed at least in part to human (anthropogenic) activities. There continue to be strong debates about the relative importance of anthropogenic factors and climate change, but a recent review concluded that there is little evidence for a major role of climate change and "strong" evidence for human activities as the principal driver. Examples from regions such as New Zealand, Madagascar, and Hawaii have shown how human colonization and habitat destruction have led to significant biodiversity losses.

Anthropocene is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to accelerating geophysical and biochemical changes that characterize the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth. Originally a proposal for a new geological epoch following the Holocene, it was rejected as such in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

The term has been used in research relating to Earth's water, geology, geomorphology, landscape, limnology, hydrology, ecosystems and climate. The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen, for example, in regards to biodiversity loss, and climate change. Various start dates for the Anthropocene have been proposed, ranging from the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution (12,000–15,000 years ago), to as recently as the 1960s. The biologist Eugene F. Stoermer is credited with first coining and using the term anthropocene informally in the 1980s; Paul J. Crutzen re-invented and popularized the term.

The Wisconsin glaciation, also called the Wisconsin glacial episode, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex, peaking more than 20,000 years ago. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cordillera; the Innuitian ice sheet, which extended across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; the Greenland ice sheet; and the massive Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered the high latitudes of central and eastern North America. This advance was synchronous with global glaciation during the last glacial period, including the North American alpine glacier advance, known as the Pinedale glaciation. The Wisconsin glaciation extended from about 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, between the Sangamonian Stage and the current interglacial, the Holocene. The maximum ice extent occurred about 25,000–21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the Late Wisconsin in North America.

This glaciation radically altered the geography north of the Ohio River, creating the Great Lakes. At the height of the Wisconsin Episode glaciation, the ice sheet covered most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New England, as well as parts of Idaho, Montana, and Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie, northern New Jersey and in New York City's Central Park, the grooves left in rock by these glaciers can be easily observed. In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta a suture zone between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress Hills, North America's northernmost point that remained south of the continental ice sheets. During much of the glaciation, sea level was low enough to permit land animals, including humans, to occupy Beringia (the Bering Land Bridge) and move between North America and Siberia. As the glaciers retreated, glacial lakes were breached in great glacial lake outburst floods such as the Kankakee Torrent, which reshaped the landscape south of modern Chicago as far as the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

The 4.2-kiloyear event (also known as the 4.2 ka event) was an aridification event (long-term drought), 4,200 years ago (4,200 years BP). It was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch. It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch.

Starting around 2200 BC, it most likely lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization, with some of its population moving southeast to follow the movement of their desired habitat, as well as the migration of Indo-European-speaking people into India. Some scientists disagree with that conclusion, citing evidence that the event was not a global drought and did not happen in a clear timeline.

A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. The Holocene is the current interglacial. A time with no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state.

This is a list of volcanoes that have had large explosive eruptions during the Holocene (since about 11,650 years Before Present), with a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 5 or higher, or a plume height of at least 30 km. To date, there have been no eruptions with a confirmed VEI of 8 in the Holocene; and only a few VEI-7 eruptions are thought to have occurred during this time: the most recent was the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora.

The Last Interglacial was the interglacial period that began about 130,000 years ago at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period, and ended about 115,000 years ago at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period. It corresponds to Marine Isotope Stage 5e. It was the second-to-latest interglacial of the current Ice Age, the most recent being the Holocene which extends to the present day (having followed the Last Glacial Period). During the Last Interglacial, the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. The Last Interglacial was one of the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, with temperatures comparable to and at times warmer (by up to on average 2 degrees Celsius) than the contemporary Holocene interglacial, with the maximum sea level being up to 6 to 9 metres higher than at present, with global ice volume likely also being smaller than the Holocene interglacial.

The Last Interglacial is known as the Eemian in northern Europe (sometimes used to describe the global interglacial), Ipswichian in Britain, the Mikulino (also spelled Milukin) interglacial in Russia, the Kaydaky in Ukraine, the Valdivia interglacial in Chile, and the Riss-Würm interglacial in the Alps. Depending on how a specific publication defines the Sangamonian of North America, the Last Interglacial is equivalent to either all or part of it.

The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently defined as the time between c. 129,000 and c. 11,700 years ago. The late Pleistocene equates to the proposed Tarantian Age of the geologic time scale, preceded by the officially ratified Chibanian (commonly known as the Middle Pleistocene). The beginning of the Late Pleistocene is the transition between the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and the beginning of the Last Interglacial around 130,000 years ago (corresponding with the beginning of Marine Isotope Stage 5). The Late Pleistocene ends with the termination of the Younger Dryas, some 11,700 years ago when the Holocene Epoch began.

The term Upper Pleistocene is currently in use as a provisional or "quasi-formal" designation by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Although the three oldest ages of the Pleistocene (the Gelasian, the Calabrian and the Chibanian) have been officially defined, the late Pleistocene has yet to be formally defined.

An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene interglacial began at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,700 years ago.

The Quaternary (/kwəˈtɜːrnəri/ kwə-TUR-nər-ee, US also /ˈkwɒtərnɛri/ KWOT-ər-nerr-ee) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the Phanerozoic eon. It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.6 million years ago to the present. The Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene (2.6 million years ago to 12 thousand years ago) and the Holocene (12 thousand years ago to today); a proposed third epoch, the Anthropocene, was rejected in 2024 by IUGS, the governing body of the ICS.

The Quaternary is typically defined by the Quaternary glaciation, the cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets related to the Milankovitch cycles and the associated climate and environmental changes that they caused.