What Earth Actually Looked Like From The Sky in 10,000 BCE

Fly over Earth in 10,000 BCE and the planet below looks completely alien. The northern third of the world is buried under ice sheets two miles thick, covering what is now Canada, Scandinavia, and northern Asia. Temperatures run about ten degrees Fahrenheit colder than today, and the air holds far less carbon dioxide. All that ice locks up enormous amounts of water, so the oceans sit about 400 feet lower than today. Think of a bathtub drained partway — edges hidden under water suddenly appear as dry land. Asia connects to North America across a wide land bridge called Beringia. Britain connects to Europe across a place called Doggerland. The Persian Gulf is dry ground. Humans are walking across all of it. Meanwhile, the Sahara is a green savanna dotted with lakes and rivers. Only one to five million people — all hunter-gatherers — walk the entire planet. Entire communities may have lived on coastlines now sitting 400 feet underwater, and we have barely begun to look for them.