Some 8200 years ago, a great sluice of meltwater from a now-vanished ice sheet pulsed into the North Atlantic, causing a mini-Ice Age that lasted for around 200 years. Across vast swathes of northern Europe, plant life began to change – broadleaf trees were outcompeted by hardier pines suited to the frigid temperatures – and animals and humans alike would have been forced to adapt to the sudden, drastic changes. Now, in a new study out today in Nature Ecology & Environment, archaeologists from the University of Oxford have opened a small, misty window into this early Holocene upheaval, to see how one community changed in response...
