Lascaux cave paintings in what is now France date back to a time of great upheaval on Earth some 17,000 years ago. At that time, the world experienced an intense ice age, with snow and ice covering almost a quarter of the Earth’s surface. This period was the last Great Glacial Maximum, and while it was difficult for Paleolithic humans to survive, it wasn’t impossible. There are still some places that are not completely frozen, especially in southern Europe, including Lascaux. Many people go there to escape the cold and regroup while documenting their hunting expeditions.
As bad as the last ice age was, geological evidence found around the world points to a harsher and colder time on Earth. The Earth may have been covered in snow some 500 million years before the artists at Lascaux painted their caves. If these total “global glaciations” did occur, how did it affect life forms at the time? Did anything survive? What circumstances led to this phenomenon, and how did it end?
Fast-forward to 1913, and Australian geologist Douglas Mawson has finally returned to Australia after surviving a disastrous expedition to map Australia’s Antarctic coastline. A professor of geology, he was quick to theorize that Australia must have once been covered in ice to explain why mysterious rocks and other glacial deposits appeared in the sun-drenched middle of the outback.
His theory was eventually disproved when science announced that plate tectonics caused it. But the idea of a prehistoric ice-covered Australia persisted and evolved into an ice-covered planet, especially as other geological mysteries began to surface. These include 650-million-year-old glacial deposits found at sites that were once in the tropics, as well as “falling rocks,” or large boulders that look like they fell from high ground and may have once sat on top of melting icebergs.
But if ice and snow covered the entire world, life would not survive at all. or will it It is thought that while many of Earth’s cycles and processes have stopped due to freezing temperatures, Earth’s internal tectonic activity continues, causing earthquakes and volcanoes and forcing gases into the atmosphere, causing temperature changes even beyond.
These temperature fluctuations may have acted as an “evolutionary trigger” that drove simple organisms such as algae out of the ocean and across the ocean to become land plants. These simple plants would then evolve into more complex life forms; the rest is history.
“Snowball Earth” was supposed to be one of the most difficult and challenging times on Earth, but if the theory turns out to be true, Earth still finds a way to reshape itself, and for tenacious life, it still finds method development.
Directed by: David Kelly
