San Antonio College Library

Step back in time by just 20,000 years and the world is a very different place. The Great Deep Freeze means that vast swathes of the northern hemisphere are covered by ice sheets, glaciers carve great valleys through the landscape, and continents merge as sea levels fall. Immense hairy beasts and ferocious predators rule, while spectacular animals migrate across vast, unfamiliar landscapes. Alongside them, as both prey and predator, humans face their...

Hypothesizes that the onset of the modern Ice Age in Africa caused climatic changes that forced human predecessors, the Australopithecus, out of the trees, allowing for the development of large-brained, land-dwelling Homo sapiens.

Though perhaps less frightening than earthquakes or volcanoes, ice is no less powerful a geologic force. What to most seems an occassional drivinghazard or sidewalk nuisance has at times in the Earth's history affected global weather conditions and brought about massive evolutionary change. In this book, the latest volume in the Changing Earth series, Erickson explains just how fortunate we are to live between ice ages.

The intriguing theory of a land bridge periodically linking Siberia and Alaska during the coldest pulsations of the Ice Ages had been much debated since Jose de Acosta, a Spanish missionary working in Mexico and Peru, first proposed the idea of a connection between the continents in 1590. But proof of the land bridge -- now named Beringia, after eighteenth-century Danish explorer Vitus Bering -- eluded scientists until an inquiring geologist named...

After their epic journey across Europe, Ayla and Jondalar have reached his home, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone age settlement in the region known today as southwest France. Jondalar's family greet him warmly, but they are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back, with her strange accent and her tame wolf and horses.

Working to defend the freedom of his people from multiple enemies including the Khanate empire, commander Sam Monroe forges a shaky alliance with the queen of a trade-drivin nation, the conditions of which involve Sam's marriage to the queen's daughter.

From the Publisher: More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the...

"This book provides a new look at the climatic history of the last 2.6 million years during the ice age, a time of extreme climatic fluctuations that have not yet ended. This period also coincides with important phases of human development from Neanderthals to modern humans, both of whom existed side by side during the last cold stage of the ice age. The ice age has seen dramatic expansions of glaciers and ice sheets, although this has been interspersed...

Considers the land, the fresh water, the surrounding sea, the ice, and the climate of northern North America during the past 20,000 years, and how life found its way into this strange landscape. Also considers how the fossil evidence is interpreted.

"In this book, leading scientists weave a compelling story out of the most up-to-date discoveries in different fields of Ice Age research." "As the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago, our ancestors faced a staggering sea-level rise of 120 metres, far in excess of the relatively modest rise predicted for the 21st century. The final chapter issues a stark warning about the future of our planet and the consequences of our profligate lifestyles." "Magnificently...