We have previously learned that humans may have walked the land as early as ~500,000 years ago. However, the Quaternary Glaciation began around 2,588,000 years ago and ended around 128,000 years ago. I love the abbreviation for this: Last Glaciation Period – aka the LGP (in English, obviously). During this “Ice Age,” I think it’s important to remember the conditions varied geographically across the planet. I admittedly need to stop picturing the Star Wars scene wherein Luke Skywalker kills whatever fictional animal he’s riding and crawls inside (which I think would get colder because it’s wet, but that’s neither here nor there).
As is often the case with history, multiple scenarios occur concurrently. Yes, generations of human-like beings live, but all along, the earth continues to turn, geological plates move, mountains form, and etc. whereas it might be easier to notice events independently, they typically occur concurrently. Indeed, we tend to notice movement of geological plates in earthquakes, but the plates move all the time. The typical movement is comparatively insignificant, so we are not likely to notice it.
Anyway, up until now, we tell the story of pre-history primarily based on scarce archaeological evidence and typically stories modern researchers tell to make sense of disparate facts. Indeed, some of the evidence was gathered decades or centuries ago, so the stories we often know are interpretations of interpretations. Thinking about this takes me back to stories I’ve read about archaeologists attempting to introduce false narratives. The stories we can even know are the ones that got discovered! Fortunately, carbon dating can catch some fraudulence, but I remain unconvinced that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men experts have the information necessary to catch all the fraud. This situation reminds me of two similar things. One: I am reminded of the movie, Vertigo. A large redwood tree has been cut down, and a segment of it is on display so people can see the rings. A woman places her finger on one ring and says, “Here I was born,” and then touches another ring and says, “And here I died” (which would, of course, be impossible, but it’s a good cinematic device). The other thing I remember was I learned of an astronomer who thought he had detected a planet near a distant star because he detected a “wobble.” However, he subsequently discovered his telescope lenses were warped, so he was probably mistaking that for a wobble. Some time after that, he died. However, after his death, the wobble was determined to be legitimate, suggesting there was indeed a planet near that star. The point here being that we do not even have the technology to validate some hypotheses, and even when we do, it’s often not applied properly to produce reliable results.
Once again, I find myself feeling grateful for all the rigor that does exist, but I am — yet again — seeing some major blind spots and a lot of “trust me” comprising the story of history.