我将回答大多来自考古的角度;之前我不太了解古气候学第一人们开始制造石器。我知道他们是一些其他学科的基础,影响人类(前)的历史,但它可能会有所帮助。首先,即使再和老冷时期也提到“冰河时代[1]”,大多数人不理解“冰河世纪”,但随着时间我们的祖先在猎杀猛犸。这是“考古”的观点。如果你interrested年长的地质历史,乔院长的回答解释了“地质”的角度比我更好。从这个角度看,没有冰河时代结束了公元前10000年——在当前气候“大冰河时代”就小温和。告诉我几次在旧石器时代和古气候学课程,根据知识的当前状态,有52个寒冷和第四纪期间相同数量的暖期。我并没有试图找到更多的资源现在,我不确定是否寒冷的时期都可以归类为“冰河时代”。我不确定,但我认为[Bølling-Allerød间冰段)[2]被认为是一个温暖的时期和[新][3]可能是一个寒冷的时期。 If we divide the duration of quaternary by 52, we get around 50ky per cold + warm period; so either the 52 + 52 periods were longer and roughly regular, or Bølling-Allerød/ Younger Dryas drag the average length down, while ice ages lasting tens or hundreds thousands years drag the average up. Anyway, even if there were just four big Ice Ages during quaternary, as scientists expected few decades ago, they wouldn't last millions of years, and the rounding error would be much smaller than 10ky. Bølling-Allerød and Younger Dryas are especially relevant to your question, since they show that the last Ice Age (with maximum of glaciation around 20ky BP) didn't end suddenly, but that it ended for some 2000 years, then returned for some 1300 years and than ended for good (we usually mark this moment, around 11500 BP, as the beginning of Holocene). The prevailing theory is that the reason of the sudden cold shift is melting of a huge amount of ice, which decreased salinity of ocean water, slowing the Gulf stream down. So there is some "rounding error", but we are out of its scope - I don't think there is enough ice to slow down the Gulf stream enough to trigger something that could be called "ice age" in the "archaeological" sense. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B8lling-Aller%C3%B8d [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas