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{{B}}The Ice Age{{/B}} Twenty thousand years ago, the earth was held in control by relentlessly (不宽容地) probing fingers of ice that drew power from frigid strongholds in the north and crept southwestward to bury forests, fields, and mountains. Landscapes that were violated by the slowly moving glaciers(冰川 )would carry the scars of this advance far into the future. Temperatures dropped deeply, and land surfaces in many parts of the world were depressed by the unrelenting weight of the thrusting ice. At the same time, so much was drawn from the oceans to form these huge glaciers that sea levels around the world fell by three hundred and fifty feet, and large areas of the continental shelf became dry land. This period of the Earth's history had come to be called the Ice Age. In all, about eleven million square miles of land were covered with ice. The Ice Age terminated about fourteen thousand years ago when the ice sheets began to retreat. It took about seven thousand years for the ice to retreat to its present level. |