The Sea That Once Was

Abstract

When I started my career in biology, I understood that mankind is one of the few species on the planet capable of changing the global environment. At the end of the last great glaciation about 11,500–10,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), humans began to take up their position on what would be the great transformation of ecosystems wherever they set foot. Sea level began to rise again, as a result of the massive melting of the glaciers, in some places reaching tens of metres higher than previously, until quasi-stabilization about two or three thousand years ago.