I’ve managed to find someone overlaying the ice core records of the last few interglacials for their own purposes, and although I think this diagram is poorly calibrated in terms of absolute temperature I think it is a reasonable diagram for comparing stability:
It certainly looks to a first glance like our interglacial is significantly FLATTER in terms of average temperatures (in the particular place in Antarctica that this core was taken) than those of the last 500,000 years. The ~23k year age of the reported seeds falls in the middle of the flattish bit of the red line before the rise at the start of the interglacial.
Interesting question if there is a hysteresis to agriculture.
Thanks, fascinating!
I’ve managed to find someone overlaying the ice core records of the last few interglacials for their own purposes, and although I think this diagram is poorly calibrated in terms of absolute temperature I think it is a reasonable diagram for comparing stability:
https://oz4caster.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/interglacial-warm-period-comparison.gif?w=750&h=532
It certainly looks to a first glance like our interglacial is significantly FLATTER in terms of average temperatures (in the particular place in Antarctica that this core was taken) than those of the last 500,000 years. The ~23k year age of the reported seeds falls in the middle of the flattish bit of the red line before the rise at the start of the interglacial.
Interesting question if there is a hysteresis to agriculture.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748