ABSTRACT
Despite the harshness of late Ice Age climates, especially in northern latitudes, Homo sapiens adapted successfully to a remarkable range of global environments. The last 50,000 years of the Ice Age saw human settlement of the globe reach its premodern limits, with two major exceptions. The subarctic lands and eastern arctic regions of North America were mantled by ice and were uninhabitable until long after the Ice Age (see Chapter 6). The far offshore islands of the Pacific were not to be settled until much later, after the development of outrigger and twin-hulled offshore canoes and new navigational techniques that allowed seafarers to voyage far out of sight of land during the last 5,000 years of ancient times (see Chapter 12; see also Figure 4.1).
