Over the past million years, an ice age has occurred on Earth about every 100,000 years. This cycle actually exists, and different groups scientists at different times tried to find the reason for its existence. True, there is no prevailing point of view on this issue yet.

Over a million years ago, the cycle was different. glacial period was replaced by climate warming about once every 40 thousand years. But then the periodicity of the onset of glaciers changed from 40 thousand years to 100 thousand years. Why did this happen?

Experts from Cardiff University offered their own explanation for this change. The results of the work of scientists were published in the authoritative publication Geology. According to experts, the main reason for the change in the frequency of the onset of ice ages is the oceans, or rather, their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

By studying the sediments that make up the bottom of the oceans, the team found that the concentration of CO 2 varies from layer to layer of sediments with a period of just 100,000 years. It is likely, scientists say, that excess carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere by the surface of the ocean with further binding of this gas. As a result, the average annual temperature gradually decreases, and another ice age begins. And it so happened that the duration of the ice age more than a million years ago increased, and the cycle "heat-cold" became longer.

“It is likely that the oceans absorb and release carbon dioxide, and when there is more ice, the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making the planet colder. When there is little ice, the oceans release carbon dioxide, so the climate gets warmer,” says Professor Carrie Lear. “By studying the concentration of carbon dioxide in the remains of tiny creatures (here we mean sedimentary rocks - ed.), we learned that during periods when the area of ​​\u200b\u200bglaciers increased, the oceans absorbed more carbon dioxide, so we can assume that there is less of it in the atmosphere.

Seaweeds are said to have played a major role in the uptake of CO 2 since carbon dioxide is an essential component of the photosynthesis process.

Carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere from the ocean through upwelling. Upwelling or upwelling is a process in which the deep waters of the ocean rise to the surface. Most often observed at the western borders of the continents, where it moves colder, nutrient-rich waters from the depths of the ocean to the surface, replacing warmer, nutrient-poor ones. surface water. It can also be found in almost any area of ​​the oceans.

A layer of ice on the surface of the water prevents carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, so if a large part of the ocean freezes, this prolongs the duration of the ice age. “If we believe that the oceans emit and absorb carbon dioxide, then we must understand that a large amount of ice prevents this process. It's like a lid on the surface of the ocean,” says Professor Liar.

With an increase in the area of ​​glaciers on the ice surface, not only does the concentration of “warming” CO 2 decrease, but the albedo of those regions that are covered with ice also increases. As a result, the planet receives less energy, which means it cools even faster.

Now the Earth is in the interglacial warm period. The last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. Since then, the average annual temperature and sea level have been constantly rising, and the amount of ice on the surface of the oceans has been decreasing. As a result, according to scientists, a large amount of CO 2 enters the atmosphere. In addition, humans also produce carbon dioxide, and in huge quantities.

All this led to the fact that in September the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere increased to 400 parts per million. This figure has increased from 280 to 400 parts per million in just 200 years of industrial development. Most likely, CO 2 in the atmosphere will not decrease in the foreseeable future. All this should lead to an increase in the average annual temperature on Earth by about + 5 ° C in the next thousand years.

Specialists from the Department of Climate Studies at the Potsdam Observatory have recently built a model of the Earth's climate, taking into account the global carbon cycle. As the model showed, even with minimal carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet will not be able to increase. This means that the onset of the next ice age can move forward by at least 50-100 thousand years. So we have another change in the glacier-warm cycle ahead of us, this time man is responsible for it.

last ice age

During this era, 35% of the land was under the ice cover (compared to 10% at present).

The last ice age was not just a natural disaster. It is impossible to understand the life of planet Earth without considering these periods. In the intervals between them (known as interglacial periods), life flourished, but then once again the ice inexorably approached and brought death, but life did not completely disappear. Each ice age was marked by the struggle for the survival of different species, global climate changes occurred, and in the last of them a new species appeared, which became (over time) dominant on Earth: it was man.
ice ages
Ice ages are geological periods characterized by a strong cooling of the Earth, during which vast expanses earth's surface covered with ice, observed high level humidity and, of course, exceptional cold, as well as the lowest sea level known to modern science. There is no generally accepted theory regarding the causes of the onset of the ice age, however, since the 17th century, various explanations have been proposed. According to current opinion, this phenomenon was not caused by one cause, but was the result of the influence of three factors.

Changes in the composition of the atmosphere - a different ratio of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) and methane - have caused a sharp decline temperature. This is similar to what we now call global warming, but on a much larger scale.

The movements of the continents, caused by cyclical changes in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and in addition, a change in the angle of inclination of the planet's axis relative to the Sun, also had an impact.

The earth received less solar heat, it cooled, which led to glaciation.
The earth has experienced several ice ages. The largest glaciation occurred 950-600 million years ago in the Precambrian era. Then in the Miocene epoch - 15 million years ago.

The traces of glaciation that can be observed at the present time represent the legacy of the last two million years and belong to the Quaternary period. This period is best studied by scientists and is divided into four periods: Günz, Mindel (Mindel), Ries (Rise) and Würm. The latter corresponds to the last ice age.

last ice age
The Wurm stage of glaciation began approximately 100,000 years ago, reached its maximum after 18 thousand years, and began to decline after 8 thousand years. During this time, the thickness of the ice reached 350-400 km and covered a third of the land above sea level, in other words, three times more space than now. Based on the amount of ice that currently covers the planet, one can get some idea of ​​the area of ​​glaciation during that period: today glaciers occupy 14.8 million km2, or about 10% of the earth's surface, and during the ice age they covered an area of ​​44 .4 million km2, which is 30% of the Earth's surface.

Northern Canada was estimated to have covered 13.3 million km2 of ice, while 147.25 km2 is now under ice. The same difference is observed in Scandinavia: 6.7 million km2 in that period compared to 3910 km2 today.

The ice age began simultaneously in both hemispheres, although in the North the ice spread to more extensive areas. In Europe, the glacier captured most of the British Isles, northern Germany and Poland, and in North America, where the Wurm glaciation is called the "Wisconsin glacial stage", a layer of ice that descended from the North Pole covered all of Canada and spread south of the Great Lakes. Like the lakes in Patagonia and the Alps, they were formed on the site of recesses left after the melting of the ice mass.

The sea level dropped by almost 120 m, as a result of which large expanses that are currently covered with sea water were exposed. The significance of this fact is enormous, since large-scale human and animal migrations became possible: hominids were able to make the transition from Siberia to Alaska and move from continental Europe to England. It is possible that during the interglacial periods, the two largest ice massifs on Earth - Antarctica and Greenland - have undergone little change over the course of history.

At the peak of glaciation, the indicators of the average temperature drop varied significantly depending on the location: 100 ° C - in Alaska, 60 ° C - in England, 20 ° C - in the tropics and remained practically unchanged at the equator. Conducted studies of the last glaciations in North America and Europe, which occurred during the Pleistocene era, gave the same results in this geological region within the last two (approximately) million years.

The last 100,000 years are of particular importance for understanding the evolution of mankind. Ice ages have become a severe test for the inhabitants of the Earth. After the end of the next glaciation, they again had to adapt, learn to survive. When the climate became warmer, the sea level rose, new forests and plants appeared, the land rose, freed from the pressure of the ice shell.

The hominids turned out to have the most natural data to adapt to the changed conditions. They were able to move to areas with the most food resources, where the slow process of their evolution began.
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1.8 million years ago began the Quaternary (anthropogenic) period of the geological history of the earth, which continues to this day.

River basins expanded. Went fast development fauna of mammals, especially mastodons (which would later become extinct, like many other ancient species of animals), ungulates and higher monkeys. In this geological period of the history of the earth, a person appears (hence the word anthropogenic in the name of this geological period).

On Quaternary account for abrupt change climate throughout the European part of Russia. From a warm and humid Mediterranean, it turned into a temperate cold, and then into a cold Arctic one. This led to glaciation. Ice accumulated on the Scandinavian Peninsula, in Finland, on the Kola Peninsula and spread to the south.

The Oksky glacier, with its southern edge, also covered the territory of the modern Kashirsky region, including our region. The first glaciation was the coldest; woody vegetation in the Oka region disappeared almost completely. The glacier did not last long. The first Quaternary glaciation reached the Oka valley, which is why it received the name “Oksky glaciation”. The glacier left moraine deposits dominated by boulders of local sedimentary rocks.

But such favorable conditions were again replaced by a glacier. The glaciation was on a planetary scale. The grandiose Dnieper glaciation began. The thickness of the Scandinavian ice sheet reached 4 kilometers. The glacier moved across the Baltic to Western Europe and the European part of Russia. The boundaries of the languages ​​of the Dnieper glaciation passed in the area of ​​modern Dnepropetrovsk and almost reached Volgograd.


mammoth fauna

The climate warmed up again and became Mediterranean. In place of the glaciers, heat-loving and moisture-loving vegetation spread: oak, beech, hornbeam and yew, as well as linden, alder, birch, spruce and pine, hazel. In the marshes grew ferns, characteristic of modern South America. The restructuring of the river system and the formation of Quaternary terraces in the river valleys began. This period was called the interglacial Oxo-Dnieper age.

The Oka served as a kind of barrier to the advancement of ice fields. According to scientists, the right bank of the Oka, i.e. our region has not turned into a solid icy desert. Here were fields of ice, interspersed with intervals of melted hills, between which rivers flowed from melt water and lakes accumulated.

Ice flows of the Dnieper glaciation brought glacial boulders from Finland and Karelia to our region.

The valleys of the old rivers were filled with mid-moraine and fluvioglacial deposits. It warmed up again, and the glacier began to melt. Streams of melt water rushed south along the channels of new rivers. During this period, the third terraces are formed in the river valleys. formed in the depressions big lakes. The climate was moderately cold.

In our region, forest-steppe vegetation dominated with a predominance of coniferous and birch forests and large areas of steppes covered with wormwood, quinoa, grasses and herbs.

The interstadial epoch was short. The glacier returned to the Moscow region again, but did not reach the Oka, stopping not far from the southern outskirts of modern Moscow. Therefore, this third glaciation was called Moscow. Some tongues of the glacier reached the Oka valley, but they did not reach the territory of the modern Kashirsky region. The climate was severe, and the landscape of our region becomes close to the steppe tundra. Forests are almost disappearing and their place is taken by steppes.

A new warming has come. The rivers deepened their valleys again. The second terraces of the rivers were formed, the hydrography of the Moscow region changed. It was during that period that the modern valley and basin of the Volga, which flows into the Caspian Sea, was formed. The Oka, and with it our river B. Smedva and its tributaries, entered the Volga river basin.

This interglacial period in terms of climate went through stages from continentally temperate (close to modern) to warm, with a Mediterranean climate. In our region, birch, pine and spruce dominated at first, and then heat-loving oaks, beeches and hornbeams turned green again. In the swamps, the water lily grew, which today you will find only in Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam. At the end of the interglacial period, birch- coniferous forests.

This idyll was spoiled by the Valdai glaciation. Ice from the Scandinavian Peninsula again rushed to the south. This time the glacier did not reach the Moscow region, but changed our climate to subarctic. For many hundreds of kilometers, including the territory of the present Kashirsky district and the rural settlement of Znamenskoye, the steppe-tundra stretches, with dried grass and rare shrubs, dwarf birches and polar willows. These conditions were ideal for the mammoth fauna and for primitive man, who then already lived on the borders of the glacier.

During the last Valdai glaciation, the first river terraces formed. The hydrography of our region has finally taken shape.

Traces of glacial epochs are often found in the Kashirsky region, but they are difficult to identify. Of course, large stone boulders are traces of the glacial activity of the Dnieper glaciation. They were brought by ice from Scandinavia, Finland and from the Kola Peninsula. The most ancient traces of the glacier are moraine or boulder loam, which is a random mixture of clay, sand, brown stones.

The third group of glacial rocks are sands resulting from the destruction of moraine layers by water. These are sands with large pebbles and stones, and the sands are homogeneous. They can be observed on the Oka. These include the Belopesotsky sands. Often found in the valleys of rivers, streams, in ravines, layers of flint and limestone gravel are traces of the bed of ancient rivers and streams.

With new warming, the geological epoch of the Holocene began (it began 11,400 years ago), which continues to this day. The modern river floodplains were finally formed. The mammoth fauna died out, and forests appeared in place of the tundra (at first, spruce, then birch, and later mixed). The flora and fauna of our region has acquired the features of modern - the one that we see today. At the same time, the left and right banks of the Oka are still very different in their forest cover. If mixed forests and many open areas prevail on the right bank, then continuous coniferous forests dominate on the left bank - these are traces of glacial and interglacial climate changes. On our bank of the Oka, the glacier left fewer traces, and our climate was somewhat milder than on the left bank of the Oka.

Geological processes continue today. Earth's crust in the Moscow region over the past 5 thousand years, it has been rising only slightly, at a rate of 10 cm per century. The modern alluvium of the Oka and other rivers of our region is being formed. What this will lead to after millions of years, we can only guess, because, having briefly become acquainted with the geological history of our region, we can safely repeat the Russian proverb: "Man proposes, but God disposes." This saying is especially relevant, after we have seen in this chapter that human history is a grain of sand in the history of our planet.

GLACIAL PERIOD

In the distant, distant times, where Leningrad, Moscow, Kyiv are now, everything was different. Dense forests grew along the banks of ancient rivers, and shaggy mammoths with bent tusks, huge furry rhinoceroses, tigers and bears much larger than today roamed there.

Gradually, these places became colder and colder. Far in the north, so much snow fell every year that entire mountains of it accumulated - larger than the present Urals. The snow caked up, turned into ice, then slowly began to spread, spreading in all directions.

Ice mountains have moved over the ancient forests. Cold, evil winds blew from these mountains, trees froze and animals fled from the cold to the south. And the icy mountains crawled further south, twisting the rocks along the way and moving whole hills of earth and stones in front of them. They crawled to the place where Moscow now stands, and crawled even further, into warm southern countries. They reached the hot Volga steppe and stopped.

Here, finally, the sun overpowered them: the glaciers began to melt. Huge rivers flowed from them. And the ice receded, melted, and the masses of stones, sand and clay that the glaciers brought, remained lying in the southern steppes.

More than once, terrible ice mountains approached from the north. Have you seen the cobblestone pavement? Such small stones are brought by the glacier. And there are boulders the size of a house. They still lie in the north.

But the ice can move again. Just not soon. Maybe thousands of years will pass. And not only the sun will then fight the ice. If necessary, people will use NUCLEAR ENERGY and keep the glacier out of our land.

When did the ice age end?

Many of us believe that the Ice Age ended a very long time ago and no traces of it remain. But geologists say we are only approaching the end of the ice age. And the inhabitants of Greenland are still living in the Ice Age.

Approximately 25 thousand years ago, the peoples who inhabited the central part of NORTH AMERICA saw ice and snow all year round. A huge wall of ice stretched from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, and north to the very Pole. It was during the final stages of the Ice Age, when all of Canada, most of the United States, and northwestern Europe were covered in a layer of ice over one kilometer thick.

But this does not mean that it was always very cold. In the northern part of the United States, the temperature was only 5 degrees below present. The cold summer months caused the Ice Age. At this time, the heat was not enough to melt the ice and snow. It accumulated and eventually covered the entire northern part of these areas.

The Ice Age consisted of four stages. At the beginning of each of them, ice formed moving south, then melted and retreated to the North POLE. This happened, it is believed, four times. Cold periods are called "glaciation", warm - "interglacial" period.

The first phase in North America is believed to have begun about two million years ago, the second about 1,250,000 years ago, the third about 500,000 years ago, and the last about 100,000 years ago.

The rate of ice melting at the last stage of the ice age in different regions was not the same. For example, in the area of ​​present-day Wisconsin in the United States, ice melt began about 40,000 years ago. The ice that covered the New England area in the US disappeared about 28,000 years ago. And the territory of the modern state of Minnesota was freed by ice only 15,000 years ago!

In Europe, Germany was free of ice 17,000 years ago, while Sweden only 13,000 years ago.

Why do glaciers still exist today?

A huge mass of ice, from the formation of which the ice age began in North America, was called the "continental glacier": in the very center its thickness reached 4.5 km. It is possible that this glacier formed and melted four times during the entire ice age.

The glacier that covered other parts of the world has not melted in some places! For example, the huge island of Greenland is still covered by continental ice, except for a narrow coastal strip. In its middle part, the glacier sometimes reaches a thickness of more than three kilometers. Antarctica is also covered by a vast continental glacier up to 4 kilometers thick in some places!

So the reason why there are glaciers in some parts of the world is that they have not melted since the Ice Age. But the bulk of the glaciers that are found now, formed recently. They are mainly located in mountain valleys.

They originate in wide, gently sloping, amphitheater-like valleys. Snow falls here from the slopes as a result of landslides and avalanches. Such snow does not melt in summer, becoming deeper every year.

Gradually, pressure from above, some thawing, and repeated freezing remove air from the bottom of this snow mass, turning it into solid ice. The impact of the weight of the entire mass of ice and snow compresses the entire mass and causes it to move down the valley. Such a moving tongue of ice is a mountain glacier.

More than 1200 such glaciers are known in Europe in the Alps! They also exist in the Pyrenees, in the Carpathians, in the Caucasus, as well as in the mountains of southern Asia. There are tens of thousands of these glaciers in southern Alaska, some 50 to 100 km long!

Ecology

The ice ages that have taken place more than once on our planet have always been covered in a mass of mysteries. We know that they shrouded entire continents in cold, turning them into uninhabited tundra.

Also known about 11 such periods, and all of them took place with regular constancy. However, we still don't know much about them. We invite you to get to know the most interesting facts about the ice ages of our past.

giant animals

By the time the last ice age arrived, evolution had already mammals appeared. Animals that could survive in harsh climatic conditions were quite large, their bodies were covered with a thick layer of fur.

Scientists have named these creatures "megafauna", which was able to survive at low temperatures in areas covered with ice, for example, in the region of modern Tibet. Smaller animals couldn't adjust to new conditions of glaciation and perished.


Herbivorous representatives of the megafauna have learned to find their food even under layers of ice and have been able to adapt to the environment in different ways: for example, rhinos ice age had spatulate horns, with the help of which they dug up snowdrifts.

Predatory animals, for example, saber-toothed cats, giant short-faced bears and dire wolves, perfectly survived in the new conditions. Although their prey could sometimes fight back due to their large size, it was in abundance.

ice age people

Although modern man Homo sapiens could not boast at that time of large size and wool, he was able to survive in the cold tundra of the ice ages for many millennia.


Living conditions were harsh, but people were resourceful. For example, 15 thousand years ago they lived in tribes that were engaged in hunting and gathering, built original dwellings from mammoth bones, and sewed warm clothes from animal skins. When food was plentiful, they stocked up in the permafrost - natural freezer.


Mostly for hunting, such tools as stone knives and arrows were used. To catch and kill the large animals of the Ice Age, it was necessary to use special traps. When the beast fell into such traps, a group of people attacked him and beat him to death.

Little Ice Age

Between major ice ages, there were sometimes small periods. It cannot be said that they were destructive, but they also caused famine, disease due to crop failure, and other problems.


The most recent of the Little Ice Ages began around 12th-14th centuries. The most difficult time can be called the period from 1500 to 1850. At this time in the Northern Hemisphere, a fairly low temperature was observed.

In Europe, it was common when the seas froze, and in mountainous areas, for example, in the territory of modern Switzerland, the snow did not melt even in summer. Cold weather influenced every aspect of life and culture. Probably, the Middle Ages remained in history, as "Time of Troubles" also because the planet was dominated by a small ice age.

periods of warming

Some ice ages actually turned out to be quite warm. Despite the fact that the surface of the earth was shrouded in ice, the weather was relatively warm.

Sometimes a sufficiently large amount of carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere of the planet, which is the cause of the appearance greenhouse effect when heat is trapped in the atmosphere and warms the planet. In this case, the ice continues to form and reflect the sun's rays back into space.


According to experts, this phenomenon led to the formation giant desert with ice on the surface but quite warm weather.

When will the next ice age start?

The theory that ice ages occur on our planet at regular intervals goes against theories about global warming. There's no doubt about what's happening today global warming which may help prevent the next ice age.


Human activity leads to the release of carbon dioxide, which is largely responsible for the problem of global warming. However, this gas has another strange by-effect. According to researchers from University of Cambridge, the release of CO2 could stop the next ice age.

According to the planetary cycle of our planet, the next ice age should come soon, but it can take place only if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be relatively low. However, CO2 levels are currently so high that no ice age is out of the question any time soon.


Even if a person abruptly stops emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (which is unlikely), existing quantity enough to prevent the onset of the ice age at least another thousand years.

Plants of the Ice Age

The easiest way to live in the Ice Age predators: they could always find food for themselves. But what do herbivores actually eat?

It turns out that there was enough food for these animals. During the ice ages on the planet many plants grew that could survive in harsh conditions. The steppe area was covered with shrubs and grass, which fed mammoths and other herbivores.


Larger plants could also be found in great abundance: for example, firs and pines. Found in warmer regions birches and willows. That is, the climate by and large in many modern southern areas resembled the one that exists today in Siberia.

However, the plants of the Ice Age were somewhat different from modern ones. Of course, with the onset of cold weather many plants died. If the plant was not able to adapt to the new climate, it had two options: either move to more southern zones, or die.


For example, in the territory of the modern state of Victoria in southern Australia, there was the most rich variety plant species on the planet, until the ice age came, as a result of which most of the species died.

Cause of the Ice Age in the Himalayas?

It turns out that the Himalayas, the highest mountain system our planet directly related with the onset of the ice age.

40-50 million years ago the land masses where China and India are today collided to form the highest mountains. As a result of the collision, huge volumes of "fresh" rocks from the bowels of the Earth were exposed.


These rocks eroded, and as a result chemical reactions carbon dioxide began to be removed from the atmosphere. The climate on the planet began to become colder, the ice age began.

snowball earth

During different ice ages, our planet was mostly shrouded in ice and snow. only partially. Even during the most severe ice age, ice covered only one third of the globe.

However, there is a hypothesis that at certain periods the Earth was still completely covered in snow, which made her look like a giant snowball. Life still managed to survive thanks to the rare islands with relatively little ice and with enough light for plant photosynthesis.


According to this theory, our planet turned into a snowball at least once, more precisely 716 million years ago.

Garden of Eden

Some scientists are convinced that garden of eden described in the Bible actually existed. It is believed that he was in Africa, and it is thanks to him that our distant ancestors survived the ice age.


Approximately 200 thousand years ago came a severe ice age, which put an end to many forms of life. Fortunately, a small group of people were able to survive the period of severe cold. These people moved to the area where South Africa is today.

Despite the fact that almost the entire planet was covered with ice, this area remained ice-free. A large number of living beings lived here. The soils of this area were rich nutrients so there was abundance of plants. Caves created by nature were used by people and animals as shelters. For living beings, it was a real paradise.


According to some scientists, in the "Garden of Eden" lived no more than a hundred people, which is why humans do not have as much genetic diversity as most other species. However, this theory has not found scientific evidence.

The oldest glacial deposits known today are about 2.3 billion years old, which corresponds to the lower Proterozoic of the geochronological scale.

They are represented by petrified basic moraines of the Gouganda Formation in the southeast of the Canadian Shield. The presence in them of typical iron-shaped and tear-shaped boulders with lapping, as well as their occurrence on a bed covered with hatching, testifies to their glacial origin. If the main moraine in the English-language literature is denoted by the term till, then the older glacial deposits that have passed the stage lithification(petrifications), commonly referred to as tillites. The deposits of the Bruce and Ramsey Lake formations, also of Lower Proterozoic age and developed on the Canadian Shield, also have the appearance of tillites. This powerful and complex complex of alternating glacial and interglacial deposits is conditionally assigned to one ice age, called the Huronian.

The Huronian tillites are correlated with the Bijawar Series in India, the Transvaal and Witwatersrand Series in South Africa, and the Whitewater Series in Australia. Consequently, there is reason to speak of the planetary scale of the Lower Proterozoic glaciation.

With the further development of the Earth, it experienced several equally large ice epochs, and the closer to the present they took place, the greater the amount of data on their features we have. After the Huron era, the Gneissic (about 950 million years ago), Sturtian (700, possibly 800 million years ago), Varangian, or, according to other authors, Vendian, Laplandian (680-650 million years ago), then Ordovician (450-430 million years ago) and, finally, the most widely known late Paleozoic Gondwanan (330-250 million years ago) ice ages. Somewhat apart in this list is the Late Cenozoic glacial stage, which began 20-25 million years ago, with the advent of the Antarctic ice sheet and, strictly speaking, continues to this day.

According to the Soviet geologist N. M. Chumakov, traces of the Vendian (Lapland) glaciation have been found in Africa, Kazakhstan, China, and Europe. For example, in the basin of the middle and upper Dnieper, boreholes uncovered layers of tillites several meters thick dating back to this time. According to the direction of ice movement, reconstructed for the Vendian era, it can be assumed that the center of the European ice sheet at that time was somewhere in the area of ​​the Baltic Shield.

The Gondwanan Ice Age has attracted the attention of specialists for almost a century. At the end of the last century, geologists discovered in southern Africa, near the Boer settlement of Neutgedaht, that in the basin of the river. Vaal, well-pronounced glacial pavements with traces of shading on the surface of gently convex “ram foreheads” composed of Precambrian rocks. It was a time of struggle between the theory of drift and the theory of sheet glaciation, and the main attention of researchers was riveted not to age, but to signs of the glacial origin of these formations. The glacial scars of Neutgedacht, "curly rocks" and "ram's foreheads" were so well expressed that A. Wallace, who studied them in 1880, considered them to belong to the last ice age.

Somewhat later, the Late Paleozoic age of glaciation was established. Glacial deposits have been found under carbonaceous shales with remains of plants from the Carboniferous and Permian periods. In the geological literature, this sequence is called the Dvaika series. At the beginning of our century, the well-known German specialist in modern and ancient glaciation Alp A. Penk, who personally convinced himself of the amazing similarity of these deposits with young Alpine moraines, was able to convince many of his colleagues of this. By the way, it was Penk who proposed the term "tillite".

Permocarbon glacial deposits have been found on all continents of the Southern Hemisphere. These are Talchir tillites, discovered in India as early as 1859, Itarare in South America, Kuttung and Kamilaron in Australia. Traces of Gondwanan glaciation have also been found on the sixth continent, in the Transantarctic Mountains and the Ellsworth Mountains. Traces of synchronous glaciation of all these territories (with the exception of the then unexplored Antarctica) served as an argument for the outstanding German scientist A. Wegener in putting forward the hypothesis of continental drift (1912-1915). His rather few predecessors pointed to the similarity of the outlines of the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America, which resemble, as it were, parts of a single whole torn in two and separated from each other.

The similarity of the Late Paleozoic flora and fauna of these continents, the commonality of their geological structure, was repeatedly pointed out. But it was precisely the idea of ​​the simultaneous and, probably, a single glaciation of all the continents of the Southern Hemisphere that forced Wegener to put forward the concept of Pangea - the great pro-continent, split into parts, which then began to drift around the globe.

By modern ideas, South part Pangea, called Gondwana, broke up about 150-130 million years ago, in the Jurassic and early Cretaceous. Growing up from A. Wegener's conjecture modern theory Global plate tectonics makes it possible to successfully explain all the currently known facts about the Late Paleozoic glaciation of the Earth. Probably, the South Pole at that time was close to the middle of Gondwana and its significant part was covered with a huge ice shell. A detailed facies and textural study of tillites suggests that its feeding area was in East Antarctica and, possibly, somewhere in the Madagascar region. It has been established, in particular, that when the contours of Africa and South America are combined, the direction of the glacial hatching on both continents coincides. Together with other lithological materials, this indicates the movement of Gondwanan ice from Africa to South America. Some other large glacial flows that existed during this ice age have also been restored.

The glaciation of Gondwana ended in the Permian period, when the parent continent still retained its integrity. Maybe it had to do with migration South Pole in the direction Pacific Ocean. Since then, global temperatures have continued to rise gradually.

Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods The geological history of the Earth was characterized by fairly even and warm climatic conditions over most of the planet. But in the second half of the Cenozoic, about 20-25 million years ago, the ice again began its slow advance at the South Pole. By this time, Antarctica occupied a position close to modern. The movement of fragments of Gondwana led to the fact that there were no significant areas of land near the southern polar continent. As a result, according to the American geologist J. Kennett, a cold circumpolar current, which further contributed to the isolation of this continent and the deterioration of its climatic conditions. Near the South Pole of the planet began to accumulate ice of the most ancient glaciation of the Earth that has survived to this day.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the first signs of the Late Cenozoic glaciation, according to various experts, are 5 to 3 million years old. There is no need to talk about any noticeable shifts in the position of the continents over such a short period of time by geological standards. Therefore, the cause of a new ice age should be sought in the global restructuring of the energy balance and climate of the planet.

The Alps are a classic area, on the example of which the history of the ice ages of Europe and the entire Northern Hemisphere has been studied for decades. Proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and mediterranean sea ensured a good supply of moisture to the alpine glaciers, and they sensitively reacted to climate cooling by a sharp increase in their volume. At the beginning of the XX century. A. Penk, having studied geomorphological structure Alpine foothills, came to the conclusion about four major ice ages experienced by the Alps in the recent geological past. These glaciations have received the following names (from the oldest to the youngest): gunz, mindel, riss and wurm. Their absolute age remained unclear for a long time.

Around the same time from various sources information began to come in that the flat territories of Europe had repeatedly experienced the onset of ice. As the actual material of the position is accumulated polyglacialism(the concept of multiple glaciations) became stronger and stronger. By the 60s. of our century, the scheme of fourfold glaciation of the European plains, close to the Alpine scheme of A. Penk and his co-author E. Brückner, has received wide recognition in our country and abroad.

Naturally, the deposits of the last ice sheet, comparable with the Wurm glaciation of the Alps, turned out to be the most well studied. In the USSR, it was called Valdai, in Central Europe - Vistula, in England - Devensian, in the USA - Wisconsin. The Valdai glaciation was preceded by an interglacial period, which, in terms of its climatic parameters, is close to modern conditions or slightly more favorable. According to the name of the reference size, in which deposits of this interglacial period (the village of Mikulino, Smolensk region) were discovered, in the USSR it was called Mikulinsky. According to the Alpine scheme, this period of time is called the Riess-Würm interglacial.

Before the beginning of the Mikulin interglacial age, the Russian Plain was covered with ice of the Moscow glaciation, which, in turn, was preceded by the Roslavl interglacial. The next step down was the Dnieper glaciation. It is considered to be the largest in size and is traditionally associated with the Ice Age of the Alps. Before the Dnieper Ice Age, there were warm and wet conditions Likhvin interglacial. The deposits of the Likhvinian era are underlain by rather poorly preserved sediments of the Oksky (Mindelian according to the Alpine scheme) glaciation. The Dook warm time is considered by some researchers to be no longer an interglacial, but a preglacial epoch. But in the last 10-15 years everything appears more posts about new, older glacial deposits unearthed at various points in the Northern Hemisphere.

Synchronization and linkage of the stages of development of nature, restored according to various initial data and in different ways geographic location around the world is a very serious problem.

The fact of the regular alternation of glacial and interglacial epochs in the past, few of the researchers today raises doubts. But the reasons for this alternation have not yet been fully elucidated. The solution of this problem is hampered primarily by the lack of strictly reliable data on the rhythm of natural events: the stratigraphic scale of the Ice Age itself causes a large number of criticisms, and so far there is no reliably verified version of it.

Only the history of the last glacial-interglacial cycle, which began after the degradation of the ice of the Rice glaciation, can be considered relatively reliably established.

The age of the rice ice age is estimated at 250-150 thousand years. The Mikulin (Riess-Würm) interglacial that followed it reached its optimum about 100 thousand years ago. Approximately 80-70 thousand years ago on everything the globe a sharp deterioration in climatic conditions is recorded, which marks the transition to the Wurm glacial cycle. During this period, broad-leaved forests degrade in Eurasia and North America, giving way to the landscape of the cold steppe and forest-steppe, there is a rapid change in faunal complexes: cold-tolerant species occupy the leading place in them - mammoth, hairy rhinoceros, giant deer, arctic fox, lemming. At high latitudes, old ice caps increase in volume and new ones grow. The water necessary for their formation decreases from the ocean. Accordingly, a decrease in its level begins, which is fixed along the stairs of sea terraces in the now flooded areas of the shelf and on the islands. tropical zone. The cooling of ocean waters is reflected in the restructuring of complexes of marine microorganisms - for example, die out foraminifera Globorotalia menardii flexuosa. The question of how far progress was made at this time continental ice while still debatable.

Between 50 and 25 thousand years ago, the natural situation on the planet again improved somewhat - a relatively warm Middle Würmian interval set in. I. I. Krasnov, A. I. Moskvitin, L. R. Serebryanny, A. V. Raukas and some other Soviet researchers, although in the details of their construction they differ quite significantly from each other, they still tend to compare this period of time with an independent interglacial.

However, this approach is contradicted by the data of V.P. Grichuk, L.N. Voznyachuk, N.S. grounds for distinguishing the Middle Würmian interglacial epoch. From their point of view, the early and middle Wurm corresponds to a prolonged period of transition from the Mikulin interglacial to the Valdai (Late Wurm) glaciation.

In all likelihood, this controversial issue will be resolved in the near future due to the increasing use of radiocarbon dating methods.

About 25 thousand years ago (according to some scientists, a little earlier) the last continental glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere began. According to A. A. Velichko, this was the time of the most severe climatic conditions for the entire ice age. An interesting paradox: the coldest climatic cycle, the late Cenozoic thermal minimum, was accompanied by the smallest glaciation in terms of area. Moreover, in terms of duration, this glaciation was very short: having reached the maximum limits of its distribution 20-17 thousand years ago, it disappeared already after 10 thousand years. More precisely, according to the data summarized by the French scientist P. Bellaire, the last fragments of the European ice sheet broke up in Scandinavia between 8 and 9 thousand years ago, and the American ice sheet completely melted only about 6 thousand years ago.

The peculiar nature of the last continental glaciation was determined by nothing more than excessively cold climatic conditions. According to paleofloristic analysis data, summarized by the Dutch researcher Van der Hammen et al., the average July temperatures in Europe (Holland) at that time did not exceed 5°C. Average annual temperatures V temperate latitudes decreased by about 10°C compared to modern conditions.

Oddly enough, excessive cold prevented the development of glaciation. Firstly, it increased the rigidity of the ice and, therefore, made it difficult for it to spread. Secondly, and most importantly, the cold bound the surface of the oceans, forming an ice cover on them, descending from the pole almost to the subtropics. According to A. A. Velichko, in the Northern Hemisphere its area was more than 2 times larger than the area of ​​modern sea ​​ice. As a result, evaporation from the surface of the World Ocean and, accordingly, the moisture supply of glaciers on land has sharply decreased. At the same time, the reflectivity of the planet as a whole increased, which further contributed to its cooling.

The European ice sheet had a particularly meager diet. The glaciation of America, fed from the unfrozen parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, was in much more favorable conditions. This was due to its significantly large area. In Europe, the glaciers of this era reached 52°N. sh., while on the American continent they descended 12 ° to the south.

An analysis of the history of the Late Cenozoic glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth allowed specialists to draw two important conclusions:

1. Glacial epochs have been repeated many times in the recent geological past. Over the past 1.5-2 million years, the Earth has experienced at least 6-8 major glaciations. This indicates the rhythmic nature of climate fluctuations in the past.

2. Along with rhythmic and oscillatory climate changes, there is a clear trend towards directed cooling. In other words, each subsequent interglacial is cooler than the previous one, and the ice ages become more severe.

These conclusions concern only natural patterns and do not take into account the significant technogenic impact on the environment.

Naturally, the question arises as to what prospects this development of events promises for humanity. The mechanical extrapolation of the curve of natural processes into the future leads us to expect the beginning of a new ice age within the next few millennia. It is possible that such a deliberately simplified approach to making a forecast will turn out to be correct. Indeed, the rhythm of climate fluctuations is getting shorter and shorter, and the modern interglacial epoch should soon come to an end. This is also confirmed by the fact that the climatic optimum (the most favorable climatic conditions) of the postglacial period has long since passed. In Europe, the best natural conditions took place 5-6 thousand years ago, in Asia, according to the Soviet paleogeographer N. A. Khotinsky, even earlier. At first glance, there is every reason to believe that the climate curve is descending towards a new glaciation.

However, it is far from being that simple. In order to seriously judge the future state of nature, it is not enough to know the main stages of its development in the past. It is necessary to find out the mechanism that determines the alternation and change of these stages. By itself, the curve of temperature changes cannot serve as an argument in this case. Where is the guarantee that tomorrow the spiral will not begin to unwind in opposite side? And in general, can we be sure that the alternation of glaciations and interglacial periods reflects some kind of uniform pattern in the development of nature? It is possible that each glaciation separately had its own independent cause, and, therefore, there are no grounds for extrapolating the generalizing curve into the future ... This assumption looks unlikely, but it must be kept in mind.

The question of the causes of glaciation arose almost simultaneously with the glacial theory itself. But if the factual and empirical part of this area of ​​science has made tremendous progress over the past 100 years, then the theoretical understanding of the results obtained, unfortunately, went mainly in the direction of a quantitative addition of ideas explaining such a development of nature. Therefore, there is currently no generally accepted scientific theory this process. Accordingly, there is no single point of view on the principles for compiling a long-term geographical forecast. In the scientific literature, one can find several descriptions of hypothetical mechanisms that determine the course of global climate fluctuations. As new material about the Earth's glacial past is accumulated, a significant part of the assumptions about the causes of glaciation is discarded and only the most acceptable options remain. Probably, among them the final solution of the problem should be sought. Paleogeographic and paleoglaciological studies, although they do not give a direct answer to the questions of interest to us, nevertheless serve as practically the only key to understanding natural processes on a global scale. This is their enduring scientific significance.

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  1. How many ice ages were there?
  2. How does the Ice Age relate to Biblical history?
  3. What part of the earth was covered with ice?
  4. How long did the Ice Age last?
  5. What do we know about frozen mammoths?
  6. How did the ice age affect humanity?

We have clear evidence that there was an ice age in the history of the Earth. We still see its traces to this day: glaciers and U-shaped different valleys, along which the glacier retreated. Evolutionists claim that there were several such 2 periods, and each lasted twenty to thirty million years (or so).

They were interspersed with relatively warm interglacial intervals, accounting for about 10% of the total time. The last ice age began two million years ago and ended eleven thousand years ago. Creationists, for their part, generally believe that the Ice Age began shortly after the Flood and lasted less than a thousand years. We will see later that the biblical story of the Flood offers a convincing explanation for this the only ice age. For evolutionists, however, the explanation of any ice age is associated with great difficulties.

The oldest ice ages?

Based on the principle “the present is the key to understanding the past,” evolutionists argue that there is evidence for early ice ages. However, the difference between the rocks of different geological systems and the features of the landscape of the present period is very large, and their similarity is insignificant3-5. Modern glaciers, as they move, grind the rock and create deposits consisting of fragments of various sizes.

These conglomerates, called style or tillite, form a new breed. The abrasive action of the rocks enclosed in the thickness of the glacier forms parallel furrows in the rocky base along which the glacier moves - the so-called striation. When the glacier thaws slightly in summer, stone “dust” is released, which is washed into glacial lakes, and alternating coarse-grained and fine-grained layers form on their bottom (phenomenon seasonal layering).

Sometimes a piece of ice with boulders frozen into it breaks off from a glacier or ice sheet, falls into such a lake and melts. That is why huge boulders are sometimes found in layers of fine-grained sediments at the bottom of glacial lakes. Many geologists argue that all these patterns are also observed in ancient rocks, and, therefore, not when there were other, earlier ice ages on the earth. However, there is a number of evidence that the facts of observations are misinterpreted.

Consequences present of the ice age still exist today: first of all, these are giant ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland, alpine glaciers, and numerous changes in the shape of the landscape of glacial origin. Since we observe all these phenomena on the modern Earth, it is obvious that the Ice Age began after the Flood. During the Ice Age, huge ice sheets covered Greenland, much of North America(up to the northern United States) and Northern Europe– from Scandinavia to England and Germany (see figure on pages 10–11).

On the tops of the North American Rocky Mountains, the European Alps and others mountain ranges non-melting ice caps have been preserved, and extensive glaciers descend along the valleys almost to their very foot. In the Southern Hemisphere, the ice sheet covers most of Antarctica. Ice caps lie on the mountains of New Zealand, Tasmania and the highest peaks in southeastern Australia. The Southern Alps of New Zealand and the South American Andes still have glaciers, while the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales and Tasmania still have glacier-formed landscapes.

Almost all textbooks say that during the Ice Age the ice advanced and retreated at least four times, and there were periods of warming between glaciations (the so-called "interglacials"). Trying to discover the cyclic pattern of these processes, geologists have suggested that more than twenty glaciations and interglacials have occurred in two million years. However, the appearance of dense clayey soils, old river terraces, and other phenomena that are considered evidence of numerous glaciations can be more legitimately considered as consequences of various phases. the only ice age after the Flood.

ice age and man

Never, even during the most severe glaciations, did ice cover more than a third of the earth's surface. At the very time when glaciation was taking place in the polar and temperate latitudes, it was probably raining heavily closer to the equator. They abundantly irrigated even those regions where waterless deserts extend today - the Sahara, the Gobi, Arabia. During the archaeological excavations, numerous evidences of the existence of abundant vegetation, active human activity and complex irrigation systems in now barren lands.

Evidence has also been preserved that throughout the entire ice age, at the edge of the ice sheet in Western Europe people lived - in particular, Neanderthals. Many anthropologists now admit that some of the "bestiality" of Neanderthals was largely due to diseases (rickets, arthritis) that pursued these people in the cloudy, cold and damp European climate of that time. Rickets was common due to poor nutrition and lack of sunlight to stimulate the synthesis of vitamin D, which is essential for normal bone development.

With the exception of very unreliable dating methods (cf. « What does radiocarbon dating show?» ), there is no reason to deny that Neanderthals could have been contemporaries of the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Babylon that flourished in the southern latitudes. The idea that the ice age lasted seven hundred years is much more plausible than the hypothesis of two million years of glaciation.

The Flood Causes the Ice Age

In order for masses of ice to begin to accumulate on land, oceans in temperate and polar latitudes must be much warmer than the earth's surface - especially in summer. A large amount of water evaporates from the surface of warm oceans, which then moves towards the land. On cold continents, most precipitation falls as snow rather than rain; in summer this snow melts. Thus, ice builds up quickly. Evolutionary models that explain the ice age in terms of "slow and gradual" processes are untenable. Theories of long epochs speak of gradual cooling on the Earth.

But such a cooling would not have led to an ice age at all. If the oceans gradually cooled at the same time as the land, then after a while it would become so cold that the snow would cease to melt in summer, and the evaporation of water from the surface of the ocean could not provide enough snow to form massive ice sheets. The result of all this would not be an ice age, but the formation of a snowy (polar) desert.

But the Flood described in the Bible provided a very simple ice age mechanism. By the end of this global catastrophe, when hot underground waters poured into the antediluvian oceans, as well as a large amount of thermal energy released into the water as a result of volcanic activity, the oceans were most likely warm. Ord and Vardiman show that the waters of the oceans were indeed warmer immediately before the ice age, as evidenced by oxygen isotopes in the shells of tiny marine animals, the foraminifera.

Volcanic dust and aerosols released into the air from residual volcanic activity at the end of the Flood and after it reflected solar radiation back into space, causing a general, especially summer, cooling on Earth.

Dust and aerosols gradually left the atmosphere, but volcanic activity that continued after the Flood replenished their reserves for hundreds of years. Evidence of continued and widespread volcanism is the large amount of volcanic rock among the so-called Pleistocene sediments, which probably formed shortly after the Flood. Vardiman, taking advantage of publicly known traffic information air masses, showed that the warm post-Flood oceans, combined with the cooling at the poles, caused strong convection currents in the atmosphere, which gave rise to a huge hurricane zone over most of the Arctic. It persisted for more than five hundred years, right up to the glacial maximum (see the next section).

Such a climate led to the fallout in the polar latitudes of a large amount of snow masses, which quickly glacied and formed ice sheets. These shields first covered the land, and then, towards the end of the ice age, as the water cooled, they began to spread to the oceans.

How long did the ice age last?

Meteorologist Michael Ord has calculated that it would have taken seven hundred years for the polar oceans to cool from a constant temperature of 30°C at the end of the Flood to today's temperature (averaging 4°C). It is this period that should be considered the duration of the ice age. Ice began to accumulate soon after the Flood. Approximately five hundred years later, the average temperature of the World Ocean dropped to 10 0 C, evaporation from its surface decreased significantly, and the cloud cover thinned out. The amount of volcanic dust in the atmosphere also decreased by this time. As a result, the surface of the Earth began to warm up more intensively by the sun's rays, and the ice sheets began to melt. Thus, the glacial maximum took place five hundred years after the Flood.

It is curious to note that references to this are found in the book of Job (37:9-10; 38:22-23, 29-30), which tells about events that most likely took place at the end of the ice age. (Job lived in the land of Uz, and Uz was a descendant of Shem - Genesis 10:23 - so most conservative Bible scholars believe that Job lived after the Babylonian Pandemonium but before Abraham.) God asked Job out of the storm: “From whose womb comes ice, and hoarfrost from heaven, who gives birth to him? The waters harden like stone, and the face of the deep freezes” (Job 38:29-30). These questions assume that Job knew, either directly or from historical/family tradition, what God was talking about.

These words probably refer to the climatic effects of the ice age, now unfelt in the Middle East. In recent years, the theoretical duration of the ice age has been substantially reinforced by the assertion that boreholes drilled into the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain many thousands of annual layers. These layers are clearly visible at the top of the wells and cores taken from them, which corresponds to the last few thousand years, which is to be expected if the layers represent annual snow deposits since the end of the ice age. Below, the so-called annual layers become less distinct, that is, most likely, they did not arise seasonally, but under the influence of other mechanisms - for example, individual hurricanes.

The burial and freezing of mammoth carcasses cannot be explained by uniformitarian/evolutionary hypotheses of "slow and gradual" cooling over millennia and gradual warming as well. But if, for evolutionists, frozen mammoths are great riddle, then within the framework of the Flood/Ice Age theory, this is easily explained. Michel Ord believes that the burial and freezing of mammoths took place at the end of the post-Flood Ice Age.

Let us take into account that until the end of the ice age, the Arctic Ocean was warm enough that there were no ice sheets either on the surface of the water or in coastal valleys; this provided a fairly moderate climate in the coastal zone. It is important to note that the remains of mammoths are found in the greatest numbers in areas close to the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, while these animals also lived much south of the boundaries of the maximum distribution of ice sheets. Consequently, it was the distribution of ice sheets that determined the area of ​​mass mortality of mammoths.

Hundreds of years after the Flood, the waters of the oceans cooled noticeably, the air humidity over them decreased, and the coast of the Arctic Ocean turned into an arid climate, which led to droughts. Land appeared from under the melting ice sheets, from which masses of sand and mud rose in a whirlwind, burying many mammoths alive under them. This explains the presence of carcasses in decomposed peat containing loess- silt sediments. Some mammoths were buried standing up. The subsequent cooling again froze the oceans and the earth, as a result of which the mammoths, previously buried under sand and mud, froze, and have survived in this form to this day.

The animals that descended from the Ark multiplied on Earth over several centuries. But some of them died out without surviving the ice age and global climate change. Some, including mammoths, perished in the catastrophes that accompanied these changes. After the end of the ice age, the global precipitation regime changed again, many areas became deserts - as a result, the extinction of animals continued. The flood and the ice age that followed, volcanic activity and desertification radically changed the face of the Earth and caused the impoverishment of its flora and fauna to state of the art. The surviving evidence best fits the biblical account of history.

Here is the Good News

Creation Ministries International strives to glorify and honor the Creator God and to affirm the truth of what the Bible describes true story origin of the world and man. Part of this story is the bad news about Adam's violation of God's command. This brought death, suffering and separation from God into the world. These results are known to everyone. All of Adam's descendants are afflicted with sin from the moment of conception (Psalm 50:7) and share in Adam's disobedience (sin). They can no longer be in the presence of the Holy God and are doomed to separation from Him. The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and that all “will suffer chastisement, eternal destruction, from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). But there is also good news: God did not remain indifferent to our trouble. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”(John 3:16).

Jesus Christ, the Creator, being sinless, took upon Himself the blame for the sins of all mankind and their consequences - death and separation from God. He died on the cross, but on the third day he rose again, having conquered death. And now everyone who sincerely believes in Him, repents of his sins and relies not on himself, but on Christ, can return to God and be in eternal communion with his Creator. “He who believes in Him is not judged, but the unbeliever is already condemned, because he did not believe in the name of the Only Begotten Son of God”(John 3:18). Wonderful is our Savior and marvelous is salvation in Christ our Creator!