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The timescale shown in Figure 19 covers a period during which various episodes have changed the landscapes of Southern England, creating our present-day world. These episodes include the dramatic rise in sea level and landward movement of the coastline caused by the warming of the climate following the last cold episode of the Ice Age. They also include the progressive changing of the countryside by people, leading up to the domination of some landscapes by man-made features.

FIG 19. Time divisions for the last 30,000 years (Late Pleistocene to Holocene).

Time Division	Years Before Present
Windermere Interstadial	13,000–11,000
Loch Lomond Stadial	11,000–10,000
Flandrian (Holocene)	10,000-present
Mesolithic	11,000–7,000
Neolithic	7,000–4,150
Bronze Age	4,150–2,750
Iron Age	2,750–1,950
Roman	1,950–1,600

The last 30,000 years have been warm, on average, relative to the previous 2 million years of the Ice Age. However, the higher level of detail available in this timescale makes it clear that climate change has not been one of uniform warming during this period. Short periods of colder climate, temporarily involving ice-sheet growth in the north of Britain (sometimes called stadials) have alternated with short periods of warmer climate (referred to as interstadials).