logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2025
48m 41s

End of Ice Age Britain

History Hit
About this episode

As Ice Age Britain thawed, temperatures surged, sea levels rose, and humans and animals faced a fight for survival. But this shift was anything but simple.


In this final episode of our Ice Age miniseries, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Danielle Schreve to uncover the turbulent end of the last Ice Age in Britain. Discover how mammals like Siberian lemmings and Saiga antelope roamed this icy landscape, how the Younger Dryas cold snap 13,000 years ago reshaped Britain's prehistoric environment, and how early humans adapted to survive it. With echoes for today’s climate challenges, this is a story of resilience on the fringes of the Ice Age world.


Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.


All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds


The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.


Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. 


You can take part in our listener survey here:

https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on

Up next
Jul 6
Hannibal's March on Rome
It was perhaps Hannibal’s greatest gamble — after years of victories, not least his famed trek across the snow-capped Alps, could he strike at Rome itself?In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Louis Rawlings to explore the dramatic years after Hannibal’ ... Show More
55m 55s
Jul 3
Plato's Republic
Today we journey into the creation of Plato's Republic. Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. James Romm to discover how Plato's encounters with the tyrant-ruled city of Syracuse and its rulers, Dionysius the Elder and Dionysius the Younger, deeply influenced his philosophical masterpi ... Show More
55m 27s
Jun 29
The Apocryphal Gospels
If you've heard of the mysterious and often controversial Apocryphal Gospels, you may have been told that they weren't important, or useful; that they 'didn't make the cut' to be included in the Canonical Bible. Not at all, these early Christian texts were hugely significant and ... Show More
38m 8s
Recommended Episodes
Oct 2023
Trenton W. Holliday, "Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe" (Columbia UP, 2023)
During the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave lions. It was also the home of people physically indistinguishable from humans today, commonly known as the Cro-Magnons. Our knowle ... Show More
42m 33s
Nov 2024
How to be a Medieval Teenager
Matt Lewis is joined by Alice Loxton to explore the lives of 18-Year-Olds through historyFrom Bede surviving a devastating plague to Empress Matilda's unexpected rise to power after the White Ship disaster, and Geoffrey Chaucer's adventurous youth in royal courts and French campa ... Show More
39m 22s
Feb 2025
When Europeans reached Australia
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb delves into the dramatic story of the first European encounters with the indigenous people of Australia. She's joined by Professor Alistair Paterson who sheds light on the reported events of February 1606 when the Dutch unexpectedly stumbled upon the s ... Show More
46m 1s
Aug 2024
The Bronze Age Collapse
Around 3,200 years ago, a vast, interconnected civilisation suddenly collapsed. A 'perfect storm' of climate catastrophe, famine, drought and invasion tore apart the eastern Mediterranean, plunging the survivors into decades of turmoil. Eric Cline is the author of '1177 B.C.: The ... Show More
41m 24s
Aug 2023
Old Things Considered: La Brea, Megalodon, Dino Footprints, Surviving History. Aug 25, 2023, Part 2
How Early Humans May Have Transformed L.A.’s Landscape ForeverJoin us on a time traveling adventure, as we go back 15,000 years to visit what’s now southern California. During the last Ice Age, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and dire wolves prowled the landscape, until … the ... Show More
47m 16s
Oct 2024
#449 – Graham Hancock: Lost Civilization of the Ice Age & Ancient Human History
Graham Hancock a journalist and author who for over 30 years has explored the controversial possibility that there existed a lost civilization during the last Ice Age, and that it was destroyed in a global cataclysm some 12,000 years ago. He is the presenter of the Netflix docume ... Show More
2h 41m
Oct 2024
I found the first dinosaur remains in Antarctica
Argentinian geologist Eduardo Olivero became the first scientist to find the remains of a dinosaur in Antarctica in 1986. But digging in frozen ground is not easy, so recovering them took several trips over a decade.Eduardo had to work with discretion and hide the fossils a coupl ... Show More
9m 53s
Dec 2024
How Old is America?
When fossils were discovered in the US during the 19th Century, it altered American understandings of science, religion, race and more. So what was the Hadrosaurus Foulkii, and why did it have such an enormous effect? Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of History ... Show More
27m 55s
Dec 2021
Top Human Origins Discoveries of 2021
2021 was a big year in science! Fossil discoveries introduced new relatives to our family tree, new findings added fascinating twists to the human story, and breakthroughs in research methods opened new worlds to explore. In this episode, five scientists discuss their favorite hu ... Show More
31m 16s
Nov 2024
The Mayflower: Why Did the Pilgrims Leave Europe?
More than 30 million people can trace their ancestry to the 102 passengers and 30 crew aboard the Mayflower when it landed in Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts in the harsh winter of 1620. On board were men, women and children from different walks of life across England and the city of ... Show More
41m 49s