I wish they would have explained it though. I can’t see an explanation. I imagine it has to do with the geography caused by the glaciers making the edge of where glaciers were (at least for London and Berlin) optimum places to found settlements.
Now I’m going to have to see if the same is true about North America.
Edit: Doesn’t seem to be-
Even if you go back centuries, Cahokia was north of the glacier line… well, the Kansan one anyway. It’s about right for the Wisconsin one.
Edit 2: That actually tracks because Wisconsin was the most recent. So there may be something to this.
In the Pacific Northwest it’s tricky because of the scouring from the Missoula floods.
Essentially there was an ice dam holding back all the melt water from the end of the ice age, and when that dam failed, it was like the entire Pacific Northwest flushed like a toilet. Then the dam would re-form and it would do it again and again.
“He estimated the water flow was 9 cubic miles per hour (38 km3/h), more than the combined flow of every river in the world.[8] More recent estimates place the flow rate at ten times the flow of all current rivers combined.[3]”
Coincidentally, I was reading about that maybe a week ago! It was mentioned on an archaeology show I was watching on YouTube (something by Minuminuteman, I think) and he briefly talked about it, so I looked it up. Absolutely fascinating. Something similar happened in the Straits of Gibraltar to form the Mediterranean, but long before modern humans.
I love that map showing Berlin, Amsterdam, and London more or less in a straight line!
I wish they would have explained it though. I can’t see an explanation. I imagine it has to do with the geography caused by the glaciers making the edge of where glaciers were (at least for London and Berlin) optimum places to found settlements.
Now I’m going to have to see if the same is true about North America.
Edit: Doesn’t seem to be-
Even if you go back centuries, Cahokia was north of the glacier line… well, the Kansan one anyway. It’s about right for the Wisconsin one.
Edit 2: That actually tracks because Wisconsin was the most recent. So there may be something to this.
In the Pacific Northwest it’s tricky because of the scouring from the Missoula floods.
Essentially there was an ice dam holding back all the melt water from the end of the ice age, and when that dam failed, it was like the entire Pacific Northwest flushed like a toilet. Then the dam would re-form and it would do it again and again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods
“He estimated the water flow was 9 cubic miles per hour (38 km3/h), more than the combined flow of every river in the world.[8] More recent estimates place the flow rate at ten times the flow of all current rivers combined.[3]”
Coincidentally, I was reading about that maybe a week ago! It was mentioned on an archaeology show I was watching on YouTube (something by Minuminuteman, I think) and he briefly talked about it, so I looked it up. Absolutely fascinating. Something similar happened in the Straits of Gibraltar to form the Mediterranean, but long before modern humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood
Edit: There was also the Bonneville Flood that was like the Missoula Floods, except it only happened once and was even more devastating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_flood