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In the Introduction to Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient, Coleman noted that within recent historic times, (that is, since the Old Testament), fluctuations in climate have been moderate,

... Researches have not disclosed profound climatic changes since man built cities or made use of earthen tablets or of papyrus to record events. ... The results of the study of the last few thousand years seem on the whole reassuring to the conservative mind, satisfied with things as they are.

But, fluctuations in climate over long stretches of time have been extreme,

... when one passes from human history into the more remote past, as shown by geology where changes of climate of a most startling kind are disclosed, sometimes implying catastrophes [glaciation] which half depopulated the globe, and at others suggesting mild or even tropical conditions in the polar regions. … We are apt to think of our present conditions as normal and to look upon such wide swings of the climactic pendulum as ... extremes; but there is good evidence to believe that our present epoch is not really normal, though much milder than in past ice ages. We are probably still in the closing stages of the Pleistocene Ice Age; the earth not yet warmed up to the usual level, as shown by the luxuriant life inhabiting the

Photograph. A.P. Coleman. Iroquois Beach near Hamilton, April 1908. ROM Archives. A.P. Coleman Collection
Photograph. A.P. Coleman. Ice Smoother Surface, Nipigon, Ontario. n.d. ROM Archives. A.P. Coleman Collection
Photograph. A.P. Coleman. Don, Near Hogg’s Hollow (Toronto). n.d. ROM Archives. A.P. Coleman Collection
Photograph. A.P. Coleman. Wasaga Beach (Ontario). n.d. ROM Archives. A.P. Coleman Collection
Photograph. A.P. Coleman. The Smaller Flower Pot, (Flower Pot Island, Ontario). 1930 ROM Archives. A.P. Coleman Collection

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seas and lands of what are now temperate or even arctic regions during most of geological history.

A.P. Coleman, 1926,“Introduction,” Ice Ages,
Recent and Ancient
:. xvi - xviii