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Originally Posted by chuckm
Ice ages are, to put it mildly, going to be detrimental to food production for humans and other species.
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This is not the case. Biological productivity is highest in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, while human food production is greatest in the temperate regions. Tropical jungles give a misleading impression, because much of the tropical world (including those pretty clear blue ocean waters) is in fact desert.
You might consider the megafauna that ranged North America during the last Ice Age: everything from wooly mammoths to the sabertooths & dire wolves that preyed on them. Fast-forward to immediate pre-Columbian times, and only a few moderately large herbivores remained - buffalo, moose, & elk.
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That warm time period, about 7000 - 5000BC, was associated with the rapid transition from nomadism to the development of agriculture and sustainable human culture.
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I think you're looking at this backwards, and that it's more likely that agriculturally-supported urbanism arose because the warmer climate made it harder to support the nomadic lifestyle. Whichever's the case, though, you might want to consider the quality of life of the nomad versus the typical urban dweller (not the elites, IOW). Indeed, you might think about their relative quality of life nowadays, too. Urbanism may have been a necessary phase in human history, but it sure wasn't and isn't a quality life.