Current Interglacial

By 12,000 years ago, the Midwest was ice-free. The shrinking glacier lay to the north in the Lake Superior basin and Canada. Earth’s climate was warming. Deciduous forests replaced the spruce and pine forests that could no longer survive in Illinois. Human populations were growing. The period from 12,000 years ago to the present day is called the Holocene. It is a tiny slice of Earth’s history.