And the shape of all lands was changed. . . .

[Primula Baggins]

How Britain became an island.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6904675.stm

[narya]

Extreme cold made Britain uninhabitable for thousands of years

Obviously, the stiff upper lip is a relatively recent evolutionary adaptation.

[Crucifer]

Not at all. It's a remnant of the times when it was all frozen, and British upper lips froze, and despite Global Warming, etc. etc. they have yet to melt...

[Primula Baggins]

I just thought it was interesting that there was so radical a rearrangement of the coastlines, in that exact part of the world, as recently as 200,000 years ago, when that has always struck me as the unlikeliest part of Tolkien's history of Middle-earth.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

I wonder which way the water went round?

That chart of human incursions into Britain has at its earliest, Pakefield. That is two miles north of where I live and that site which redated the earliest human occupation of the British Isles by 200, 000 years was discovered by a friend of mine, a keen amateur archaeologist. My mother was born there and half the village was lost within her memory by coastal erosion.

[solicitr]

Kind of puts 15-20 cm rise over the next century in perspective, doesn't it?

[Primula Baggins]

Depends on where you live, solicitr.

At least ice-dammed lakes aren't likely to be a problem for a good long while.

[narya]

Actually, there are still some around, but they are smaller:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_La ... urst_Flood

[axordil]

Actually, glacial dams and floods tend to happen in melting periods, so there are likely to be more over the next few decades. Whether they will happen in places where a lot of people notice immediately is another question, given that the only places where such big melt-water lakes are likely to form are Greenland and Antarctica. But I could imagine a relatively small one forming off of glaciers in the Himalayas, for example, and providing a nasty surprise for the locals.

[Primula Baggins]

There is one, mentioned in the article Narya links to.

[axordil]

Whoa. So there is. Lucky guess.

[Primula Baggins]

If "lucky" is the word.