Paleoshorelines and Their Relict Littoral Plants

This book unravels the deep-time story of the Baltic Sea’s ancient shores—landscapes shaped by the retreat of the last Ice Age and still visible today in raised beaches across Fennoscandia. Relict coastal plant species, surviving for millennia in habitats that mirror long-vanished shorelines, reveal how climate, soil and sunlight once allowed pioneer vegetation to flourish on emerging land. Using luminescence and radiocarbon dating, the authors determine the ages of prehistoric shorelines and even provide a new age estimate for a remarkable rock painting. As land rose unevenly after the Ice Age, rivers shifted their courses; the dramatic outburst of the Kymi River through the First Salpausselkä ridge is traced and dated, along with the ensuing floods and ice-block events recorded in oral tradition and place names. Luminescence analyses also uncover evidence of ancient meltwater rivers flowing under the continental ice more than 60,000 years ago—during a milder interval that allowed mammoths to roam Fennoscandia before the ice returned. A vivid synthesis of geology, paleoecology and cultural history, this book brings to life the dynamic landscapes and climatic shifts that shaped Northern Europe’s past.