Subatlantic age

The Subatlantic is the current climatic age of the Holocene epoch. It started about 2,500 years BP and is still ongoing. Its average temperatures are slightly lower than during the preceding Subboreal and Atlantic. During its course, the temperature underwent several oscillations, which had a strong influence on fauna and flora and thus indirectly on the evolution of human civilizations. With intensifying industrialisation, human society started to stress the natural climatic cycles with increased greenhouse gas emissions.

== History and stratigraphy == The term subatlantic was first introduced in 1889 by Rutger Sernander to differentiate it from Axel Blytt's atlantic. It follows upon the previous subboreal. According to Franz Firbas (1949) and Litt et al. (2001) the subatlantic consists of the pollen zones IX and X. This corresponds in the scheme of Fritz Theodor Overbeck to the pollen zones XI and XII.