Introduction A World of Ice Over the past two million years, glacial ice has repeatedly buried much of North America, including all of present-day New England, during a series of ice ages. The most recent glacier blanketed the land in ice thousands of feet thick, from about 70,000 to 20,000 years ago. At the peak of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago, glaciers covered nearly a third of the world’s land.  The area that is now New England was buried underneath glacial ice up to a mile thick.  As the ice advanced and retreated, it created landforms such as Long Island and Cape Cod. North America, 20,000 Years Ago The glaciers buried North America as far south as present-day Illinois, as well as much of Europe and Asia. As the ice sheets expanded, sea levels dropped about 400 feet lower than they are now, and land along the coastlines of the continents was exposed. As it flowed over North America, glacial ice sculpted the land. It ground down bedrock, scattered boulders, and mounded up sand and gravel. When the climate began warming, the glaciers’ edges melted back toward the North Pole, leaving behind landscape features that have endured to the present. As the glacier slowly advanced and retreated, it scoured and scarred hills of bedrock, pushed up mounds of sand and till, dislodged boulders, left behind lakes and streams of melted ice, and created the basic features of Pequot territory that are still visible today. The ice has long since melted away from Mashantucket, but glaciers still cover a significant amount of the earth. At the north and south poles, and on mountain tops, glaciers continue to grind away rock, deposit sand and gravel, and otherwise sculpt the landscape.