Quarternary 1.64 million years ago till present day



The countryside so familiar to us today developed during the Quaternary.
In this process, the natural climate and human activity have both played an important role.
Southern Limburg is still being pushed up by the Eifel and Ardennes uplift.
The River Maas, at that time a wide and branching proto-river, leaves behind in southern Limburg thick gravel deposits.
The Quaternary is further characterised by large-scale climatic changes. Warm and cold intervals (ice ages) interchanged.
Each time the landscape changes in character: extensive steppes, tundra and polar deserts during cold ages or deciduous forests during the warmer intervals.
During ice ages water was 'stored' on land as ice.
This caused the sea level to occasionally drop for tens of metres and the North Sea even became dry land from time to time.

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