Gaasten
|
• Gaasten |
|
Three degrees ... The global climate cooled off from time to time more than 100,000 years ago. These periods of cold, which lasted thousands of years and are known as the ice ages, alternated with warmer periods. The mounds of Gaasterland were created in the next-to-last ice age, when a thick ice cap of more than 250 meters carried boulder clay from Scandinavia. Boulder clay is oily clay containing all sizes of boulders. This soil drift was deposited in layers, sometimes several meters thick, in the northern half of The Netherlands when the ice masses slowly melted. Boulder clay mounds were formed when the ice retracted at the end of the ice age and then advance in a southern direction again a number of times. These mounds are oval-shaped and more than 10 meters high. The Frisian word for them is “gaasten”, which explains why the region is called Gaasterland. |
