ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Early Holocene sea level rise

So, imagine you're at the beach with your friends and you build a sandcastle close to the water. As the waves come in and out, sometimes the water reaches your castle and sometimes it doesn't. Right?

Now let's think about the whole world instead of just your beach. The earth is covered in water, like a giant ocean. The water level in the ocean can change over time, just like the waves at the beach change how close they get to your sandcastle.

During a time called the Early Holocene (that's a big word that means a long time ago, before humans were around), scientists have discovered that the water level in the ocean was rising. This means that over hundreds and thousands of years, the water came closer and closer to the land. It wasn't like a giant wave that crashed all at once, but it was a slow and steady change.

This rising of sea levels happened because of a few different things. One was that the ice sheets and glaciers that covered a lot of the land during the last big Ice Age started to melt. When ice melts, it turns into water and flows into the ocean, making the water level rise. Another thing that happened was that the earth's climate was changing, and this caused the water to expand and take up more space in the ocean.

The rise in sea level during the Early Holocene was an important time in the earth's history because it affected where people and animals could live. Some areas that used to be dry land became islands or sunk under the water. It also changed the shape of coastlines all over the world. And now, because of things like human pollution and climate change, scientists are worried that we might see another big rise in sea level in the future.