Ice Age Experience

85,000 years ago, the lake valley was part of a tundra-like landscape. The glaciers were within reach, mammoths and other ice-age animals roamed through Ballwil and shared their habitat with the Neanderthals.

The large mammoth tusk, which was discovered in 2006 in the gravel plant of Lötscher Kies + Beton AG in Ballwil, dates from this time. To this day, it is a source of great fascination and stands as a witness to an infinitely long history of the earth and its climate.

The gigantic gravel walls in the gravel plant give an idea of the enormous forces of the glaciers that advanced and retreated over thousands of years. They once spread from the Alps far into the Central Plateau and - like a large conveyor belt - transported huge quantities of rock that shape our landscape today. If you let your gaze wander over the horizon, you can hardly imagine that during the Ice Age a layer of ice up to 500 meters thick lay over Ballwil.

The freely accessible adventure area is located in a disused zone at the edge of the gravel pit. Pioneer plants are found there, as they were characteristic after the last glacial melt. Nowhere can our climate history, geology, botany, zoology and cultural history be made more visible than in a gravel pit. At various information stations you can puzzle, touch and try things out - and quickly you become part of history yourself!

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.