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Has science been able to determine from the geologic record how our current ice caps compare to those that existed before before the beginning of the last Ice Age? If so, how do they match up? (I tried to ask this on Physics.SE, but it was suggested it was more of a history question)

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Perhaps "Are there historical records to establish the size/extent of the polar icecaps? – Mark C. Wallace Jan 25 at 12:09
Would be good if you shared with us when this last ice age began and ended and a little bit about the extent of the glaciers at the time your talking about. – Hermann Ingjaldsson Jan 25 at 12:12
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This is a geology question, not history. History is not simply "things that occurred in the past"; it is a discipline, and one whose methodologies cannot answer this question. – choster Jan 25 at 16:12
So. You're saying Earth's history isn't history? Archaeologists will be crushed. – Major Stackings Jan 25 at 16:54
No, Earth's history is not history, nor is it archaeology. It is paleontology, and this already loosey-goosey site doesn't need any more expansions of scope. – choster Jan 25 at 18:25
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up vote 7 down vote accepted

Perhaps this is what you are looking for. In particular, look at the bottom graph in red, which is an estimate of global ice volume. The data was taken from oxygen measurements in Antarctic ice cores.

enter image description here

Assuming they have their data and estimates close to right, it looks like our current worldwide volume of ice is not a record low for the Pleistocene. However, its pretty close to it. The end of the Oxygen (green) graph looks a bit wierd too. Still, there's nothing on the end of that ice graph that draws the eye to say, "something different is going on here".

Yet.

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Eureeka! That is exactly what I was hoping to learn. :) – Major Stackings Jan 25 at 21:31
Yet? There IS nothing weird going on, we're just in an interglacial (and nearing the end of it), which means climate patterns are inherently unstable and prone to large variations over relatively short time periods (decades). – jwenting Jan 26 at 5:30
@jwenting - Its quite possible you are right. Even if you aren't, I've heard it argued that HCGW is putting off the onset of the next Glacial cycle (IOW: A Good Thing). The truth is we really don't know yet. (There's that word again). – T.E.D.♦ Jan 26 at 6:35
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WHICH icecaps? If you mean glaciers, WHICH glaciers? Some no doubt extend further, some less far, some didn't exist before the last ice age, for example.
As to the polar icecaps, the northern one sits entirely on top of water, if floats, so there's no way to know if it was larger or smaller in the past beyond where we have photographic record
The southern one covers pretty much the entire Antarctic continent, so has the same issue. If it were larger in the past, it would have been over open water and no historical record is left. If it were smaller, the evidence is hidden under miles of ice and rather hard to reach.
Most likely it will be the same with the polar caps as it is with the glaciers: in some places they extend further, in others they extend less, than in the past. But no worry, with the predicted global cooling (announced last week by the British Met Office through the BBC) it'll sopon get a lot larger :) (of course that was in part sarcasm (they did indeed announce "global cooling", just as they did in the 1970s, right before they announced "global warming" and no are making an about face once again), I believe in global cooling as much as I do in global warming, such things are cyclical and nothing we can influence anyway so why worry about them?).
And no, it's not a history question so much as a geology one. Doesn't belong under physics indeed, but afaik there's no geology SE you could ask.

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