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We know from the "Lost Road" quote in my last post, that Tolkien was thinking about Numenor in relation to the Ice Age, and placing it immediately before it; I think it's very, very likely that "16,000 years" was calculated to align the Numenorean Catastrophe directly with the onset of the Younger Dryas.
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Since islands have a tendency to sink somewhat during warm periods when the sea level is higher I wonder if he meant that the Edain reached Númenor just before the beginning of the next (and last) Ice Age. Perhaps they were escaping the advancing glaciers. The Dwarves seemed to want to move south at that time as well.
It would seem difficult to explain all the activity that occurred during the 590 years before the Second Age if the North was covered in ice. However, not much at all happened there during the first 1200 years of the Second Age before the Númenoreans began to make permanent havens.
Delving further into the past is it possible the Noldor arrived at Helcaraxë during the Older Dryas? Was Melkor was freed from his sentence when the Ålesund interstadial ended 28,000 years ago?
