The Elster glaciation (, Elster-Glazial or Elster-Zeit) or, less commonly, the Elsterian glaciation, in the older and popular scientific literature also called the Elster Ice Age (Elster-Eiszeit), is the oldest known ice age that resulted in the large-scale glaciation of North Germany and other parts of Europe. It took place approximately 500,000–400,000 years ago. It succeeded a long period of rather warmer average temperatures, the Cromerian Complex. The Elster was followed by the Holstein interglacial, which was followed Saale glaciation. The glacial period is named after the White Elster, a right tributary of the Saale.

[Schematic diagram of the maximum glaciation of the last three cold periods on the North German Plain:

red line = extent of the Weichselian glaciation; yellow line = extent of the Saale glaciation; blue line = extent of the Elster glaciation | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/EisrandlagenNorddeutschland.png]

Controversial correlations

Traditionally, Elster was correlated with the Mindel glaciation of the Alps and the Anglian glaciation of Great Britain and Ireland. Analysis in the 1950s of oxygen isotopes in deep sea core samples introduced a global glacial history, with warm and cold phases identified by marine isotope stages (MIS). This identified two glacial stages in the time slot of the Elster/Mindel/Anglian, namely MIS 12 and MIS 10. A lack of suitable isotopes for dating the glacial deposits has made it difficult to resolve the ambiguity. This has led to an increasingly controversial issue between the two main alternatives: