The mississippi river today is a classic meandering river. 20,000 years ago the mississippi river was a major outwash channel for the laurentide ice sheet, and was characterized by dramatic variations in flow with huge discharge during summer ice melt and a dramatic falloff in discharge during the winter. the river also carried coarser sediment than today, with abundant sand and even gravel in its upper reaches. what does this suggest about the ancient mississippi?

All these characteristics are part of a young river

Explanation:

A river has 3 phases, the youth, the maturity and the old age.

When a river is young, starts with a lot of water on it, with a lot of force because it will start to trace the path of the river. For this reason, there is a lot of mud, rocks, the water runs faster, there are some parts of the river that are irregular. By passing the time when the basin stabilize, the mud start to go to the bottom, the rocks stay almost still and the velocity of the water is not so much.