A global overview of glacier advances and retreats (grouped by regions and by millennia) for the Holocene is compiled from previous studies. The reconstructions of glacier fluctuations are based on 1) mapping and dating moraines defined by 14C, TCN, OSL, lichenometry and tree rings (discontinuous records/time series), and 2) sediments from proglacial lakes and speleothems (continuous records/time series). Using 189 continuous and discontinuous time series, the long-term trends and centennial fluctuations of glaciers were compared to trends in the recession of Northern and mountain tree lines, and with orbital, solar and volcanic studies to examine the likely forcing factors that drove the changes recorded. A general trend of increasing glacier size from the earlyemid Holocene, to the late Holocene in the extra-tropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) is related to overall summer temperature, forced by orbitally-controlled insolation. The glaciers in New Zealand and in the tropical Andes also appear to follow the orbital trend, i.e., they were decreasing from the early Holocene to the