Changing Climate Reveals, Ruins Secrets In The Ice

How climate change is revealing, and threatening, thawing relics

Stephanie Bailey, February 26, 2019 (CNN)

“Since the scorching hot summer of 2006, almost 3,000 archaeological artifacts have appeared from the melting ice in Oppland, Northern Norway…[A] glacier archaeology program called Secrets of the Ice is documenting the finds…[because] once an artifact is exposed to oxygen and sunlight, it will start to degrade…Nearly 70 [Viking] arrows have been found on this site. The oldest dates back 6,000 years…[Europe's oldest known natural mummy, the 5,300-year-old Ötzi the Iceman] was discovered in 1991 in the Alps on the border between Austria and Italy, and some scientists believe it emerged due to climate change…But it is hard to predict how long precious items like another ice mummy will be preserved in their icy tombs…[A]bout 90% of the Norwegian glaciers may have melted away by the end of the century…[Yearly, Norway is] losing at least a couple of whole sites and at least 100 individual artifacts…

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[C]limate change is presenting different problems in the Arctic Circle…[A 2018 study] found there were around 180,000 registered archaeological sites in the Arctic…[These date from the Stone Age] and include the settlements, cemeteries, churches and fishing villages of Norse, European, Inuit and Sami people…But the study warned that climate-related events are destroying a wide range of cultural sites there…[T]he main threats posed by climate change in the Arctic are from coastal erosion and landslides…Some coastal archaeological sites in northern Alaska have already disappeared into the sea because of eroding coastlines, and rising sea levels and more frequent storms, are expected to make the problem worse…[Archaeologists urgently need funding to develop ways of identifying, monitoring, and protecting] the most vulnerable sites…” click here for more

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