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As the climate changes, history is emerging from the glaciers where it was preserved. But glaciers aren’t the only previously-frozen forms giving up their artifacts — even smaller ice patches contain discoveries.
For Wyofile, Kelsey Dayton reports that in Yellowstone National Park, archeologists are racing to collect the emerging ice-encased trees, the bodies of animals and the ancient tools, spears and utensils that have been preserved high in the Rocky Mountains.
Ice patches don’t move like the larger glaciers, so they are even better suited for preserving material. In the greater Yellowstone ecosystem — an area that includes surrounding mountains and forests — researchers started collecting these artifacts about eight years ago, Craig Lee, an archeologist at the Institute of Arctic Alpine Research in Colorado, told Dayton.
In Yellowstone, Lee, archeologist Staffan Peterson, and others have found animal bones, wooden weapons, and other artifacts ranging from 10,000 year to just a few hundred years old. They've carbon-dated leaves and tree stumps that are more than 5,000 years old.
Dayton writes:
The artifacts released by melting ice in the high country are important because they provide excellent clues to the past. Archaeologists normally only have access to what can survive thousands of years — usually items made of stone. Yet stone tools are only a fraction of what ancient people used to survive. Ice patches, meanwhile, cryogenically preserve organic artifacts such as wood, textiles, leather and animal fur, and provide a much broader perspective of what people used in their daily lives, Peterson said.
The land high in the mountains may seem chilly and inhospitable now, but ancient animals did venture to the green areas made wet by snow in even higher regions. The people hunting them followed.
In Yellowstone, the melting ice has offered up ancient tree stumps, plants, animals and insects as well as dart shafts and basketry, Lee and a co-author write in a special issue of Yellowstone Science (pdf). Glacier National Park also has ice patches protecting history — The Blackfeet, Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai peoples left fire rings, campsites and stone tools that are slowly melting out of the ice there.
It’s a bonanza for archaeologists, who rarely find so many important specimens at once. Unfortunately, it comes at a price: The artifacts are emerging at such a rate that scientists are unable to collect and preserve them all. According to Smithsonian, the ice once preserved a range of organic artifacts, like baskets and clothing, that would have decomposed under normal circumstances. But now that the glaciers are gone, these artifacts are disintegrating at an alarming rate.
So far, the archaeologists at Yellowstone have discovered artifacts ranging from a few hundred to 10,000 years old. These include ancient animals, trees, wooden weapons, and a variety of tools. Yellowstone archaeologist Staffan Peterson even discovered a wooden tool he thinks was once used to spread resin—an “item he never knew existed,” according to WyoFile
It’s bittersweet news for the scientists—the artifacts they manage to preserve will provide important insights into the past, but each lost artifact feels like a missed opportunity. Peterson told WyoFile, "I get the feeling of ‘My God, these things are melting right in front of me, and any value they have for science is melting away with them."
This isn't the only example of climate change fueling archaeological discovery. "Ice patch archaeology" is currently practiced in a number of regions. Meanwhile, droughts and wildfires have revealed a slew of Native American artifacts in California's state parks. Unfortunately, as the Monterey Herald reports, looters have been snatching up the artifacts before archaeologists can get to them.
originally posted by: sycomixMain stream science in general and historians think they know so much, sooner or later they are gona be backed into a corner and be forced to admit they don't know squat.
Doesn't this mean, that those areas covered in ice that is melting now, were also exposed 10,000 years ago? How did all that stuff get there, to freeze?
originally posted by: Mianeye
a reply to: chiefsmom
Doesn't this mean, that those areas covered in ice that is melting now, were also exposed 10,000 years ago? How did all that stuff get there, to freeze?
No, not necessarily, the artifacts has been covered by 10.000 years of snow, but it doesn't mean the area was completely snow/ice free back then.
originally posted by: EA006
I'd like to see some testing for radioactivity performed on the bones.
I'd also like to see if there's any pole shift evidence around.
The latest one, the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago; and may have happened very quickly, within a human lifetime.[1] A brief complete reversal, known as the Laschamp event, occurred only 41,000 years ago during the last glacial period. That reversal lasted only about 440 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. During this change the strength of the magnetic field dropped to 5% of its present strength
originally posted by: punkinworks10
But none of that has anything to do with the find in question
originally posted by: Mianeye
a reply to: chiefsmom
Doesn't this mean, that those areas covered in ice that is melting now, were also exposed 10,000 years ago? How did all that stuff get there, to freeze?
No, not necessarily, the artifacts has been covered by 10.000 years of snow, but it doesn't mean the area was completely snow/ice free back then.