Cultural significance of melting glaciers

In her book The Age of Melt, US science journalist Lisa Baril embarks on a fascinating exploration of the hidden treasures and profound implications of Earth's ice patches and glaciers. 

As an enthusiastic hiker, I've often spotted patches of snow lingering along ridge lines even late into the summer in North America's Rocky Mountains and other global mountain ranges. I assumed these were simply remnants from the previous winter or perhaps a few winters past. However, I may have been mistaken. Many of these subtle ice patches could have been around for 10,000 years or more, harboring a wealth of ancient artifacts and climate data, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

In The Age of Melt, science journalist Lisa Baril guides readers through Earth's frozen landscapes. This "cryosphere" encompasses the vast polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, along with sea and lake ice, permafrost, mountain glaciers, and semi-permanent ice patches. Baril focuses particularly on the latter two categories, as they are found at mid and low latitudes where the majority of people live and interact with ice. 

This relationship between humans and ice—past, present, and future—is central to Baril's exploration. The narrative begins high in the Alps, at the border between Italy and Austria, with the 1991 discovery of Ötzi, a human body unearthed by melting ice. Preserved for over 5,000 years, Ötzi’s remains and belongings offer a remarkable glimpse into the past. The preservation of such artifacts is due to the unique nature of ice patches compared to glaciers. 

While glaciers flow slowly downhill due to their weight, transporting ice from colder upper regions to warmer lower areas where it melts, ice patches are smaller and do not flow. This lack of movement means the ice can be thousands of years old, allowing materials that land on the surface to be frozen and preserved with minimal alteration. As Baril explains, many of Ötzi’s possessions were made from once-living organic materials, such as plant fibers, wood, and leather, which would have decayed quickly if not for being frozen. Unlike inorganic artifacts made of stone or metal, the age of these organic items can be accurately determined through carbon dating. 

The remarkable preservation of Ötzi’s body and belongings opened a unique window into Neolithic civilization in the Alps and gave rise to a new field called ice-patch archaeology. Baril engages with archaeologists and researchers studying ice patches and the cultural artifacts being uncovered in Europe, North America, and Asia. One notable site she visits is a 70-meter-long tunnel carved into the Juvfonne ice patch in Norway, built in 2012. Here, evidence has surfaced of humans hunting and herding reindeer as far back as 6,000 years ago. Many ancient artifacts revealed by melting ice patches worldwide are linked to large-animal hunting. 

During the summer, reindeer (caribou), bison, mountain sheep, and other large animals would gather on ice patches to escape the heat and insects, while autumn melt would promote late-season grass growth, turning the patches into high-elevation oases. Hunters followed these herds, as indicated by lost and discarded hunting tools, along with everyday items such as shoes, clothing, and baskets that were preserved in the ice. 

Through interviews and field excursions in the Rocky Mountains, Canada’s Yukon province, and beyond, Baril interacts with Indigenous peoples whose traditional lands include artifact-rich ice patches and culturally significant mountain glaciers. A pivotal moment occurred in 1997 when fresh caribou dung was discovered melting out of an ice patch in the Yukon, where caribou (Rangifer tarandus) had been absent for 60 years. This led to the realization that the ice patches might be much older than previously thought. This was further confirmed by the unearthing of what appeared to be a twig, which turned out to be a 5,000-year-old atlatl, a lever used to throw darts, predating the bow and arrow by millennia. 

These discoveries sparked ongoing collaboration between Yukon government archaeologists and First Nations governments to monitor and survey melting ice patches for artifacts across a vast region that includes the traditional lands of six First Nations in Canada. Throughout her journey, Baril collaborates with interdisciplinary teams of archaeologists and climate scientists in both the field and laboratory as they investigate ice patches and glaciers in the Rocky Mountains. In 2007, Craig Lee, an archaeologist now at Montana State University, discovered the oldest ice-patch artifact to date: the foreshaft of an atlatl made from a birch-bark sapling, which has been carbon-dated to be 10,300 years old. 

Additional dating of plant material encased in organic-rich layers within the same ice patch indicated that new layers of ice had formed over the past 10,000 years, preserving an exceptional record of high-elevation climate variability in the Rockies. Baril concludes her journey by exploring current and future interactions between humans and alpine ice. In South America, she participates in a pilgrimage with Quechua-speaking people to the retreating Qolqepunku Glacier in the Peruvian Andes. 

She also describes initiatives aimed at compensating for declining summer river flows caused by shrinking Himalayan glaciers, such as the creation of conical ice heaps known as ice stupas, which melt slowly and provide water during the growing season. The burning of fossil fuels has led to atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not seen in three million years. The retreat of ice over the past few decades is one of the most evident signs of climate warming. 

While the artifacts revealed by rapidly melting ice offer extraordinary insights into earlier cultures and climates, they come at the cost of losing majestic mountain glaciers and the ecosystem services they provide. As Baril notes, the field of ice-patch archaeology itself may be as transient as the ice patches it studies. Once the ice melts, these connections to the past will vanish, pushing humanity closer to a future climate unknown to our ancestors—but one that will be inherited by our children.

By Naila Huseynova