Melting Glaciers Reveal Ancient Secrets, But Will We Find Them Before They're Lost Forever?

The global retreat of glaciers and ice patches is both well-documented and concerning, a clear calling card from a warming world. And all around the globe, archaeologists have been springing into action, finding incredible artifacts that have been exceptionally preserved within the ice for hundreds and even thousands of years.

However, for every incredible discovery researchers make, they know that there are doubtlessly other artifacts that are being exposed, dried up, cracked or blown away before they can be discovered.

And underpinning it all? The grim reality of just how quickly thousands of years of ice accumulation is melting away.

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In Norway, a significant melt event in 2006 exposed hundreds of artifacts, prompting experts from the Oppland County Council and the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo to join forces. Their mission? To rescue and preserve the artifacts unearthed by the melting ice before they are destroyed or degraded by other weather and climate conditions.

Since 2016, this Glacier Archaeology Program has been known as “Secrets of the Ice.” It has documented over 4,500 artifacts from more than 70 sites, an incredible total that accounts for over half of all glacial archaeological findings worldwide.

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Lars Holger Pilø, co-director of “Secrets of the Ice,” emphasizes the urgency of the work his team is doing.

“The work feels very urgent. The glacial ice is melting at an unprecedented rate,” he says. “What has been preserved by the ice for millennia can disappear in just a few warm summers. Every melt season is a race against time: once an artifact melts out, it is exposed to sun, wind, rain, and trampling by animals. It may be lost forever if we do not find it. That sense of urgency keeps us motivated, along with the knowledge that each discovery adds something unique to our understanding of past human activity in the high mountains.”

Adding to that sense of urgency? The speed at which the ice is melting.

According to Pilø, “Climate change means we are losing ice at a rate we cannot keep up with, and more artifacts are melting out than we have the capacity to rescue. On top of that, unstable weather and difficult field conditions make the work physically demanding. The warming world is both creating the opportunity for new discoveries and threatening to destroy them before we can get there.”

You can learn more about the “Secrets of the Ice” project at their website.