Alpine melt reveals ancient life

By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Berne

The Schnidejoch glacier records human activity in the region

Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains.

And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change…

… It all started at the end of the long hot summer of 2003, when a Swiss couple, hiking across a melting Schnidejoch, came across a piece of wood that aroused their curiosity.

They took it down with them, and gave it to canton Berne’s archaeological department, where careful examination and carbon dating revealed the piece of wood to be an arrow quiver made of birch bark, dating from about 3000 BC.

“We now have the complete bow equipment, quiver and arrows,” says Mr Hafner “And we have, surprisingly, a lot of organic material like leather, parts of shoes and a trouser leg, that we wouldn’t normally find.”

And the finds are not confined to 3000 BC. Some of the leather found, and a fragment of a wooden bowl, date from 4500 BC, older even than Oetzi, making them the oldest objects ever found in the Alps.

Key to climate change

What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun.

Really? Haven’t we been told repeatedly that climate was stable for thousands of years until we invented the SUV? Now the climate optimums are well established fact? And they occurred because of natural conditions? Fear not dear reader, you are not off the hook yet. The story continues.

Martin Grosjean, a climatologist from Berne clarifies things for us, “what we do know is that the climate has fluctuated throughout history; in the past the driving force for the changes was the Earth’s orbital pattern, now the driving force is green house gas emissions.”  So, in the past, orbital variations drove the climate, but through some change in physics, they have ceased to do so.

Grosjean continues, “The leather is the jewel among the finds,” he says. “If leather is exposed to the weather, to sun, wind and rain, it disintegrates almost immediately. The fact that we still find these 5,000-year-old pieces of leather tells us they were protected by the ice all this time, and that the glaciers have never been smaller than in the year 2003 and the years following.”

While Grosjean may be correct, it would seems to be a giant leap in logic to get to the idea that the glaciers have never been smaller than they are now. It is just as likely that they were much smaller and further melting may reveal more evidence of older alpine habitation by neolithic man. It may also be possible that the alpine regions were entirely ice free at some point in the distant past and that the artifacts now being uncovered were dropped at some time during a glacial advance and have been covered during the intervening years. It is important to keep in mind that: “In 1991, we were completely surprised by Oetzi,” remembers Albert Hafner. “Up to then, we had always thought the Alps were not used, that people never went there.” We could be surprised again if the glaciers continue to recede.

I’m betting that the BBC reporter misunderstood or misconstrued what Grosjean had to say on the subject. Reporting that the climate was warmer than today 5,000 or 7,000 years ago would go against the dogma. Couldn’t the story of these discoveries stand on its own merit without the climate sidebar?