As Alpine Glaciers Retreat, Evidence of Stone Age, Roman, and Mediaeval Use Emerges
While 'the Science™' is covering up what once used to be known as 'the Mediaeval Climate Optimum', archaeologists keep finding evidence of less-icy mountains: what gives?
And a few days ago, this happened: as in Norway, archaeologists in the Alps are virtually tripping over cool stuff, such as evidence of relatively consistent human activities at high altitudes—2,000m above sea level (or higher)—throughout the Stone Age, Classical Antiquity, and the Middle Ages.
Needless to say, there is but one thing ‘the Science™’, ‘journos™’, and everyone else who blindly follows them needs to to—keep ignoring the mountains (pun intended) of evidence of fewer ice at high altitudes well before humans began to burn coal, oil, and gas.
Without much further ado, here’s a translation from the Austrian Press Agency from last week, with emphases and [snarky commentary] added.
Retreating Glaciers Present New Challenges for Archaeologists
Via Austria Press Agency | Science, 9 Sept. 2024 [source]
Little remains of the once mighty Taschachferner glacier. The glacier at the end of the Tyrolean Pitztal valley advanced further down the valley between 1970 and 1987, and it is now hundreds of metres higher than it was at that time. The retreat of the ice is taking place rapidly throughout the Alps, which is also revealing old archaeological artefacts that have been frozen fast. This presents scientists with challenges.
As climate change [of course, but not the absence of the word ‘anthropogenic’] continues to accelerate, areas that have not been ice-free for a very long time are now becoming ice-free. But evidence of relatively recent events, which were not frozen for so long, can now be found in places where delicate little plants are slowly taking over former ice surfaces. The Taschachferner can boast the remains of a historical episode that took place not so long ago, but will be of interest to archaeologists in the summer of 2024: a US bomber that crashed onto the glacier in 1944 [yawn; don’t get distracted, the main point isn’t a US bomber but what follows below].
Finds: US Bomber and a Pinewood Foot Trap
The bomber had run into difficulties on the way back after a bombing raid on the Skoda factory in the Czech Republic [fake news, because the Skoda works were then part of Germany]. The ten-man crew then bailed out over Sölden in Ötztal, the plane flew as far as the Taschachferner where it crashed at an altitude of around 2,500 metres, as high mountain archaeologist Thomas Bachnetzer from the University of Innsbruck and his colleague Johannes Pöll from the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments (BDA) explained to APA on the ascent to the crash site. It has now been below the ice edge for several years [would that indicate there was less snow and ice in WW2?]. In August, the researchers began the first systematic inspection, surveying and documenting the crash site.
For Pöll, the primary and most important conservation task is to identify and classify the smaller pieces of wreckage that are now scattered across the steep area below the mighty lateral moraine that formed had much earlier. The moraine piled up when the Ferner reached its maximum extent in 1855; today it takes a lot of imagination to visualise this. If the B-17 bomber is still very young from an archaeological point of view, [here commences the main issues] a Swiss stone pine foot trap found in 2016 on the nearby Seekarjoch at around 2,900 metres above sea level is not.
According to analyses by Bachnetzer and his colleagues, it was set there in the 14th century, during the then fading medieval climatic optimum [whose existence is, of course, denied by the IPCC since Assessment Report 5; for the current Assessment Report 6, see Ch. 2, which explains that ‘The terms “Little Ice Age” and “Medieval Warm Period” (or “Medieval Climate Anomaly”) are not used extensively in this report because the timing of these episodes is not well defined and varies regionally. Since AR5, new proxy records have improved climate reconstructions at decadal scale across the last millennium. Therefore, the dates of events within these two roughly defined periods are stated explicitly when possible.’], most likely to catch ibexes. The scientists also discovered this through a detailed reconstruction of the trap. The fact that the organic material was able to survive the centuries almost unscathed is due to the preservation by ice, snow, and the overall significantly slower decomposition processes in view of the low average annual temperatures there [take-away: it was colder after the middle ages, and now it’s getting warmer once more]. That is now gone: ‘In a few 10,000 years, the glaciers might come back’, says Bachnetzer succinctly.
It’s Not Just the Tyrolean Glaciers That Harbour Ancient Artefacts
In the coming years, however, not only the Tyrolean glaciers are likely to uncover a few more ancient artefacts. Bachnetzer and colleagues from the BDA recently compiled a collection of information on all 17 known archaeological sites close to glaciers throughout Germany. If the artefacts are made of organic material, they may not survive for long without ice preservation, emphasised the high mountain archaeologist [huhum, that’s of course, not ideal, but then again, the more important thing is, I’d argue, what kind of ‘stuff’ re-emerges from under the ice].
The long-standing view that there was hardly anything to be found in the mountains for his guild is now a thing of the past. Today, there is clear evidence in many places that these harsh natural areas were repeatedly visited in the past for hunting, high pasture farming, or the extraction of raw materials when the climatic conditions were favourable or warm [i.e., less cold than after the middle ages]. There is even evidence of human presence from the Middle Stone Age at the entrance to the Taschach Valley, said Bachnetzer [uh-oh, if I’m a Climate Apocalypse™ fear-porn addict, that’s…problematic].
A high alpine site that humans also visited time and again is the Pfitscherjoch at around 2,300 metres above sea level at the transition from the rear Zillertal to the South Tyrolean Pfitschertal. Between 2011 and 2016, Bachnetzer and his colleagues were able to prove that soapstone (Lavez) was mined here for the production of vessels. The earliest traces point to a beginning in the first century AD. There was also a small workshop of sorts there at the time [read that again: the Romans set up a quite sustained and not too-shabby concern at 2,300m above sea level].
A Total of 16 Lavez Quarries to Date
The quarrying is likely to have once been significant for the regional economy. A total of 16 Lavez quarries have been documented there so far, explained Bachnetzer. Apparently, attempts were made to extract a blank wherever it looked promising. It is unclear when the mining activities ended there, as most of the evidence has not yet been dated. However, the area appears to have been utilised for many centuries [after the first century AD; I for one wouldn’t be surprised if it ended around the time the middle ages and its ‘optimum’ ended].
If the traces on the Pfitscherjoch, where the mountain archaeologists were also drawn to this summer, are more or less carved in stone, other artefacts are usually just lying around after the ice retreat [i.e., there’s a direct comparison to the Norwegian archaeologists who document these ‘Secrets of the Ice’]. Accordingly, they are only discovered by experts in absolutely exceptional cases. According to Pöll, there is therefore a need for a widely known system that allows laypeople to easily report any finds and for archaeologists to make their way to the site. An app called ‘IceWatcher’ developed by researchers from the Swiss canton of Valais does this, but is still too little known. However, such finds can also be reported to universities, the Federal Monuments Office or museums, as the scientists emphasised.
Time is of the Essence
The fact that time is indeed pressing is also evident at the Taschachferner: the US aircraft parts, which have been much easier to reach for some time now, are dwindling rapidly, as the inspection showed. No wonder, there are not only many collectors of relics from the Second World War or early eras of aviation, but also numerous visitors to the high mountains who simply take things with them carelessly. Incidentally, the large parts of the bomber, such as the engine blocks, were recovered by helicopter some time ago.
Even if the number of larger objects found at the crash site on the relatively warm summer afternoon in the upper Pitztal valley is limited, the experts draw a positive conclusion. While the meltwater in the high valley is constantly rushing down to the valley, Bachnetzer says that the many small parts, such as pipes, tanks or rubber residues from tyres, are a surprise on site. The archaeologist explains that artefacts were carried down by glacial movements, mudslides and avalanches.
However, artefacts that clearly show that a large aircraft crashed here are now almost completely missing. Some of them could even be covered by stones today. ‘In a few decades, however, it’s possible that nothing will be found up there because people keep taking small parts with them’, says the archaeologist. Pöll can imagine that the site could be placed under a preservation order, precisely in order to raise awareness of the special nature of this site among the population and to prevent the further loss of wreckage.
Archaeology Challenges ‘Climate Doom™’ Narratives
I’ve written about these findings in Norway every now and then, not just because I think it’s cool—but also because these provide more corroborating evidence:
Put differently, if there was but one or two such findings, I’d be more hesitant on this one. But there’s more and more, including the famous Ötzi. I shall quote a few choice excerpts from the Norwegians at ‘Secrets of the Ice’ who, as recently as two years ago, penned a piece entitled ‘A New Understanding’ (emphases mine):
Ötzi melted out of the ice in 1991 in a gully at the Tisenjoch pass close to the Italian/Austrian border. The original interpretation of the find by the Innsbruck-based archaeologist Konrad Spindler was that Ötzi fled to the mountains in the autumn after a conflict. He froze to death in the snow-free gully. Snow and ice quickly covered him, and then a moving glacier. Ötzi remained encased in ice until he melted out in 1991. How else could the preservation of the body and artefacts be explained?
…when Ötzi appeared, he was a bolt from the blue sky for the Austrian and Italian archaeological milieu. From the start, scientists believed that Ötzi was a unique find, preserved by miraculous circumstances—a freak of nature event. Otherwise, there would surely have been more such finds. It was six years before the first mass melt-out of archaeological finds from the ice in Yukon in 1997 and a few years later in the Alps and Norway…
Since Ötzi was discovered in 1991, glacial archaeology has developed as a new archaeological discipline, with its own methodology and a deeper understanding of the complexity of ice sites. Presently, there are hundreds of sites and thousands of finds in various parts of the world. However, Ötzi is still an odd find. Similar very old finds sealed beneath moving glaciers are unknown. The time has come to ask the question: does the original Ötzi story still hold up?
This is so awesome—researchers doing what they are supposed to do: cross-relate evidence to figure out whether or not the original interpretation still holds. I’ve skipped a few paragraphs about the ice man, do read up on it, if you require a bit more background on what happened after Ötzi was recovered.
The Question of Time and Place of Death
Spindler’s interpretation of the find was that Ötzi died in the snow-free gully. The estimate of time of death was late summer or fall. The basis for this conclusion was the discovery of a sloe near the ice mummy—sloes ripen in late summer. In addition, minute pieces of grain stuck to Ötzi’s clothing, and the idea was that they ended up there during threshing.
Doubts Arise
An important piece of independent evidence that Spindler’s assessment of Ötzi’s time of death was wrong appeared in 2001. Klaus Oeggl found pollen of hop hornbeam in a sample from Ötzi’s gut. These pollens are produced in March and April in the valley, where Ötzi came from. Fresh leaves of maple were also recovered from inside one of the birch bark containers found at the site. They point to a death perhaps a little later in the year—May or June? This time of year is a time of maximum snow depth in the Tisenjoch area. Even considering the windswept ridge where the find lay, snow would very likely have covered the gully, perhaps deep snow. How could Ötzi have died down in the gully then?
In 2010, a group of Italian researchers challenged Spindler’s disaster theory. They claimed that Ötzi had died in the valley in the spring and was transported to the site in the autumn. According to the researchers, Ötzi was buried on a stone-platform near the later find spot. They also believed that the mummy and the finds had been moved by recurrent thaw and re-freezing processes. The original Ötzi research group countered that this hypothesis just did not fit the evidence obtained from the investigation of the site. However, the discussion drew attention to the uncertainties associated with the natural processes on the site. The 1992 excavators also raised this point. They wrote in their 1995 report that recurrent thaw and re-freezing processes had probably displaced the mummy and the finds…
Ötzi died in the spring/early summer, not in the autumn, and natural processes had affected the mummy and the finds…
However, there may be a simpler and more natural explanation for the broken equipment and missing pieces. We learned from a careful analysis of our Lendbreen site that there are a number of natural processes that affect artefacts lost on the surface of snow and ice. The simple version is that the artefacts may be displaced from the original place of deposition, they may break into pieces and the broken pieces may scatter. Often artefacts go through all three processes.
You can find my coverage of this paper below:
The ‘Secrets of the Ice’ piece then goes on a tangent comparing the Ötzi site with the Lendbreen site (which I’m omitting here). Here’s the gist—Ötzi was dispersed and eventually deposited in the gully where he was found:
A conclusion in line with the evidence and in support of Oeggl’s work is that Ötzi did not die in the gully. He died outside it, or more precisely above it. His dead body most likely rested in/on the snows of late winter. After freeze-drying on the surface of the snow, he and most of his belongings later entered into the gully as the snow and ice surrounding him melted away. Whether this happened the same year, later and/or in several steps is not known. Natural processes on the site caused Ötzi’s broken equipment and the missing pieces, not a violent encounter prior to his death.
The Question of the Glacier
A central part of the original Ötzi story is that he died just as the climate was getting cooler. Snow and ice covered his resting place a short time after he died, sealing it off from the environment. Otherwise, the reasoning goes, the ice mummy and the artefacts would not have been preserved. This has even been used as an argument for glacier advance and climate cooling just when Ötzi died. As the ice built up, a glacier developed here. Since Ötzi rested in a protected gully, the moving ice of the glacier did not directly influence the find. Only 5,300 years later did the glacial ice melt away and Ötzi reappeared.
This type of preservation is at odds with the way other ice finds from glacial ice are preserved. They are mostly found in association with ‘cold’ ice, i.e. non-moving ice that is frozen to the ground below. Such non-moving ice can be found in isolated ice patches and in non-moving ice fields attached to moving glaciers. Alpine glaciers, on the other hand, only yield more recent finds, which normally do not even date back to the medieval period. This is due to their downhill movement and renewal of the ice (more about that here).
Since the discovery of Ötzi in 1991, no other similar finds have appeared from gullies beneath glaciers, even though glaciers in the Alps have retreated substantially due to the ongoing warming. A number of human corpses and remains have emerged from the melting glaciers in the Alps and elsewhere, but none earlier than c. AD 1600 (more on this subject here). All the recent human remains were discovered on the surface of glaciers, not below them. An artefact assemblage similar to Ötzi’s, but five hundred years younger and without the mummy, appeared in the Schnidejoch pass in the Swiss Alps from 2003 onwards. This find was associated with ‘cold’ ice in a slope just below the actual pass. There is a glacier here as well, but further downslope.
Here follows another tangent about this, mainly focussing on the issue of Ötzi’s dispersed artefacts and the problems deriving from presumable other, comparable corpses being crushed by downward-flowing glaciers. There are, of course, little data from before the 1990s, so there’s yet one more avenue to explore:
There is one more way to investigate the question of a moving glacier at the find spot. That is to reconstruct the maximum ice thickness at the find spot at the end of the Little Ice Age (from the 14th century to the mid-19th century). This was when glaciers in the Alps were at their largest after the Ice Age. A map of the Tisenjoch published in 1878, just at the end of the Little Ice Age, shows the height contours of the ice at that time. We can compare this ice height with the height of the bedrock, now exposed by the retreating ice.
The calculation shows that even when taking the uncertainties of the old map into consideration, there was never enough ice thickness at or around the find spot for the ice to start sliding. The ice thickness was below 20 metres in 1878, probably closer to 5 metres. There needs to be 25-30 metres of ice for a glacier to start sliding at the bottom. In addition, the slope at the find spot is less than 10 degrees, which does not facilitate ice flow. Austrian glaciologist Andrea Fischer undertook this analysis for our new Ötzi paper. It is the final nail in the coffin for the idea of a moving glacier at the find spot.
Basically, what Andrea Fischer found is that, at the time Ötzi died, the high Alpine peaks were, practically, ice-free back then:
Based on this discussion, a non-moving ice field developed over Ötzi’s resting place. Further downslope, this ice field became thicker, eventually developing into a classical moving glacier, which ground its way into the hillside. In the flat area of the find, the ice did not become thick enough for basal sliding to happen after Ötzi died here. It was ‘cold ice’, frozen to the ground.
Does it matter whether a moving glacier or a thin non-moving ice field developed over Ötzi’s resting place? Is this not just a technicality? Not quite. Thin, non-moving ice fields connected to glaciers are quite similar to isolated ice patches. They are less stable than glaciers, and more prone to periodic melt during shorter warming periods. If Ötzi was buried beneath a non-moving ice field of limited thickness, the body and the associated artefacts are more likely to have been repeatedly exposed to the environment. It would change the context of the Ötzi find from very special circumstances to quite normal find circumstances for ice finds…
What does the evidence say? With a permanent burial of Ötzi and his equipment by ice like in a time capsule, the radiocarbon-dated material from the bottom of the gully should all derive from before or at his time of death, not later. A 2014 report by Walter Kutschera and colleagues summarizing the available radiocarbon dates shows that this is not the case. The material not related to Ötzi based on the radiocarbon dates is mostly of natural origin. The exception is a piece of cut green alder, radiocarbon-dated to 800-410 BC, i.e. the Hallstatt period.
The radiocarbon dates clearly show that material was repeatedly added to the assemblage in the gully. This could only have happened if the find spot was also repeatedly exposed. The gully started to collect material from c. 5300 BC and continued until c. 3800 BC. It is also worth noting that a piece of charcoal in the gully was dated to be about one thousand years older than Ötzi. Small pieces of worked stone from the Mesolithic were also found. Ötzi was not the first human at the site.
Most glacial ice in the Alps disappeared during the Holocene Thermal Maximum prior to Ötzi’s death. Then the ice started slowly to come back, a process known as the neo-glaciation, starting around a thousand years before Ötzi. Since then, glaciers in the Alps have varied in size. There is no clear evidence that the ice expanded suddenly at the time of Ötzi’s death, despite such claims in the scientific literature [this is about as measured as archaeologists come; in fact, it’s a whopper]. Rather, this was a time of ‘small ice’.
The climate gradually cooled throughout the Holocene. It makes sense that the find spot would eventually be covered by so much ice that it was completely sealed off, even when ice retreat happened. According to the radiocarbon dates, this appears to have happened around 1500 years after Ötzi’s death. In the meantime, material accumulated in the gully. This shows that the gully and its contents must have been exposed by melting.
At this point, Wikipedia reminds us that ‘Ötzi, also called The Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC.’
If you now ‘subtract’ the 1,500 years from that timespan, you’d figure out that the Alps were not covered in glaciers until 1850 and 1650 BC. Let that sink in.
Back to ‘Secrets of the Ice’:
There is reason to believe that the upper part of his body was exposed on a number of occasions prior to the 1991 discovery.
Ötzi was not buried in the ice for 5300 years like in a time capsule. After being encased in the ice in the gully, he was intermittently exposed during melting incidents. This led to some damage to his body and the artefacts. The intermittent exposure of the gully led to the introduction of younger material to the finds assemblage, in addition to material already present here before Ötzi died. This tells us that scientists have to be careful in assigning undated material in the gully to Ötzi…
When Ötzi was discovered, there were few other archaeological remains from glaciated mountain passes. This also made Ötzi stand out in the archaeological record. This situation has changed. The finds from the Tisenjoch now fit into a pattern with other glacial archaeological pass sites in the Alps. Several discoveries have been made at nearby mountain passes during the last 10 to 20 years…
The Gurgler Eisjoch (3134 metres), a connection between the Schnalstal/Pfossental and Gurglertal, is an important pass site. Here, a snowshoe from around 5800 years BP (Before Present, i.e. before 1950), wooden objects, arrow shafts and leather finds from 6500-5800 years BP as well as Iron Age and medieval artefacts were found in the vicinity of an ice patch. From the Langgrubenjoch (3017 metres)—a remote passage between the Matschertal and the Schnalstal valleys—a belt hook, pieces of clothing and even human remains from around 4500/4300 years BP were recovered together with large timbers from the Middle to Late Bronze Age, which were used there as roof shingles for a shelter.
The find situation seems very similar to the Ötzi site. A stationary ‘cold ice’ field at the highest point preserved the finds above a mobile warm-based temperate glacier. Typical damage to the wooden objects, like those on Ötzi’s equipment, are described for the Langgrubenjoch.
It is now clear that Ötzi is part of a greater story, which shows an intensive use of the high alpine landscapes.
And there’s, of course, much more to this in terms of their implications:
The New Understanding of Ötzi
During very warm summers, the ice-cold grave of Ötzi would occasionally re-open, as the ice cover was not very thick. This led to the deterioration of the most exposed parts of the body and the artefacts. At the same time, it allowed more recent material to enter the gully. About 3800 years ago, the climatic conditions for ice expansion became so favourable in the Alps that ice and snow finally sealed it off from its surroundings. There was never a moving glacier at the find spot, only ‘cold ice’ frozen to the ground. At the end of the 20th century the ice again melted back to a degree that it re-exposed the body and the artefacts.
Looking at the Ötzi find this way, it is no longer an anomaly in the world of glacial archaeology, quite the contrary. Ötzi died on the snow, which is how most ice finds are originally lost. Together with the artefacts, he eventually melted down into a gully, a typical way topographical features will trap ice artefacts. A non-moving field of ‘cold’ ice preserved the mummy and the artefacts, just like the other old finds from the ice. The find spot itself was not sealed off like a time capsule. More recent material is mixed with earlier finds as on other ice sites…
You can read and download our open access paper on Ötzi here.
Press-release and photos with captions/credits available here.
Bottom Lines
Curiously, there’s no mention of ‘climate change’, let alone ‘crisis’ or the like.
It’s hard not to notice this, in particular as this shows you, once more, what my archaeologist colleagues also tell me privately: the ‘ice melts due to human CO2 emissions’ trope is ‘not that simple’.
What are the implications, then?
Well, for once, legacy media reporting is abysmal, as is the way glacier archaeologists speak about this: extremely hedged, with typically no objections to assertions.
Speaking from my own experience, I hardly listen to the results of interviews I do; I wouldn’t be surprised if many glacier archaeologists don’t listen in and/or don’t listen to the opined introduction or the like. Still, this doesn’t make their responsibility of stating facts go away.
Be that as it may, evidence from both the Alps and Norway indicates ‘a greater story, which shows an intensive use of the high alpine landscapes’.
That is, until around the late middle ages some 400-500 years ago witnessed the end of what once used to be called the ‘Mediaeval Climate Optimum’, which was succeeded by the ‘Little Ice Age’. The latter lasted until the mid-19th century.
The IPCC has done away with both, hence it is becoming more and more obvious that what scientists find is increasingly at odds with how this is presented by ‘climate activists™’ and ‘journos™’:
We do this at our own peril. There is no substitute for reality.