Ancient artifacts dislodged by climate change | Hacker News Reader

Ancient artifacts dislodged by climate change

smithsonianmag.com

153 pointsmotorogo79 comments

The unidentified "wrenches" [1] look awfully like a Trangia pan handle [2]. Wonder if they were used to hold a hot cooking pot?

[1] https://miro.medium.com/max/4344/1*yF6s3HG4AY4WAQruLPSmag.jp...

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trangia-Pan-Handle/dp/B06XWJ32LP

Indeed. Never thought about whittling out one. Looks like a neat little project when we go camping next summer.

Huh. Exactly. The notches on the handle would be for lashing in another piece of wood to act as the lever arm.

without a single picture of any of the artifacts

That made me very frustrated! Here's the proper article, with actual pictures: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/2000-artifacts-pul...

Thanks for the link. Aside from the OP article's basic regurgitation of prior (perhaps stale - I couldn't read it either being behind a "sign-in wall"), the Smithsonian author clearly didn't view it as a race against time and human-induced climate change, but merely an unexpected windfall for researchers:

"There are countless negative impacts of the changing climate, but the recovery of these artifacts could be an unexpected positive. Our uncertain climate future may inadvertently help researchers learn more about our past."

thanks :)

Ok, we've changed to that from https://gen.medium.com/the-rescue-mission-to-save-civilizati.... Thanks!

That tunic is incredible! I can't believe it's around 1700 years old. I wonder how fast it would deteriorate once melted from the ice if it wasn't discovered.

The glaciers melting is a sad thing but at least this aspect of it is exciting.

Excellent sources, mostly Norwegian, but there are pictures and some English resources on those two web sites:

* https://secretsoftheice.no/ * https://www.norskfjellsenter.no/home

And lots of illustrations of snowmen and melting ice lollies.

Much as I dislike Twitter links, there are lots of good pictures here: https://twitter.com/brearkeologi

See their official facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/pg/secretsoftheice/posts/

If you scroll down far enough there are some (perhaps they were added later).

The 'wrenches' look to me like some thing used to pull on or to tighten some sort of string or rope.

The article suggests, that the climate change that we are now concerned about is responsible for the exposure of these artifacts. Actually, the periodic glaciation in the earth history is followed by warming periods, known as the interglacials, during which the glaciers retreat[1]. This melting of glaciers, and the concomitant rise is sea level has been going on for the last 20,000 years of the current interglacial. I feel like this article, perhaps slightly, misrepresents what is happening.

Ötzi[2] was discovered almost 40 years ago, before the accelerated warming due to current climate changes we are concerned about. He was likely uncovered by the inexorable melting of the glaciers that started during the current interglacial epoch, known as the Holocene, and which continues today. This melting explains the small, but constant sea level rise that has been going on for centuries. [3]

During the last glacial maximum, the Laurentide ice sheet covered millions of square kilometers including the area that is currently Canada and northern United States. This ice sheet was up to 4000 meters thick, carved out the Great Lakes, and covered most of North America until 20,000 years ago. [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial#/media/File:Ice_A...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ötzi

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise

[4] https://study.com/academy/lesson/laurentide-ice-sheet-facts-...

If an arrow shaft was found from about 1500 years ago, does that imply there probably wasn't ice there at the time? Or were people hunting on the ice then?

The latter. Anything under the glacier would be pulverised into dust (the glaciers even carve out their own valleys). These artefacts must have started up above the ice (on top or down a crack), so the people would have been hunting on the ice or maybe travelling across it.

I don't think we can simply assume that starting position matters to "pulverization" after 1500 years.

Mobility is more likely; the mobile object moves along with the ice, the stationary one gets pulverized.

I think even moving things that started on the ground would probably be crushed by the weight, since they would be at the bottom.

Almost certainly icy areas, simply for the fact that the weight of the ice could easily crush and mangle any artefacts if the ice formed over them while they'd have much better survival chances the higher up in the ice layer they spent the bulk of their time in. Ötzi for example was travelling through a cold and icy region, it is what preserved him (although he's 3x as old).

Ice weighs 0.919 grams per cubic centimeter or 919 kilograms per cubic meter, for those of us more familiar with inches/feet that means a cubic foot of ice 57.4 pounds. That weight adds up quickly.

Wrenches? Clearly those are bottle openers.

https://miro.medium.com/max/6516/1*yF6s3HG4AY4WAQruLPSmag.jp...

The references to Vikings seem a bit gratuitous, tacked on to the end of sentences likely by an editor, when the scope of the article is about Ötzi and 3400-year old shoes. I’m sure they’ve found some stuff from 1000 years ago as well, but the really fascinating material here is far older. But Vikings!!

Are there any good sci-fi novels about global warming thawing out some ancient alien artifacts?

Not precisely what you’re looking for with the global warming angle, but At The Mountains of Madness by Lovecraft and John Carpenter’s The Thing both feature aliens hidden under the ice.

Also the first X-Files movie; it had a whole spaceship buried in Antarctica.

Not a novel, but the first example off my head is that the TV show Stargate SG-1 had a plot line about the discovery of the second Earth gate in Antarctic ice.

why is there so much clip art and so little pictures of artifacts?

It's not an article to push the artifacts, it's an article to push global warming.

The existence of fossil evidence of human civilization in glacial areas indicates these areas were warmer in the past, when the glaciers didn't exist. It underscores the cyclical nature of climate change.

Cant read this article, Medium shows me to signup for an account.

Use a private browsing tab, or clear your cookies.

Alternatively, disable JavaScript, works and looks great.

That always pops up for me, but I can just close it by clicking outside the box or clicking the x in the top right. Do those not work for you?

Those always used to work. But now I’m getting an uncloseable popup:

You've completed your member preview for this month, but when you sign up for a free Medium account, you get one more story

Add uMatrix plugin and block cookies and scripts from Medium.

http://archive.is/UHgrk

> You've completed your member preview for this month, but when you sign up for a free Medium account, you get one more story.

Fuck Medium.

Incognito gets you around this. I know it's beside the point. However incognito is the laziest of bypasses to a subscription-wall which tells me Medium aren't really behind it as a strategy anyway.

For now.

The real problem is that websites can still even tell whether or not you're in incognito mode.

Lately I've been using Forget Me for Chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forget-me-clean-hi... One click wipes cookies, history, and local and session storage for the current site. It works on the NYT and everything else I've tried so far.

Or just deleting the medium cookies (two clicks, same tab, no incognito needed). If there is an easy way to block all cookies from a specific domain without an extension, that would be nice too..

How to do that on android?

uMatrix, can granularly block js, cookies, css etc on a per site and per domain (different elements loading into a site) basis.

Blocking all cookies and javascript on medium has minimal to no negative impact on my experience.

I use uMatrix with a global deny of everything. When going to a site never previously visited uMatrix then puts up a big warning sign indicating that the entire site is blocked. That's handy to increase anti-phishing defense depth too.

I do the same, its annoying for a while, but worth it.

Now I just need a way to sync my settings between browsers, devices, phones and pc. I want one Dark Reader, uBlock, and uMatrix profile across firefox, chrome/brave/vivaldi, and phone.

to reiterate what you said, since others are trying to be helpful and giving other workarounds:

this is besides the point. for such a simple task as publishing static text, we've got what, yet another $7.99 (or whatever), a month fee? yes, medium provides some benefit to both authors and readers, and some may find it worth it, others won't.

But it's static text. www.pacbell.net/~username, or Geocities may not have been so glamorous; capitalism has an odor all its own.

(inb4 I get ad-homonym'd for having personally benefitted from capitalism)

It's $5. All of that money goes to the authors right now (VC is funding the operations). Plus in the case of this article, some additional money went to an editor and copy editor.

Not sure it's obvious, but that article only exists because of medium's paywall. That subscription money goes to the author, and in the case of that publication, also editors. I can understand why someone might not want to be a medium customer yet, but I don't see how cursing them is warranted.

Early tech bros built the internet on the idea of everything should be free (even if at the same time they idolized billionaire CEOs) and now the idea of free is pervasive and things like journalism, a pillar of democracy is failing.

Exactly. I'm excited for the pendulum to swing back to pay. I don't understand why I'm being downvoted for that. Pay is so obviously better for the consumer, especially a tech consumer. I know not all of us who read HN are making FB salaries, but we all have pretty good earning potential. And so the ROI on paying $5 to read smarter, more curated, more accurate information seems like a no brainer.

I'm excited to exchange money to get back my time and to get smarter.

They were more “Deadheads” than “tech bros”.

Paywalls annoy me too. That said, for historical accuracy, the idea that content should be free of charge was hotly debated in the early days of the Internet and WWW. People like Jaron Lanier felt that online discourse would suffer if there wasn’t some nominal cost to, say, sending an email.

>People like Jaron Lanier felt that online discourse would suffer if there wasn’t some nominal cost to, say, sending an email.

Interesting, and I think to some extent it is true.

Just letting you know I downvoted this because it contributes nothing to the conversation that we haven’t heard a million times before. Yes, Medium sucks ass. I’m sorry. I hate it too. But to see this on every. Single. Thread. involving a Medium article makes me want to pull every last goddamn hair out. The fact that it’s the top comment right now speaks to HN’s apparent inability to actually discuss the content of an article instead of a million other tangential things about the article, the most popular of which being whether or not it’s hosted on Medium.

The venue blocks access. Linking to an inaccessible article will get complaints. That's the appropriate response.

If HN refused medium articles, this problem would solve itself. What value does medium provide to be worth losing HN as a source of traffic?

But it doesn’t, so why bring it up? Just ignore it and move on. I don’t understand why these conversations aren’t considered not germane and deleted, honestly.

Because that response works until you run out of products/services to move on to.

If half the interesting posts on HN are blocking access, it merits conversation and I'd argue a few "fuck off"s as well.

I'm not sorry that we don't delete conversation you consider boring.

Dudes, I'm not sure how to tell you this but if you want quality content without advertising, then spending money will be required at some point.

Edit: I'm rate-limited so I can't answer below. Medium pays authors through the Partner Program which is a Flattr-like interaction-based model.

Does Medium pay the authors?

Yes. Currently 100% of the subscription revenue is shared out to the authors. Obviously, there's some venture capital paying for the rest of operations right now, and the revenue share will change. But yes, in general, the point of the subscription at Medium is to pay authors and editors to get better articles.

We had plenty of good content (more, frankly) a decade or two ago when people just ran their own websites / blogs.

It’s almost like silicon valley mostly makes broken crap.

Broken records, apparently.

To deal with this, I use the YesScript2 plugin, now I can read whatever article I want.

I decided to block all medium cookies in Chrome a few weeks ago when that message popped up, and now that you mention it I haven't seen it in a while, so I guess it is enough, no scripts/add-ons required.

Well, that's what you can expect to happen if an ancient ice melts - stuff just comes out.

I hope they find Megatron...

And not The Thing...

or ancient sandwiches

and not ancient sand witches

Filled up with cute clipart. Few images of the artifacts themselves.

Possibly the ultimate failure in basic interface design. Thanks, morons.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis!

https://i.imgur.com/G1vIYO0.jpg

I often get into arguments with people not believing in the consequences of climate change, especially when it's about the melting glaciers. People reason that finding ancient objects hints to low ice levels at numerous times in the last millennias. My reaction is to reason about the implications of melting ice (ex. sea level rise), which I cannot really back up with facts. Is there another way to argue about this?

You can absolutely back up concerns about sea level rise with facts: https://skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm

Some just choose to ignore them.

Wow, that site managed to hang my Brave tab on a 10-core, 64 GB RAM machine. Is it folding proteins on the background or something?

Maybe you need to check what else is running. I am using a Chromebook and it loads in seconds.

> Some just choose to ignore them

Some... like smart people with lots of money.

Because, you know, the prediction market in nice oceanfront properties beloved by the coastal elites hasn't collapsed, even tough their tongues say they believe.

I don't trust that website. I know for a fact that their #4 issue is a bust. I tracked down the 'consensus' paper that had 97% of a few dozen climate scientists say that humans are having an impact. I don't believe in CAGW because of the math, and I agree with those 97% scientists. The rest of the papers that reference the 97% consensus fail to qualify it that the consensus was about any impact at all however little. I think CO2 having a logarithmic warming effect should frankly be the end of the argument.

Easy explanation:

    Glacier -> Camp

Glaciers move.

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