Melting ice patch in Norway reveals large collection of ancient arrows | Hacker News Reader

Melting ice patch in Norway reveals large collection of ancient arrows

phys.org

203 pointsdnetesn70 comments

The people behind this research have a rather interesting Twitter account on which they document many of their finds and glacial archeology in general.

It's called Secrets of the Ice and is at https://twitter.com/brearkeologi

Their main website is https://secretsoftheice.com/

And their own article about these finds has more information and more pictures and is probably a better source if you're interested in this: https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2020/11/25/prehistoric-arro...

This photo is rather alarming

https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1320024088954294275/photo/1

Just an exponential function showing its true colors, not sure what is alarming here. /s

Hasn't done this for 6000 years. Its doing things like this everywhere. So while one data point can be thought of as 'normal' or 'just how an exponential function works', a global phenomenon is damning. We're in a very fast, very abrupt warming time. Nothing like any historical period. Not explainable as normal variation.

Nah we all know global warming is a hoax. /s

Sure, but we now can say with certainty that 2020 isn't the hottest year on record for that particular region.

Sweet giant plants and firestorms that cover the planet making more coal for future generations.

They don't, though; firestorms are the opposite of what you want for coal generation.

Also coal was made in the Carboniferous when there were no wood eating microbes. The lack of creatures digesting wood is gave us coal.

So...no. No silver lining. Or at least not that one.

Most of our coal reserves were deposited as charcoal, after a firestorm.

The more recent graphs https://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/arctic-sea-ice-extentconcentrati... (linked to in that tweet) look less immediately alarming (this year is no longer an outlier), but the general trend is still perfectly clear.

Two standard deviations from the mean is an outlier.

It's an outlier if you assume nothing's changing, but there are better ways to say that sea ice is generally shrinking than by pointing out that the current year is an outlier.

I meant that it doesn't look like an outlier if you assume arctic sea ice is decreasing (linearly?) over time (it does look like an outlier even there if you focus on October 24th).

Nothing to be alarmed about. We are but passengers on this great planet. 10,000 years is nothing.

The planet will still be here in immediate future. Ofc in short term it will be eventually gone due to sun engulfing it.

How is there nothing to be alarmed about when the cause of the ice retreating is anthropogenic?

And then everyone clapped

This PDF [0] has vg shots of several arrows. (See fig. 4) (I'm not surprised at straight shafts from 700CE. But F166 (fig. 4b) from 3980-3830calBP is birch (Table 1) - and surprisingly regular.)

"The Langfonne paper is open access and can be downloaded here:" ( t.co/zd5lwds8Wz points to ) =>

[0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095968362097277...

Official website: https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2020/11/25/prehistoric-arro...

This made me think of a book plot I'd like read: melting ice reveals a sign "we've been in this situation, at this point you've got 5 years to revert the climate trend or die".

Wouldn't this finding imply the reverse situation - we've been at this level of climate before during a -cooling- time (hence ice) and we're now going through a reversal of that cooling?

It depends how optimistic you are. It could be a message from a civilisation wiped out ages ago, because they knew at what point they crossed the line when the changes were irreversible. (ignore the continent drift and the placement of the sign for a bit :) ) Devices left behind kept working for some time, speeding up the recovery enough that we can't see that period clearly in any usual natural markers.

Nah, it's not optimism, it's intelligence, really.

Yes, it's definitely a message from peoples of olden ages.

I was thinking exactly this too.

And found quite a few other articles about glacier archaeology, like this one: https://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-...

As it dates back from 2005... I'm not sure the parent one will spark any doubt either

Surely it would imply that they had 5 years and they succeeded

We might have passed the "holocene climate optimum" already (haven't researched it much) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_%28period%29

During the holocene, (last 10,000 years, ie after the ice age) Northern Europe has seen much warmer temperatures than the average of last century. Finland had oak forests in the stone age five thousand years ago. And there were much colder periods than now in between etc. Currently there's a lot of old oaks only in the warmest most favorable locations and forests are mostly pine. After all they take centuries to grow. But oak is again spreading.

Not too far from : http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...

Ha, you made me realise that it would be basically a message for a Seldon Crisis.

Reminds me somehow of a joke from a genetics class of mine:

A block of what appears to be encoded language is found in the DNA of virtually all organisms. It includes a primer with a key to decoding it.

After years and years of work by the world’s greatest cryptographers, the message is deciphered. It reads:

“Danger! Extremely hazardous self-replicating agents! For hazardous waste cleanup use only. In case of spill or uncontrolled replication, contact...”

That's brilliant!

I wonder what kind of hazardous waste life was meant to clean up..? And what was the contact address!??

Oxygen?

H2S and NH3, I guess.

It'd be cool if the primer doesn't align to anyone yet, and all humans alive right now are just a few variants off from receiving the message

It could be worse:

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/

How do you suppose the Vikings reverted the climate during the Medieval Warm Period?

Interestingly, Norse Mythology centers around Frost Giants signalling the end of the world. They feared the ice returning.

Why do you think that is?

I was not thinking about the Viking times in this case, but honestly I love the frost giants version!

Fimbulvinter (a long winter) was a sign of Ragnarök. Ice giants was not a sign.

Fair enough. Point still stands. The Norse feared long and continuous winter. Not warming. Why?

Because the area is currently colder than average or optimal for human habitation and agriculture.

Colder climates make Scandinavian peninsula uninhabitable (e.g. as it was during Weichselian glaciation) and local warming would likely even be helpful for the long-term habitability and agriculture of that particular region (unlike the much more populated areas in warmer climates), the costs and risks for Nordic countries mainly come from the change as such, requiring adaptation.

The Norse people who were living in the northern parts of modern Norway would probably prefer if these lands had the climate of current Oslo area or Denmark, not fear that.

Quite possibly because they had actually experienced what happens when the summer doesn't come.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_53...

Isn't it obvious? Winters in Scandinavia are dark and cold and nothing grows. A winter lasting multiple years would lead to starvation, so basically the end of the world. Especially if the sun and moon was eaten by a wolf.

But according to Völuspá, after the Fimbul winter there will be a big battle and the fire giant Surt will set the world on fire with his flaming sword. So you get both ice and fire!

If you are interested there is an English translation of Völuspá here: http://www.voluspa.org/voluspa.htm

FWIW, we could also make such winter happen, with a press of a button (or a wrong tweet by the right person).

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone

Oh, yeah, we have a lot of them in the Elbe. (CZ).

To me, it rather reminds of the (actually existing) Japanese tsunami stones - the stones littering the coasts of Japan bearing inscriptions warning not to build homes below the point. The Fukushima Daiichi plant was built below that point, in fact it was built on the beachfront.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2018/03/11/how-cen...

Great link, thanks. Learn from the past ^2.

This was cool. And goes to show how we never learn...

-Not only was the plant built more or less on the seafront, the sheds housing the backup generators were quite literally built on the quay stones.

In hindsight (which, after all, is 20/20), it would have made sense to keep a set of backup generators on the top of the reactor building, just in case a tsunami came a-knocking.

It's hard to imagine living in a world where the same ground produces food hunted with bow and arrow for 5200 years.

I mean... what constitutes a generation gap in that world?

More advanced weapons require a lot of diverse foundational technologies which took a very long time to develop, simply because of a lack of writing, a lack of even the concept of those technologies, a lack of labor specialization, and a lack of the concept of an organized development process.

could probably still hunt deer there today.

we're the outliers. pick any two random people from that span of millennia, and they will have an understanding between them that is impenetrable to us.

Reindeer was domesticated. So they didn't need to hunt them.

A bit more in-depth article (with addtl pics):

https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2020/11/25/prehistoric-arro...

Kind of makes you want to hang out along the edge of glaciers to see the big reveal. Pretty interesting find.

The arrow in the picture appears to be metal so not stone age. And the question of why so many in that spot? Did something in the ice collect them there from all over? Or was their a seasonal hunting ground where these guys hunted?

Sadly what I see in hunting spots around the bay are discarded plastic shotgun shell hulls[1]. Sadly I think those things will last for a very long time.

[1] Yes, I pick them up when I find them and hike them out but clearly not everyone does.

the picture in this article is of one arrow. ONE?!

Those are pretty strong against guardians.

> The researchers have also found reindeer antlers and bones and other biological matter but have been surprised by how few of them have been revealed as the ice melts.

Sites like this can be a "kill zone" where animals tend to naturally gather like say a watering hole or a cluster of exceptionally tempting edible plants. No need to create a lure or decoys, just wait for them to come.

Lack of bones may indicate that kills were moved before they were dissected.

Reindeer do gather on snow patches in summer/early autumn to avoid insects.

Is it normal to hide these archaeological sites?

Just seemed weird to not publicize the finding. I suppose it’s better to have tourists and locals come visiting.

Yes, it is normal - and that's because sites quickly become useless for archaeology when the souvenir-hunters and traders in artifacts come a-calling. It's not just about what is there, but where everything is in relation to everything else.

Still, melting ice can render ephemeral objects unrecognizable in days. Even if 'pot-hunters' moved in, they would at least preserve something. As it is, perhaps millions of artifacts are decaying to be lost forever? That's not good archaeology either. I'm of two minds on this.

> I suppose it’s better to have tourists

Not if they will move / not report interesting items, or stomp over ground you want to see undisturbed for some time.

Just look how quickly the recent monolith discovery changed into a tourist attraction and got popular on the internet.

Yes, it's typical. For one, you don't want people disturbing sensitive sites that may need to be revisited periodically. Things that have the allure of value tend to make otherwise reasonable people greedy and come sniffing around for things to loot. It's not hidden from anyone with credentials or the government, just the general public.

Absolutely not. Humanity is not trust worthy. It’s going to be a couple of days before Instagram influencers descend on the site and destroy it.

Comparing (for example) Edmund Hillary, the first Westerner to climb Everest, to a present-day Instagram influencer is satisfying.

He followed the philosophy of Radiant Living and went on a hunt for the abominable snowman.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

Is carbon dating accurate? I mean is the part in arrow 6000 year old or the wood part? Does it work for today's items?

Yes and no: between 60kya and 800ya.

Reality is just one big Jojo reference

Reads like a /r/nosleep title, or writing prompt

It reminds me that this happens every year in some parts of the world, with loose items and such found in the spring.

Therefore, I imagine it happened every year in that part of Norway for the years leading up to this very long freeze that's now thawing.

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