Out of the freezer

• Autores: Laura Spinney
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2951, 2014, págs. 36-39
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The summer of 2003 was the hottest in Europe for 500 years. On the remote Schnidejoch pass, 2,750 m above sea level in the Swiss Alps, an ice patch shrank by half. When hiker Ursula Leuenberger came across it, she realized it had no business there, so far above the tree line so she picked it up and handed it over to the local archaeological service and turned out to be part of a Neolithic arrow quiver, almost 5,000 years old. Archaeologists have round more than 800 artefacts in the vicinity of the pass. Schnidejoch links the Simmental valley to the north with the economically important Rhone valley further south and the discoveries indicated that humans have used it for at east 6,000 years: in the Middle Ages and Roman period, through the Iron and Bronze Ages, and back to the Neolithic. That was a big surprise. Here, Spinney says as glaciers melt and ice thaws, a hidden and surprising world of ancient human activity is revealed.