89 pointsby dxs6 hours ago12 comments
  • autoexec2 hours ago
    Sure, our actions and inaction regarding climate change threaten the very future of humanity, but on the bright side we're going to learn so much about human history in the process!
    • quotemstr3 minutes ago
      Nah. For centuries up to the 1850s, climate was looking pretty dicy. The little ice age, had it gone on, might have represented a return a big ice age.

      The heroic efforts of early industrialists adding carbon to the atmosphere avoided this calamity and set us up with a level of comfy and productive climate unknown in the quaternary.

      Amazing how humanity keeps lucking out like this.

    • ant6n2 hours ago
      Climate is out. Climate tech too.

      AI is in.

      • paulryanrogersan hour ago
        With oil prices rising, climate tech is still quietly advancing.
      • jareklupinski40 minutes ago
        what if we used AI on the climate
        • trismus27 minutes ago
          Just gotta build out those data centers first. For the climate, of course.
          • yako2100026 minutes ago
            Impact compared to other life necessary structures of big cities is small. (Water, power etc...) But yeah, it still consumes.
          • parineum8 minutes ago
            I'm sure you're abstaining from using AI, for the climate of course.
  • pugworthy3 hours ago
    To be clear, so far some of the oldest ice found is over 6 million years old...

    https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/six-million-year-old-ice-d...

  • assimpleaspossi36 minutes ago
    So this means these areas were once not ice covered? Does this mean the area is returning to what it was a thousand years ago? And, back then, this was the normal or is ice covering the normal?
  • lexicality4 hours ago
    I'm slightly surprised they're just holding these artefacts with bare hands. I thought that was generally a no-no for dealing with objects untouched for thousands of years
    • AlotOfReading2 hours ago
      Conservationists and archivists (sometimes) use gloves on cleaned samples, but not archaeologists. An archaeologist wearing gloves is almost certainly just cold.

      There's no real reason to immediately protect the find from light handling when it's discovered. It's a dirty object that's still coated in whatever was floating around the environment for those thousands of years. The rock will be fine and probably handled multiple times before it gets back to an archive.

      I think the only times I've worn gloves in the field were for a very rusty metal dagger and some especially sensitive human remains.

    • thenthenthen23 minutes ago
      Thats one pretty arrowhead
    • dieselgate3 hours ago
      Me too but presumably they’re not really that unique as there are hundreds? Or maybe the stone/hard artifacts are handled different than organic/soft.
  • skeledrew2 hours ago
    Just wait for a few ancient-but-novel pathogens to start emerging too.
  • chrisco2554 hours ago
    What's most impressive to me is how razor sharp the slate arrowhead they show in the top photo is. I've seen photos of many stone age arrowheads but they are usually much more dull and blunted.
    • jacquesm2 hours ago
      That's because they weren't exposed to the weather as much. Essentially these were 'shrinkwrapped' in nature's own version of Cosmoline. No bacteria, no free oxygen. Once did this with a rose to see how long it would last and it basically was perfect until we moved house. Many years and not even the slightest change, it didn't even lose color.
      • spockz2 hours ago
        That would actually be a brilliant treatment to give wedding bouquets! I’ve never heard of Cosmoline. Going to look it up. Thanks!
  • PowerElectronix5 hours ago
    Does this mean that the ice wasn't there during the stone age?
    • kzrdude4 hours ago
      Yes: most mainland Norway ice was gone during the holocene climatic optimum (9–6 thousand years ago), and glaciers recovered since then (until approx the 20th century, when deglaciation started accelerating again).

      The climate is varying in long cycles, and the deglaciation 20 thousand years ago (last glacial maximum) was driven by a spike in summer temperatures, and this peak has already long passed. Ice ages and interglacial periods have a certain momentum to them, so it takes more than just that to go back to full ice age..

    • chrisco2554 hours ago
      Yes, the early Neolithic was warmer than modern era.
      • mistrial93 hours ago
        wrong: IPCC AR6 puts the warmest Holocene stretch (~6.5 ka) at about 0.2-1°C above 1850-1900. 2011-2020 already beat that
        • chrisco255an hour ago
          No, it's not wrong or we wouldn't be finding 5K year old instruments underneath melted glaciers as this article's evidence shows. And ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica support this.
          • fc417fc80241 minutes ago
            Without taking a position I will point out that your stated reasoning doesn't hold due to how much momentum these systems have and how slowly they respond. It seems entirely plausible that this outcome would still have happened if temperatures had plateaued several years ago.
    • throwaway1737384 hours ago
      Whatever you put in the glacier the glacier gives back to you. Anything you leave there ends up at the bottom of it in the moraine.
  • gAI4 hours ago
    Including Stone Age diseases?
  • bpbp-mango3 hours ago
    I wonder what we will find beneath Greenland's ice?
  • mikert894 hours ago
    Hyperborea
  • pestatijean hour ago
    Imagine if the water disappeared
  • dyauspitr5 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • sublinear5 hours ago
      That last sentence is how we know you've never been there. The ratio is the same as anywhere else.
      • dyauspitr5 hours ago
        I’ve been to Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, the British Isles, all of it really.