Glaciers are melting and revealing millennia-old secrets: what archaeologists find beneath the ice
Kyiv • UNN
The melting of glaciers is revealing mummies, weapons and clothing to archaeologists, including the 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi. Moisture and air threaten the finds.
Due to global warming, glaciers around the world are rapidly melting, revealing unique finds to archaeologists that had remained hidden beneath the ice for millennia. Among them are mummified human remains, ancient weapons, clothing, and other household items. BBC reports, UNN writes.
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One of the most famous finds was Ötzi the “Iceman,” whose body was accidentally discovered by German tourists in the Alps in 1991 at an altitude of about 3,200 meters. At first, they thought they had come across a victim of a recent accident.
However, radiocarbon analysis showed that the man lived approximately 5,300 years ago, before the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. His body was so well preserved that researchers were able to make out tattoos, determine the composition of his last meal, and discover an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, indicating a violent death.
Thousands of ancient artifacts are emerging from beneath the ice
According to a 2025 study, from 2000 to 2023, the world's glaciers, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, lost an average of about 270 billion tonnes of ice each year. The fastest melting occurred during the last decade.
Norwegian archaeologist Espen Finstad said that over the past 20 years alone, researchers had found thousands of items that had previously been concealed by the ice.
It is a huge historical freezer that no longer works. That is why these artifacts are reappearing in the world, and many of them have been preserved just as well as they were thousands of years ago
Archaeologist Andreas Putzer emphasizes that such discoveries are particularly valuable because they make it possible to study the daily lives of ancient people. Unlike burials, where objects were often placed deliberately, finds such as Ötzi preserve the items a person used directly before their death.
At the same time, melting glaciers are creating a new problem for archaeologists: once ancient objects emerge from beneath the ice, they are exposed to moisture, air, and temperature fluctuations, which can cause them to deteriorate rapidly.