Archaeologists warn of climate threat to past treasures FEATURE 12/10/2010

Archaeologists warn of climate threat to past treasures

FEATURE

12/10/2010

PARIS — Mummies decaying in Siberia, pyramids vanishing under the sand in Sudan, Maya temples collapsing: climate change risks destroying countless treasures from our shared past, archaeologists warn.

Melting ice can unlock ancient secrets from the ground, as with the discovery in 1991 of “Oetzi,” a 5,300-year-old warrior whose body had been preserved through the millennia inside an Alpine glacier.

But as ice caps melt, deserts spread, ocean levels rise and hurricanes intensify — all forecast effects of man-made global warming — Henri-Paul Francfort of the CNRS research institute fears a heavy toll on world heritage.

Francfort is head of a French archaeological team in Central Asia that played an important part in excavating the Kurgans, or frozen tombs, of nomadic Scythian tribes in Siberia’s Altai mountains.

He fears they now risk being lost.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101210com6.html