Archaeologists are finding mysterious ancient objects on Norway's melting glaciers. Take a look.
Some ancient artifacts are mysteries, but they still indicate trade routes through the mountains.
Here's what Norway's glacial archaeologists found in the meltiest part of this past summer.
Mysterious and fascinating artifacts are surfacing on melting glaciers across the planet.
From strange wooden tools and statues to ancient human remains, these objects are drawing archaeologists into the high, frozen mountains each year.
Norway is at the forefront of this emerging field of research, called glacial archaeology. With about 4,500 artifacts discovered, the country claims more than half of the planet's glacial archaeology findings, according to Espen Finstad, who co-leads the Norwegian program, called Secrets of the Ice.
Archaeologists there are piecing together clues about ancient industries and trade routes across the glaciers.
They just had one of their best field seasons yet. Here's what they found.
People have trekked over Norway's glaciers for thousands of years to sell and buy goods.
Ancient hunting, travel, and trade routes crossed the mountains between the Norwegian coast and inland areas from the Stone Age.
"We are lucky that some of these trade routes have gone over ice," Finstad told Business Insider.
Objects that ancient travelers left behind were frozen in the ice for centuries — until recent decades.
As humans have burned fossil fuels for energy, releasing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, global temperatures have been rising for decades. Glaciers everywhere are melting, releasing the ancient artifacts preserved inside them.
Some of these objects look familiar, such as this mitten.
Others, such as this whisk, are quite different from what we know today.
The Lendbreen ice patch is the most fruitful site the archaeologists visit.
"There are so many treasures in the ice there," Finstad said.
Lendbreen was a common travel route during the Viking and medieval eras. The archaeologists go there almost every year.
In the summer of 2024, heavy melting meant lots of new discoveries.
"The melting really came rapidly at the end of the season," Finstad said.
Finstad's team of about seven archaeologists visited nearly a dozen sites across the mountains to search for artifacts.
At Lendbreen, they used pack horses to bring gear up to the site and set up their camp.
They stayed there about nine days, Finstad said.
Their findings included "two of the best-preserved arrows we ever found," Finstad said.
One of them was just lying on top of the ice, waiting to be found. Usually there's a little excavation involved, but the archaeologists simply picked this arrow up.
"It's very seldom to find them that well preserved on the ice. So it was kind of a gift. It was very beautiful," Finstad said.
Arrows are abundant in the glaciers because reindeer hunting was "almost like an industry" in the Iron Age and medieval era, Finstad said.
People hunted for their own food, of course, but also to sell in a market.
Arrows can hold clues about past societies.
For example, some arrowheads found on the glaciers have tips made from river mussels that must have come from far away, cluing researchers in to just how far people were traveling and trading over the ages.
Some of the prehistoric arrows Finstad's team found last season were so well-preserved they still had fletching.
Fletching is delicate and doesn't usually last thousands of years. These were rare findings.
Some items they find are just "strange," Finstad said.
Small bits of wood, leather, and textile are often impossible to identify.
Finstad estimated they'd found about 50 small, mysterious objects at Lendbreen in 2024.
"It's all kind of small things, daily life things from the Viking Age or older, which you don't find in other archaeology contexts, at least in Norway, because it's gone. It degrades," Finstad said.
Heavy snow cut off the archaeologists' efforts — but now they know where to look this summer.
"We are excited to go back," Finstad said.
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Earth's magnetic field is weakening — magnetic crystals from lost civilizations could hold the key to understanding why
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In 2008, Erez Ben-Yosef unearthed a piece of Iron Age "trash" and inadvertently revealed the strongest magnetic-field anomaly ever found. Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, had been working in southern Jordan with Ron Shaar, who was analyzing archaeological materials around the Levant. Shaar, a geologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was building a record of the area's magnetic field. The hunk of copper slag — a waste byproduct of forging metals — they found recorded an intense spike in Earth's magnetic field around 3,000 years ago. When Ben-Yosef's team first described their discovery, many geophysicists were skeptical because the magnitude of the spike was unprecedented in geologic history. "There was no model that could explain such a spike," Ben-Yosef told Live Science. Related: Major 'magnetic anomaly' discovered deep below New Zealand's Lake Rotorua So Shaar worked hard to give them more evidence. After they had analyzed and described samples from around the region for more than a decade, the anomaly was accepted by the research community and named the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA). From about 1100 to 550 B.C., the magnetic field emanating from the Middle East fluctuated in intense surges. Shaar and Ben-Yosef were using a relatively new technique called archaeomagnetism. With this method, geophysicists can peer into the magnetic particles inside archaeological materials like metal waste, pottery and building stone to recreate Earth's magnetic past. This technique has some advantages over traditional methods of reconstructing Earth's magnetic field, particularly for studying the relatively recent past. Generally, scientists study Earth's past magnetic field by looking at snapshots captured in rocks as they cooled into solids. But rock formation doesn't happen often, so for the most part, it gives scientists a glimpse of Earth's magnetic field hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, or after relatively rare events, like volcanic eruptions. Past magnetic-field data helps us understand the "geodynamo" — the engine that generates our planet's protective magnetic field. This field is generated by liquid iron slowly moving around the planet's outer core, and this movement can also affect, and in turn be affected by, processes in the mantle, Earth's middle layer. So differences in the magnetic field hint at turmoil roiling deep below the surface in Earth's geodynamo. "We cannot directly observe what is going on in Earth's outer core," Shaar told Live Science. "The only way we can indirectly measure what is happening in the core is by looking at changes in the geomagnetic field." Knowing what the magnetic field did in the past can help us predict its future. And some studies suggest our planet's magnetic field is weakening over time. The magnetic field shields us from deadly space radiation, so its weakening could lead to a breakdown in satellite communications, and potentially increase cancer risk. As a result, predicting the magnetic field based on its past behavior has become ever more important. But observational data of the magnetic field's intensity only began in 1832, so it's difficult to make predictions about the future if we only dimly understand the forces that steered the magnetic field in the past. Archaeomagnetism has started to fill these gaps. How do we see the magnetic field from an archaeological artifact? Archaeomagnetism takes advantage of our human ancestors' harnessing of the earth around them — they started building firepits, making bricks and ceramics, and eventually, smelting metals. In each of these tasks, materials are heated to intense temperatures. At high enough temperatures, thermal energy makes the particles inside a material dance around. Then, as the material is removed from the fire and cools, the magnetically sensitive particles inside naturally orient in the direction of Earth's magnetic field, like miniature compass needles. They become "stuck" in place as the material hardens, and will retain this magnetic orientation unless the material is heated again. The settled magnetic particles in an archaeological artifact offer a unique snapshot of the magnetic field at the time the material was last hot. This snapshot is regional, spanning a radius of about 310 miles (500 kilometers) around the sample — the scale at which the magnetic field is thought to be uniform, Shaar said. When the sample is dated with radiocarbon or other techniques, scientists can begin to build a chronological record of an area's magnetic field. These artifacts are so helpful for geophysicists because Earth's magnetic field constantly drifts. For instance, in 2001, the magnetic north pole was closer to the very northern tip of Canada, but by 2007, it had moved over 200 miles (320 km) closer to the geographic north pole. That's because two large "lobes" of strong magnetism, called flux patches, in the outer core underneath Canada and Siberia act as funnels for the magnetic field, pulling it into Earth. As these lobes shift, they move magnetic north. And while most of the planet's magnetic-field lines go from north to south, about 20% diverge from these paths, swirling to form eddies called magnetic anomalies. It's these anomalies that researchers are struggling to explain, and that artifacts could reveal. A growing field Although archaeomagnetism has been around since the 1950s, magnetic-field-measuring technologies, like the magnetometer, have improved dramatically since then. Refined statistical analysis techniques also now allow much more detailed interpretation of archaeomagnetic data. To get all of the data in one place and synthesize our understanding of Earth's magnetic field, scientists have started to build a global database called Geomagia50, hosted at the University of Minnesota's (UM) Institute for Rock Magnetism. But even as the technique grows in popularity, there are many hurdles to widespread adoption. "The equipment is quite expensive," Maxwell Brown, a UM geophysicist and custodian of the Geomagia50 database, told Live Science. The most precise magnetometers can cost between $700,000 and $800,000, Brown said. "So there are only a few labs in the [United States] that have one of these." As a result, about 90% of the data in the Geomagia50 database has come from Europe, Brown said. Africa doesn't have a single magnetometer available to geophysicists for archaeomagnetic sampling, meaning our magnetic snapshot of the continent is largely blank. Additionally, there are no current avenues for the average archaeologist to send their artifacts to be sampled, Ben-Yosef added. Anyone without a magnetometer has to set up an official partnership with someone who does have one. Even if the equipment is available, sampling takes time and expertise, Shaar said. Measuring the direction of the field can sometimes be relatively simple, but understanding the intensity of the field takes much more work. The sample must be heated and reheated 20 separate times, gradually replacing the original magnetization and destroying the sample. "It sounds like it's an easy thing: We put it in a magnetometer or instrument, and we get the results. No. For each artifact, we spend two months working in the lab, making experiments and then getting the results. It's a complicated, experimental procedure," Shaar explained. This lack of global data limits our understanding of what the magnetic field has been up to in recent history. "We clearly have a very strong bias [toward Europe] in the data distribution," Monika Korte, a geophysicist and magnetic modeler at Germany's GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, told Live Science. "Where we have sparse data we have just a very blurred picture, a very rough idea of what's going on." Geographic diversity is important, as samples taken from one area can indicate the magnetic field only in that area. For instance, other data similar to the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly's intense spikes of magnetic strength have been spotted in places like China and Korea around the Iron Age as well, but there's not enough evidence to confirm these as bona fide anomalies or to say whether they are related to the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly, Korte said. Why should we learn more about historic anomalies? The discovery of the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly redefined our previous understanding of the potential strength of the field, Shaar said. Understanding how much the magnetic field can change may seem like a purely abstract endeavor, but these ancient fluctuations may have implications for modern times. Another important anomaly is the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), a region of weakened magnetic field that spans central South America in a strip that ends near southern Africa. It likely first emerged 11 million years ago, caused by the slight difference in location of the magnetic axis and the rotational axis at Earth's core. As the magnetic field is slightly off-center to the rotational axis, the field dips in strength over the South Atlantic, though the field's interaction with the churning mantle may also contribute to the anomaly. The South Atlantic Anomaly still exists today, and has disrupted communications from satellites and the International Space Station, as the weak magnetic field in the region lets through more radiation from solar wind. Studying the SAA throughout its history has helped scientists understand how our magnetic field changes over time, and how such anomalies alter the likelihood of a magnetic field reversal, when Earth's north and south poles flip. But although scientists have a reasonable understanding of the South Atlantic Anomaly, its weakened magnetic field is very different from the strong spikes of the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly, which has baffled geophysicists. And though researchers haven't pinpointed the exact extent of the anomaly, its seemingly small scale of around 1,000 miles (1,609 km) across, combined with the extremely high spikes in the magnetic field, isn't easily explained. Some geomagnetists had suggested that the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly developed due to a narrow flux patch that developed on the outer core under the equator before it drifted north towards the Levant, potentially contributing to other spikes of intensity recorded in China. 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‘Largest piece of Mars on Earth' catches massive $5.3 million bid at NY auction
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Hamilton Spectator
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Largest piece of Mars on Earth fetches meteoric $5.3 million at New York auction
The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million. The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million. The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official bid price was about $5.3 million. Two advance bids of $1.9 million and $2 million were submitted. The live bidding went slower than for many other objects that were sold, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the $200,000 to $300,000 bid intervals to $100,000 after the proposals hit $4 million. The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet , Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters). It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says. 'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,' Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, said in an interview before the auction. 'So it's more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.' It's not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars , but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's says. Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said. The examination found that it is an 'olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,' a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby's says. It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' she said. The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the owner. Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6 million, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs. The original estimate was $4 million to $6 million. Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it's ready to exhibit, Sotheby's says. The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period , about 150 million years ago, Sotheby's says. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex , but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long. The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company. Wednesday's auction was part of Sotheby's Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
