Archaeologists warn of climate threat to past treasures
PARIS (AFP) – 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....
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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....