Sometimes melting ice reveals secrets and at this time on earth a lot of ice is melting. Scientists have been finding the remains of extinct animals and even human remains. It is very exciting for them, when they find remains of a human which is many thousands of years old and completely preserved, because they can study human habits from that period such as how people dressed, what they ate and even what tools they used. There can even be clues to where they came from. As a matter of fact the find of a woolly mammoth will probably lead us to cloning them, but sometimes things are found which while being gruesome can solve a mystery. During World War I Italian soldiers were being trained to fight in very cold climates and what better place to practice then to climb up high into the Alps. During World War I the Alps were a place Italians were going to battle enemies which were coming from Austria and Germany. A war waged at these elevations and lasted for over three years. It had a name and was called the White War.

You may be wondering why I mentioned this, but the answer is very simple. For over the last few years as the snow has been melting, corpses have been appearing in this area. At first it was three, then they were more in almost every year since and as more ice melted there were more corpses which have appeared and it is said the count has reached more than eighty. At first it was three Austrian soldiers who came out of the ice and there is a gruesome figure we must keep in the back of our minds and that is the estimate for deceased soldiers on the Alpine front is over 150,000. It makes one wonder how many of these soldiers are under the ice and will be revealed as years go by? It has been said two thirds of the deceased soldiers did not die from military action, but rather from avalanches, frostbite and other cold related reasons.

Other things are being revealed about this war besides bodies. As the ice melts tunnels are appearing. It turns out living quarters were carved out of the ice and snow and they are also appearing. All sorts of paraphernalia are being found which have survived. Some of them are photographs. Archaeologists are very concerned. Sure they want to see these bodies go to their final resting place, but they are also concerned about the history of the artifacts, because they are afraid looters will go to these areas and grab anything they can to sell online. The bodies have been very well preserved, but identification is next to impossible. As the men are being excavated they are receiving military funerals out of respect.

As the ice melts all over the world scientists are finding incredible things. A team of Russian scientists found plants that were extinct for at least thirty thousand years. Apparently an Ice Age squirrel had collected them and put them into his cache. The amazing thing about the plants was the scientists were actually able to get specimens to grow and these specimens produced seeds. This just goes to show how easy it may be to bring back some of these extinct plants, if we find examples of them in the ice. Not only were thirty thousand-year-old extinct plants found, but so was a thirty thousand-year-old extinct virus. The virus which was found was a giant virus which they named Pithovirus sibericum. What made the virus so incredible was the fact it was as big as a bacteria and it contained proteins which were unlike any other virus on earth. These proteins made up two thirds of the virus. I never like it when I hear ancient extinct viruses are back, because who knows what they are capable of?

In the Argentinian Andes retreating ice has revealed the bodies of Incan children who were sacrificed about five hundred years ago. The ice has also revealed the body of a pilot who crashed his plane decades ago. The wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1952 into an Alaskan glacier was revealed and found in 2012. The plane had fifty-two people aboard when it crashed. It has been said the ice is melting so fast in Yellowstone National Park artifacts are being revealed faster than scientists can collect them. So what is being found at Yellowstone? It turns out ancient Native Americans were in the area and we are finding their tools and weapons and even baskets are emerging. Archaeologists tell us in the Yellowstone area there are a lot of ice patches and these are better for preserving artifacts than glaciers, because glaciers move and ice patches do not. Scientists are finding artifacts from as far back as 10,000 years ago in the area.

Fifty-four years ago a man named Paul T. Walker, an American geologist, put a message in a bottle. He wrote down exactly where the bottle was located as he put it at the edge of a glacier. He didn’t know if anyone would ever find it, but he did put instructions in the bottle to measure where it had been to where it was found. Presumably this was so people would see how fast or slow the glacier was moving. Fifty-four years later the bottle was found by Doctor Warwick Vincent and Denis Sarrazin. They followed the instructions in the bottle and when they figured out what the distance was between where it was placed and where that glacier was now they found the glacier had moved 233 feet. This was quite a distance considering the time the bottle was placed and when it was found. The glacier was moving in excess of 4 feet a year.

It seems  items are being found popping out of melting ice from all different time periods. One example, is a small knife with a wooden handle which is believed to have been made in the Iron Age. One archaeologist found over four hundred items just in one year. Another archaeologist said we often find things related to hunting. He went on to say they often find objects such as clothing and the skeletons of animals. Will we find something which will change our idea about our ancestors? What about that proverbial UFO buried under the ice? There is just no way to know what might pop out of the ice next.