Experts survey the glacier ice on Mount Ararat for the first time
Facing wind and cold, with only half as much oxygen as at low altitude, a German-Turkish research team surveyed the glacier of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey for the first time in July, at over 5,000 metres altitude. For two weeks, the scientists worked on the ice, which until then had been a blank spot for research. Their goal was to find out whether the ice of Turkey's highest mountain preserves a unique archive of climate and cultural history. For this archive is under threat: due to warming, the Ararat ice cap is shrinking at an accelerating pace, and with every summer, information is lost that hardly any other source can provide. To read this information, the project brings together archaeology and glaciology in a joint undertaking.
The ice cap was surveyed using a combination of ground-based Radio Echo Sounding and active seismics. This method allows the thickness and the subglacial bed of the ice to be mapped. ‘Despite wind and cold, we obtained all the data we need,’ says Dr Coen Hofstede of the Alfred Wegener Institute, who was responsible for the measurements on site. ‘Now we can determine where to drill the longest continuous ice core.’ For during the next expedition, the research team aims to recover the actual ice cores. If this succeeds, it would yield the first ice core from Mount Ararat.
‘For archaeology, an entirely new source is opening up here,’ says Prof. Dr Achim Lichtenberger, project leader from the University of Münster. ‘So far, we have been dependent on what lies in the ground. The ice, by contrast, could preserve a continuous chronicle of human activity, layer by layer over millennia.’ The ice also holds valuable data for glaciology. Preserved within its layers are the composition of past atmospheres, the transport of dust, and traces of earlier volcanic eruptions. This could allow researchers to reconstruct, for example, how well-known climate phases such as the Roman Climate Optimum or the Late Antique Little Ice Age played out in this particular region.
The mountain's geographical location is especially revealing. It lies at the crossroads of some of the world's most important early civilizations. While comparable studies in the Mediterranean region have so far been carried out only in the Alps, the Near East has remained unexplored. ‘This is the region where agriculture began, where early centres of mining and metallurgy emerged,’ explains Prof. Dr Ünsal Yalçın of Isparta University in Turkey. ‘If we are lucky, we will find in the ice not only climate data but also fine metal particles from ancient smelting furnaces or residues from early slash-and-burn agriculture. Mount Ararat would then serve as an archive for the entire region of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.’
Participating institutions
The project is led by the Institute of Classical Archaeology and Christian Archaeology at the University of Münster and is supported by Isparta University in Turkey. The geophysical surveys are carried out by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, together with the Institute of Environmental Physics at Heidelberg University. Further partners are the University of Van, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research in Innsbruck, and the Turkish Mountaineering Federation. The German-Turkish project is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.