Archaeologists in Norway have discovered dozens of arrows—some dating back 6,000 years—melting out of a 60-acre ice patch in the county’s high mountains. This is the most arrows discovered at a single ice site in the world, and by a large margin.
In their paper published in the journal The Holocene, the group describes how they kept their research secret to avoid the possibility of others contaminating the site and what they have learned about the arrows thus far.
Lars Pilø writes on Secrets of the Ice that the changing patterns in reindeer hunting are particularly interesting in light of other findings, such as the discovery that some combs from eighth-century Denmark were made from reindeer antlers
“It supports recent ideas that long-distance trade in low cost commodities in Northern Europe started earlier than previously believed,” he writes.
