--- title: The oldest ice disappears and the Stone Age emerges from it description: Melting ancient ice in Norway's mountains is exposing Stone Age and Bronze Age artefacts. Archaeologists with Secrets of the Ice found 48 prehistoric arrows... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-oldest-ice-disappears-and-the-stone-age-emerges-from-it-4sua2s1gx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The oldest ice disappears and the Stone Age emerges from it | daily.dev og:description: Melting ancient ice in Norway's mountains is exposing Stone Age and Bronze Age artefacts. Archaeologists with Secrets of the Ice found 48 prehistoric arrows... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-oldest-ice-disappears-and-the-stone-age-emerges-from-it-4sua2s1gx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/4sUA2S1gx.png og:image:alt: The oldest ice disappears and the Stone Age emerges from it og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The oldest ice disappears and the Stone Age emerges from it **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Melting ancient ice in Norway's mountains is exposing Stone Age and Bronze Age artefacts. Archaeologists with Secrets of the Ice found 48 prehistoric arrows this year, including one slate arrowhead estimated at 5,000 to 6,000 years old. More than 100 arrowheads and shafts have now come from a single ice patch over 20 years of fieldwork. Lead archaeologist Espen Finstad and colleagues estimate most of these ice patches will disappear within 20 years, and Finstad calls the reality brutal, saying it has affected the team emotionally for the first time after the glacier collapse in Jotunheimen. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How old are the oldest arrows found melting out of Norway's ice patches? Archaeologists estimate one slate arrowhead and shaft found in Norway's mountains is between 5,000 and 6,000 years old, dating to the Stone Age. It was compared against previously discovered arrows to reach that age estimate. More recent iron arrowheads found at the same sites are only 1,000 to 1,500 years old by comparison. _Readers tracking climate-driven archaeology discoveries can follow ongoing coverage on daily.dev._ ### How many prehistoric arrows have been found in the Norwegian ice patches by Secrets of the Ice archaeologists? Archaeologists with Secrets of the Ice found 48 prehistoric arrows in a single year of fieldwork, calling it a large number. Over 20 years of work, more than 100 arrowheads and arrow shafts have been recovered from one ice patch alone. The oldest are made of slate, freshwater mussel shells, and bone. _Anyone curious about climate change's effect on archaeology can keep up with such finds via daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 47 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-31). **TL;DR:** Discussion is dominated by a sprawling, often sarcastic argument about climate change and its causes rather than the archaeology itself, with a smaller thread admiring the well-preserved arrowhead and debating artifact handling practices. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 30% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some find the preservation of the slate arrowhead remarkable, noting it looks sharper than typical stone age finds due to being naturally sealed from oxygen and weather. - A few note archaeologists have sound reasons for not using gloves since the artifacts are still dirty and not yet in an archival context. **The pushback** - Many are skeptical or sarcastic about climate change framing, questioning whether past warm periods (like the Holocene climatic optimum) undercut the article's implications. - Some argue the discussion has been derailed into unrelated AI and data-center energy-use tangents. - A few worry about ancient pathogens potentially emerging from thawing ice, though others dismiss this as unlikely. **By community** - hackernews (heated): The thread spirals into a contentious climate-change debate, with sarcasm, counter-sarcasm, and disputed historical temperature claims overshadowing discussion of the actual find. **Hottest debate:** Whether the current ice melt is unprecedented or just a recurrence of past warm periods like the Holocene climatic optimum, with dueling claims about historical temperature data. **Open questions** - Was the ice actually absent from these mountains during parts of the Stone Age, and if so, is the current melt simply a return to that baseline? - What might be found beneath other major ice sheets, like Greenland's, as they melt further? **Highlights** > Yes: most mainland Norway ice was gone during the holocene climatic optimum (9–6 thousand years ago), and glaciers recovered since then (until approx the 20th century, when deglaciation started accelerating again). The climate is varying in long cycles, and the deglaciation 20 thousand years ago (last glacial maximum) was driven by a spike in summer temperatures, and this peak has already long passed. Ice ages and interglacial periods have a certain momentum to them, so it takes more than just that to go back to full ice age.. > — [kzrdude on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50310333) > wrong: IPCC AR6 puts the warmest Holocene stretch (~6.5 ka) at about 0.2-1°C above 1850-1900. 2011-2020 already beat that > — [mistrial9 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50311073) > No, it's not wrong or we wouldn't be finding 5K year old instruments underneath melted glaciers as this article's evidence shows. And ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica support this. > — [chrisco255 on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50312109) > That's because they weren't exposed to the weather as much. Essentially these were 'shrinkwrapped' in nature's own version of Cosmoline. No bacteria, no free oxygen. Once did this with a rose to see how long it would last and it basically was perfect until we moved house. Many years and not even the slightest change, it didn't even lose color. > — [jacquesm on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50311391) > A single data center can consume over well over 650 MW which is enough electricity for nearly 500,000 homes, which is more homes than the entire population of Miami Florida. Amazon has a 1,037 MW AI data center. > — [autoexec on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50312972) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309266) · 110 points · 47 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Iron Age salt-mining complex found beneath Hallstatt in Austria](https://daily.dev/posts/iron-age-salt-mining-complex-found-beneath-hallstatt-in-austria-nvul1h8ge) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Unique Archeological Discovery Sheds Light On Neanderthal Wooden Tool Usage](https://daily.dev/posts/unique-archeological-discovery-sheds-light-on-neanderthal-wooden-tool-usage-nitgh3vos) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Satellite data reveal how Antarctica’s ice cliffs behave over time](https://daily.dev/posts/satellite-data-reveal-how-antarctica-s-ice-cliffs-behave-over-time-nvocswzf0) · MIT News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Hohle Fels Flute: Evidence of Early Music and Cultural Development in Upper Paleolithic Europe](https://daily.dev/posts/the-hohle-fels-flute-evidence-of-early-music-and-cultural-development-in-upper-paleolithic-europe-itvuizzv7) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ancient Ice Production](https://daily.dev/posts/ancient-ice-production-4jujit128) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-oldest-ice-disappears-and-the-stone-age-emerges-from-it-4sua2s1gx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The oldest ice disappears and the Stone Age emerges from it","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-oldest-ice-disappears-and-the-stone-age-emerges-from-it-4sua2s1gx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-oldest-ice-disappears-and-the-stone-age-emerges-from-it-4sua2s1gx"},"datePublished":"2026-10-30T23:15:12.071Z","dateModified":"2026-10-31T04:46:24.546Z","description":"Melting ancient ice in Norway's mountains is exposing Stone Age and Bronze Age artefacts. 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