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A trove of Viking artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network.

Members of the Secrets of the Ice team surveying the Lendbreen pass. Photo by Johan Wildhagen, Palookaville.

A trove of about 800 Viking artifacts, some frozen in an icy mountain range in Norway for more than 1,000 years, have come to light as a result of global warming. The revelations prove that the mountain pass served as an important part of a trade network with the rest of the Viking world and that it was likely used to transport goods such as cheese, butter, reindeer pelts, and antlers between farms.

"The Viking age is one of small-scale globalization: They're sourcing raw materials from all over," Søren Michael Sindbæk, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, who was not involved in the study, told . "This is the first site where we have good chronology and the finds to illustrate that."

In a melted ice patch on the mountain slopes of Norway's Innlandet County, archaeologists found a leather shoe, a woolen mitten, and a tunic. There were also feathered arrowheads, horseshoes-and a horse snowshoe-walking sticks, a piece of a sled, kitchen utensils, and even droppings from Viking packhorses.

Along the path they found stone cairns that would have marked the way, with a stone shelter built near the top of the ice patch. Collectively, these artifacts suggest that travelers were commonplace in the mountains, despite their remoteness and the harsh weather conditions.

"It may seem counterintuitive, but high mountains sometimes did serve as major communications routes, instead of major barriers," study co-author James Barrett told Science. "It's easy to travel at high elevations, once you get up there and there's snow on the ground."

The discoveries are part of the burgeoning field of glacial archaeology, made possible as climate change shrinks ice flows around the world. Norway's Glacier Archaeology Program, led by Innlandet County Council and the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, began research in the area in 2006, joining similar programs in other countries in researching the field.

The Norwegian "Secrets of the Ice" findings were published last week in the scientific journal . The paper declared the Lendbreen ice patch on the Lomseggen ridge, which has been melting rapidly since 2011, to be the "first such ice site discovered in Northern Europe." Previous finds of a similar nature had only been made in the Alps.

"Past travelers left behind lots of artifacts, frozen in time by the ice," wrote the lead archaeologist, Lars Pilø, on the project website. "These artifacts can tell us when people traveled, when travel was at its most intense, why people traveled across the mountains and even who the travelers were."

"It was clearly a route of special significance," the journal noted. The pass was in use between the years 300 and 1500 AD, and most active around the year 1000. Its use declined with the Little Ice Age, around 1300, and the Black Death, around 1400.

The first major evidence that humans ventured across inhospitable mountain passes was the discovery of Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman in the Italian Alps in 1991. The snow and ice had preserved the man's body for 5,300 years, allowing scientists to study the bacteria in his gut. What they found helped track the movements of pathogens, and by extension, human migration.

The find "really flipped a switch," Stephanie Rogers, a geoscientist at Auburn University, told the New York Times. "What was that person doing up there?... if we found something in this place, we are going to find something in other places."

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Melting Ice Has Uncovered Hundreds of Ancient Viking Artifacts and a Previously Unknown Trade Route in Norway

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A trove of Viking artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network. A trove of about 800 Viking artifacts, some frozen in an icy mountain range in Norway for more than 1,000 years, have come to light as a result of global warming.

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On a small fruit farm near the Straits of Malacca Lim Kok Ann is down to just one tree growing kedondong, a crunchy, tart berry that Malaysians mostly use in pickles and salads. "It's not very well-known," says the 45-year-old, who is instead focusing on longan berries and pineapples, which have bigger markets. For a smallholder like Lim, demand for kedondong would have to grow rapidly to justify scaling up his business. "We have to grow what is profitable," he says.

But less than an hour away in the Malaysian countryside, inside three giant, sleek and silver domes, scientists are trying to change the future of food. They're pushing the boundaries of what humans eat by growing and processing so-called 'alternative' crops - such as kedondong.

At the headquarters of global research centre Crops For the Future (CFF) this particular under-used fruit has been turned into an effervescent, sugar-free juice, high in vitamin C and getting top marks in sensory evaluations.

"Anything you see here is a forgotten crop," says Sayed Azam-Ali of the abundant plants weaving through the gardens of CFF outside Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.
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Spindly moringa trees, cream-coloured bambara groundnuts, the sour kedondong berry - these are crops which have been farmed for centuries but are virtually unknown outside the places where they grow. Even here, demand is dwindling. They've been relegated to the sidelines, says CFF head Azam-Ali, in favour of the "big four".

Prof Azam-Ali explains that just four crops - wheat, maize, rice and soybean - provide two-thirds of the world's food supply. "We're dependent on these four," he says. "But actually there's 7,000 crops we've been farming for thousands of years. We ignore all of those."

Researchers are trying to unlock the potential of these ignored crops - plants they describe as forgotten, under-used or 'alternative' as they are displaced by increasingly uniform diets fuelled by processed ingredients from the major crops.

It's a timely quest. The food sector is already responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. By 2050 it estimates the world must produce 50% more food to feed the projected global population of 10 billion. Meeting this demand without contributing to climate change, further eroding biodiversity and causing yet more damage to ecosystems calls for urgent solutions.

Forgotten crops hold key answers, according to CFF. By investing in neglected local plants, countries can reduce their reliance on imported crops and their carbon-heavy supply chains. Reclaiming the variety of crops humans once ate also boosts food security at a time warming climates threaten existing crops. On top of that forgotten crops are among the most climate-resilient and nutritious, argues Azam-Ali. His summary is plain: "Dietary diversification is critical to the future of humanity."

Food security experts agree. "There is no food insecurity in the world, there is food ignorance," says Cecilia Tortajada, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy at the National University of Singapore. "Whenever we have indigenous crops we tend to disregard them as if they were not valuable but they are," she adds.

Azam-Ali knows that scepticism firsthand. He came across alternative crops in the 1980s through the work of women farmers he met in Niger. The then-PhD student remembers marvelling at the crops they grew in their backyards, without the benefits of technology, to feed their families when the big crops failed. He saw a tremendous opportunity to build alternative food systems. But "the resistance was enormous", he recalls.

Undeterred, he ploughed on. Project after project helped prove these crops were viable in different environments as alternatives to the staple ones. But the question of whether these crops would be marketable remained. "That's the critical thing. What is the end use going to be?" he says.

In one of the centre's domes, food technologist Tan Xin Lin whips up a bright green batter. Using powdered moringa leaves in place of some wheat flour, she is trying to bake a cake lower in gluten and higher in nutrients.

Xin Lin's job is to concoct recipes with these still-unfamiliar ingredients that will appeal to both local and international palates. In recent years she has used some of the forgotten crops grown at CFF, such as moringa and bambara groundnut, to make everything from instant soup and Italian biscotti to tortellini and murukku, a crunchy Indian snack usually made from chickpea flour.

"I try to modernise forgotten crops instead of using old recipes," says Xin Lin, who is also a trained patisserie chef. It's a strategy to appeal to the world's growing middle classes who are increasingly turning to the fast and processed food industries. It's also a way to help counter perceptions of local crops as "old or poor people's food" or as inferior "women's crops", adds Xin Lin.

The roots of these connotations about local foods can run deep. The bambara groundnut, a protein-rich legume native to sub-Saharan Africa that is also grown in parts of southeast Asia, can trace its marginalisation to colonial rule. "African women who grew bambara groundnut were actually punished for growing it," says Azam-Ali. "Colonial powers said you can't grow that because there's no oil. We can't get a market for it."

But today the bambara murukku is one of CFF's best reviewed foods and they are aiming to get it into grocery stores, pointing to the success of crops like quinoa to potential investors. Some 30 years ago, quinoa was virtually unheard of outside its native mountains in Bolivia and Peru. Today the nutritious grain is found on the menus of plush eateries across the world.

Measuring crops by nutrition instead of yield is at the heart of the forgotten foods enterprise. Ever since the "green revolution" of the 1960s, high-yielding crops have dominated modern agriculture. That was in part a crucial response to devastating famines at a time when the world needed to increase its food supply. Today "nutrition is becoming a time bomb", says Azam-Ali, as growing carbon dioxide levels strip crops of their minerals. Instead of bio-fortifying major crops we should be investing in those forgotten crops that are already more nutritious, he asserts.

In the bowels of CFF's third dome, lab manager Gomathy Sethuraman opens a window into the centre's "crown jewels", revealing vines of winged beans growing under a bright yellow light. It's one of multiple chambers where scientists are studying the impact of higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels on the nutritional make-up of alternative crops. This research is "the game changer", says Azam-Ali, ensuring that 'future crops' are also the healthiest ones in warmer climates.

There is a growing global momentum around forgotten foods, says Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a US-based think tank. Other than CFF, which bills itself as the world's first research centre dedicated solely to underutilised crops, there are other key groups championing agricultural diversity including Crop Trust, Slow Food, Icrisat and Bioversity International. Add to that more middle-income consumers searching for nutritious foods and others eager to try the unprocessed foods their grandparents once ate, she says.

Underpinning the movement are farmers themselves. "This is something farmers, especially women, have been doing for as long as agriculture has really existed," says Nierenberg. "They've been saving seeds, trying to reserve crops their families are actually eating. That's preserving a lot of agricultural biodiversity and making sure these crops are passed from generation to generation."

But the rising interest in forgotten foods in some quarters is outpaced by the global spread of Western-style diets heavy in sugar, fat and processed foods in others.

A key obstacle for bringing fading local crops to the fore in Malaysia, for example, is "the obsession with imported products", says Jenifer Kuah, co-founder of a restaurant that champions locally-sourced food in an affluent suburb of Kuala Lumpur. Customers at Sitka, regarded as a pioneer in the country's small farm-to-table dining scene, still seek foreign ingredients as a "status symbol", she says.

When they serve up local vegetables such as winged beans, Kuah says it's about "re-envisioning the product, not doing it the same way, as people want something new". Her observations echo those of food technologist Xin Lin, as both work to overturn old food habits.

The argument for forgotten foods feels intuitive. Some analysts say it is in fact inevitable. "Climate change is going to mean almost certainly tastes are going to be forced to change," says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London. We "have to get used to eating other crops" as yields of staple crops fall, he says.

Yet persuading private-sector investors to back alternative crops remains a mammoth challenge. "They've all been here," says Azam-Ali when asked if big industry has been receptive. He won't name who but adds they "say it's very interesting but there's no market".

Key to CFF's strategy now is engaging people with their own forgotten foods to help in turn generate a demand for them. Last November they invited Prince Charles to launch their Forgotten Foods Network, a resource to collect disappearing recipes worldwide that then offers another opportunity to turn to local crops.

"These forgotten foods are in all of our family histories," says the CEO. "If we don't store the knowledge, that's 10,000 years of history, gone in one generation." He's determined to make sure that doesn't happen.

--
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On a small fruit farm near the Straits of Malacca Lim Kok Ann is down to just one tree growing kedondong, a crunchy, tart berry that Malaysians mostly use in pickles and salads. "It's not very well-known," says the 45-year-old, who is instead focusing on longan berries and pineapples, which have bigger markets.

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Indian Activists Held Over Caste Violence

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Indian Activists Held Over Caste Violence

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Five prominent Indian activists have been arrested in connection with caste-based violence in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this year.

Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Varavara Rao were picked up from their homes in different Indian cities.

Police in Pune later confirmed that Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira were also under arrest.

The homes of other leftist lawyers and scholars were also raided as part of an investigation into the violence.

Five others with Maoist links were arrested in June in connection with the same investigation.

Police say that the activists incited Dalits (formerly untouchables) at a large public rally on 31 December 2017, leading to violent clashes that left one person dead.

Dalit groups had gathered in the city of Pune to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Koregaon. Dalits regard the battle - in which they fought alongside British colonial forces to defeat an upper-caste ruler - as the first battle against caste oppression.

But a day after the rally, clashes broke out between Dalits and right-wing groups, who reportedly opposed the celebrations.

Critics have said the raids are a "witch hunt" against those who have challenged the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy said: "Officials are punishing those who fight for justice and are against Hindu dominance."

Indian Dalit recalls protest that paralysed Mumbai

Why are Dalits in Narendra Modi's India angry?

"Instead of arresting those who publicly lynch people, the police are arresting lawyers, poets and writers who fight for Dalit rights. This shows which direction India is headed," she told BBC Telugu.

Amnesty International said the arrests raised "disturbing" questions about whether they were politically motivated.

"India is witnessing a massive crackdown on lawyers, journalists, activists and human rights defenders, who have been critical of the state," the rights group said.

"The government should protect people's rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly instead of creating an atmosphere of fear."

Others, including notable historian Ramachandra Guha, took to social media to condemn the arrests.

Police told the BBC that their investigation was ongoing and had led them to search the homes of scholars and activists in Delhi, Hyderabad in the south, Mumbai in the west and Ranchi in the north.

Sunil Gonsalves, the son of activist Vernon Gonsalves, told the BBC that the police had searched their home for more than five hours.

"They searched our entire house, checked our pen drives and took the hard disc from the computer and our mobile phones. They also took books which are easily available," he said. "We feel helpless in such a situation."

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Indian activists held over caste violence

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Five prominent Indian activists have been arrested in connection with caste-based violence in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this year. Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha and Varavara Rao were picked up from their homes in different Indian cities. Police in Pune later confirmed that Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira were also under arrest.

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Experts in northern Sri Lanka are trying to identify the remains of dozens of bodies in a mass grave in the country's former war zone.

So far the skeletal remains of more than 90 people have been unearthed in the north-western town of Mannar.

The mass grave is the second biggest found in the north since the end of the conflict in 2009.

The 26-year war between troops and separatist Tamil rebels left at least 100,000 people dead, and many missing.

A court ordered detailed excavations at the site - a former co-operative wholesale depot near the main bus terminus - after human remains were found by workers digging foundations for a new building earlier this year.

"The entire area can be divided into two parts. In one segment we have a proper cemetery. In the second part, you have a collection of human skeletons which have been deposited in an informal way," said Professor Raj Somadeva, a forensic archaeologist from the University of Kelaniya near Colombo, who is leading a team of experts at the site.

There is more ground still to excavate and he says more skeletons could be found. The remains unearthed by his team include the skeletons of at least six children.

Who the victims were - and who killed them and when - remains unclear. The town of Mannar is dominated by ethnic minority Tamils.

Local police guard the site so no-one can tamper with it and the forensic archaeologists can painstakingly remove skulls and other bones from the dirt without being disturbed. They use brushes and small chisels so the remains are not damaged.

No clothes or other items have been found in the grave that could help identify the victims.

Sri Lanka mass grave yields more skeletons

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Sri Lanka shift on civil war anniversary

While Mannar town remained mostly under army control during the civil war, Tamil Tiger rebels dominated its surrounding areas and many other parts of the district. The military captured the entire district after ferocious battles, which ended almost 10 years ago.

The way the bodies are arranged inside the mass grave has puzzled the experts.

"We are concerned about the line position. [It is] completely chaotic - you have two layers of skeletons roughly," said Prof Somadeva.

As his team uncovers the human remains, they transfer them to the custody of the court in Mannar, which will decide the future course of action once the excavation is complete.

Prof Somadeva and his colleagues are also yet to determine how the victims died. The age of the bodies will be analysed later.

So far no one has been blamed for the killings.

A number of mass graves have been unearthed in Sri Lanka's former war zone since the conflict ended.

None found so far has contained more bodies than a site in another part of Mannar - adjacent to Thiruketheeswaram, a prominent Hindu temple - where the remains of 96 people were discovered in 2014.

But four years on there's still no clarity in this case either, about who was killed and by whom.

Return to Sri Lanka: Indian soldier revisits a brutal battlefield

Broken survivors of Sri Lanka's civil war

Rights groups allege that both the military and the Tamil Tigers inflicted widespread civilian casualties. At least 20,000 people disappeared during the conflict.

But the government has always denied its forces had anything to do with civilian deaths or disappearances.

After years of international pressure, the government set up an independent body, the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP), earlier this year to investigate the disappearances. The OMP has provided partial funding for the excavation in Mannar.

OMP chairman Saliya Pieris insists that a detailed investigation at the latest grave found in Mannar is important.

"The primary task of the OMP is tracing the disappeared and informing the relatives about the circumstances of their disappearances.

"One of the aspects of this tracing would be naturally [to find out] if there are mass graves and there are people who have been disappeared, who have been buried in mass graves."

But given the failure of the authorities to investigate the remains unearthed from previous mass graves, there is scepticism among Tamils over what the new inquiry might achieve.

"Hundreds of people disappeared in Mannar district during the conflict while moving from uncontrolled areas to controlled areas," said Victor Sosai, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Mannar.

"There have been allegations that several Tamils who were trying to flee the conflict to India on boats were also intercepted and their fate is unknown."

He visited the site of the latest mass grave along with the Bishop of Mannar, Emmanuel Fernando, during the initial stages of the excavation.

"We understand that they have found skeletons of children and adults, we need to really find out more about who these people are and how they died and who was responsible," Rev Sosai says.

The Tamil Tigers were accused of ruthlessly eliminating fighters and supporters of rival Tamil militant groups. They were also accused of executing Sri Lankan soldiers captured in battle.

Soon after the end of the conflict, some Tamils accused the rebels of firing at fleeing civilians on the beaches of north-eastern Mullaitivu district during the final days of the war. The military is also accused of widespread atrocities.

But the army dismisses any suggestion that soldiers are connected with the bodies found in the mass grave in Mannar.

"Definitely there is no link between this grave and the army. No one has accused the army so far," said army spokesman Brig Sumith Atapattu.

But many in the minority Tamil community say if Sri Lanka really wants to come to terms with its past, then it has to sincerely address the issue of the disappeared by investigating mass graves.

Only then might the families affected be able to properly grieve and try to move on.

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Skeletons unearthed in S Lanka mass grave

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Experts in northern Sri Lanka are trying to identify the remains of dozens of bodies in a mass grave in the country's former war zone. So far the skeletal remains of more than 90 people have been unearthed in the north-western town of Mannar.

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In one of the most arid regions in the world a series of carefully constructed, spiralling holes form lines across the landscape. Known as puquios, their origin has been a puzzle - one that could only be solved from space.

The holes are from the Nasca region of Peru - an area famous for the Nasca lines, several enormous geometric images carved into the landscape; immaculate archaeological evidence of ceremonial burials; and the rapid decline of this once flourishing society.

What adds to the intrigue in the native ancient people of Nasca is how they were able to survive in an area where droughts can last for years at a time.

The puquios were a "sophisticated hydraulic system constructed to retrieve water from underground aquifers," says Rosa Lasaponara of the Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, in Italy. And they transformed this inhospitable region.

The puquio system must have been much more developed than it appears today

Lasaponara and her team studied the puquios using satellite imaging. From this, the team were able to better understand how the puquios were distributed across the Nasca region, and where they ran in relation to nearby settlements - which are easier to date.

"What is clearly evident today is that the puquio system must have been much more developed than it appears today," says Lasaponara. "Exploiting an inexhaustible water supply throughout the year the puquio system contributed to an intensive agriculture of the valleys in one of the most arid places in the world."

A series of canals brought the water, trapped underground, to the areas where it was needed; anything left was stored in surface reservoirs. To help keep it moving, chimneys were excavated above the canals in the shape of corkscrewing funnels. These funnels let wind into the canals, which forced the water through the system.

Like many other South American cultures the Nasca had no writing system

"The puquios were the most ambitious hydraulic project in the Nasca area and made water available for the whole year, not only for agriculture and irrigation but also for domestic needs," says Lasaponara, who has written about her satellite studies in Ancient Nasca World: New Insights from Science and Archaeology, which is due to be published later this year.

The origin of the puquios has remained a mystery to researchers because it was not possible to use traditional carbon dating techniques on the tunnels. Nor did the Nasca leave any clues as to their origin. Like many other South American cultures they had no writing system.

Their existence tells us something remarkable about the people who lived in the Nasca region from before 1,000 BC to AD750. "The construction of the puquios involved the use of particularly specialised technology," says Lasaponara. Not only did the builders of the puquios need a deep understanding of the geology of the area and annual variations in water availability, maintaining the canals was a technical challenge as they spread across tectonic faults.

What makes them even more remarkable is that they still function today

"What is really impressive is the great efforts, organisation and cooperation required for their construction and regular maintenance," she says. That meant a regular dependable water supply for centuries, in an area that's one of the most arid places on Earth.

"Maintenance was likely based on a collaborative and socially organised system, similar to that adopted for the construction of the famous 'Nasca lines' which in some cases are clearly related to the presence of water." The quality of construction was so good, that some of the puquios still function today.

These structures show the native people of the Nasca basin were not only highly organised, but that their society was structured in a hierarchy, says Lasaponara. She says the puquios were vital in "controlling water distribution by those in power over the communities that came under their influence." Knowing how to bring water to one of the driest places on earth means that you hold the very key to life itself.
William Park is BBC Future's social media producer. He is @williamhpark on Twitter. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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The ancient Peruvian mystery solved from space

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In one of the most arid regions in the world a series of carefully constructed, spiralling holes form lines across the landscape. Known as puquios, their origin has been a puzzle - one that could only be solved from space.