Swiss urge glacier hikers to look for artifacts

Hikers enjoy the view from the Alvier mountain in the Swiss Alps near Truebbach , Switzerland, Saturday.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hikers enjoy the view from the Alvier mountain in the Swiss Alps near Truebbach , Switzerland, Saturday.

GENEVA  — Swiss scientists are urging alpinists and hikers to keep an eye out for lost items in melting ice patches — items lost hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

A project run by a Swiss cultural institute and a graduate student in the canton (state) of Graubuenden aims to gather artifacts trapped long ago in glaciers — finds that are now turning up with more frequency due to a warming planet.

The project encourages people to turn over things like wood or clothing they might run across in eastern Switzerland where the Swiss National Park is located.

In recent decades mountaineers have found everything from goat skin leggings in the Swiss Alps to a corpse in the melting ice of South Tyrol, each about 5,000 years old.