In the context of battlefield archaeology (previously covered here) and the definition of the Anthropocene (here), we now have a discussion of how the effects of battle shows up, and will show up in the future, in the geology of the work, “Battle-scarred Earth: How war reshapes the planet“, (print: “Battle Scars”) (paywall) by Jan Zalasiewicz and Mat Zalasiewicz:
The earliest evidence of armed conflict dates back to around 13,000 BC and a mass grave in northern Sudan. Here 59 human skeletons were discovered, many bearing signs of violent death such as spear and arrowheads embedded in their bones.
The wars of the ancients give some guide to how long the marks of war might last. The old battlegrounds were picked over, as the dust and smoke settled, by vultures, rats and human scavengers. Much later, teams of archaeologists moved in, finding smashed human skeletons and the remains of weapons such as flint arrowheads. Could these objects last longer and become geology rather than archaeology?
A few might. The simple materials of the old warriors have good geological analogues. Indeed, some are the essence of geology. There is little that is more hard-wearing than flint: tough and chemically resistant, it is one of the ultimate survivor rocks. A wooden lance can carbonise over time to become a lance-shaped lump of coal. But not everything will last that long: iron weapons, for example, may not fossilise so easily, as iron rusts at the surface and corrodes once buried. …
Bombturbation [the explosive production of a distinctive mass of metres-deep craters and churned earth and rock] can continue even after the guns fall silent. Of the estimated 1.5 billion shells fired in the first world war, perhaps a quarter didn’t explode on impact. Thousands are found every year, and people are still killed by them. Most of this unexploded ordnance lies buried, some 20 metres down. If it stays buried, could it fossilise? This seems likely. Even if the steel eventually dissolves, and the explosive transforms to petroleum, a compressed carbon-impregnated impression will remain, like a crushed and flattened dinosaur skull in a sandstone slab.
Bombturbated mud also contains the bones of fallen soldiers. Of the million killed in the 10-month-long Battle of Verdun, only some 290,000 were ever found. The rest must lie somewhere within that bomb-churned stratum. These layers are akin to bone beds – concentrations of vertebrate fossils found in prehistoric rock. But there is one striking difference: in these human bone beds, the remains are virtually all of young men.
(NewScientist 28 March 2015)
A sobering thought for the humans who knew, or were related to, those humans, isn’t it? Or even us. But in 500 years, when future archaeologists are digging up those bones, will they feel the same way? If hypothetical alien archaeologists were to dig them up, and speculate on why the young males of the herd were forced into the area and then massacred, will they feel any emotion over the uncomprehending misery experienced by those young soldiers?
Not odd enough? How about this: at Mammoth Site, in Hot Springs, South Dakota, is a paleontological dig of the eponymous creature which we visited a couple of years ago. Most interestingly, the docent stated that only males had been found in the bone bed, at least so far. The theory went that the adult males were not part of the herd and wandered about. At some point, they’d wander into this sinkhole, where the surface would give way beneath them. They’d scrabble for footing, never find it, and eventually drown. I tried to visualize that and was rather horrified.
But what if the female mammoths of the herd picked out those young males of which they didn’t approve – perhaps for not being docile enough – and pushed them into the sinkhole, as an object lesson to the other males? Now how should we feel?
