Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern!

Will the River Aare set another temperature record? On Wednesday the water hit 23.93°C, breaking a five-year-old record. As I write, it’s 23.88°C and creeping up! Here are other news and stories from Switzerland on Monday.

Keystone / Martin Ruetschi

In the news:  The current hot spell has pushed the zero-degree line – the height at which the temperature goes into the minus – far above the highest Alpine peak. Last night it reached 5,184 metres above sea level, a new record.

• MeteoSwiss said the new record and the old one from 1995 are the only values ever measured above 5,000 metres. A reading of 4,900 metres would already guarantee a place in the top ten.
• Belief in conspiracy theories has decreased markedly in Switzerland during the pandemic, according to a study. But those who stick with them are likely to become more radical, reckons one expert.
• A walker had a close call with a wolf on Alp Grüm in eastern Switzerland. The wolf growled at the person, who was on his own and without a dog, after following him at close distance for several minutes. The authorities are now assessing the situationExternal link to try to determine why the wolf approached the person aggressively.

swissinfo.ch/Susan Misicka

In the Swiss Alps, a melting glacier has revealed crystal tools made by hunter-gatherers. Now archaeologists are examining what they left behind.

During the Stone Age, hunter-gatherers trekked all over the Alps to find crystals. That might sound New Age, but there was nothing spiritual or mystic about their mission. These prehistoric craftspeople were searching for glittery treasures to turn into arrowheads, blades, awls and other tools.

Archaeologists in the Swiss Alps are now exploring a unique mine used as far back as 8000BC. Fragments of mountain crystal provide clues to how hunter-gatherers worked at the region’s only known prehistoric rock crystal mining site. Susan Misicka has been following their work over the course of the three-year project.

Archaeologist Marcel Cornelissen has been hunting for prehistoric goodies for years. The expedition in September 2020 only came about thanks to a receding glacier and a tip-off from a modern-day crystal hunter, who found a heap of crystal shards, two pieces of antler and some bits of wood while he was out looking for minerals.

One piece of antler disintegrated upon thawing, but specialists were able to radiocarbon date the other piece to 6000BC. That makes it the oldest find of its kind preserved in Alpine ice – and considerably older than Ötzi, the mummy of a man who died in the northern Italian Alps around 3200BC and was found in 1991.  

Cornelissen’s finds suggest that people mined the site as far back as 8000BC. “It would be nice to find a few more pieces to really make sure,” he says. “I also hope that we have enough material in the end that we get a better impression of how the people worked.”

Read the rest of Susan’s article, which includes videos of the archaeologists in action, pictures of many of the finds and advice on what to do if you find something unusual in or near Swiss ice.