{"id":85887,"date":"2025-11-05T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com"},"modified":"2025-11-05T18:01:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T18:01:56","slug":"the-ark-builders-saving-fragile-bits-of-our-world","status":"publish","type":"wpm-article","link":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-ark-builders-saving-fragile-bits-of-our-world","title":{"rendered":"The Ark-Builders Saving Fragile Bits Of Our World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most days on the glacier began the same. Whoever had been on polar bear watch the night before \u2014 hours of staring into the constant blizzard, rifle in hand \u2014 would make the morning coffee.&nbsp;<\/p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"noa-web-audio-player\" style=\"border: none\" src=\"https:\/\/embed-player.newsoveraudio.com\/v4?key=n0e13g&#038;id=https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-ark-builders-saving-fragile-bits-of-our-world\/&#038;bgColor=F3F3F3&#038;color=6D6D6D&#038;playColor=F3F3F3&#038;progressBgColor=F7F7F7&#038;progressBorderColor=F3F3F3&#038;titleColor=383D3D&#038;timeColor=6D6D6D&#038;speedColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkHighlightColor=039BE5&#038;feedbackButton=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\"><\/iframe><p>Then, after breakfast, the Italian-led team of scientists would get to work coaxing a towering aluminum drill into the ice. For three weeks in April 2023, their little compound of tents atop Holtedahlfonna, a glacier in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, was home.<\/p><p>Although it is more than 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Svalbard is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhm.ac.uk\/discover\/arctic-melting.html\">warming<\/a> about six to seven times faster than anywhere on Earth, driven in part by warm Atlantic currents and rapid loss of sea ice. Melting glaciers are a potent symbol of global warming as well as a rich resource of planetary history. The ice inside them is a natural time capsule of our atmosphere, containing microorganisms, pollutants, pollen and viruses from hundreds or even thousands of years ago.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cIt is a library with chapters in the past,\u201d said Catherine Larose, a Canadian microbiologist who was part of the Holtedahlfonna expedition. Deep ice cores communicate information that can\u2019t be found anywhere else on Earth; some are essentially frozen slices of the atmosphere untainted by plastics, lead or other pollutants. \u201cYou can go back into these archives of 600 years ago, and you can get that,\u201d Larose said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>That\u2019s why one of the ice cores her team extracted is set to travel to the other end of the Earth. A nonprofit called the Ice Memory Foundation is sending samples from melting glaciers around the world to be preserved in Antarctica for generations to come.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This initiative, among many others, is part of a new approach to preservation that has emerged as nations around the world <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/climate-change-carbon-emissions-global-warming-98b96100fca83641c77a52928e303e10\">whiz past<\/a> the climate limits set to prevent imminent collapse. Back on Svalbard, for instance, a facility called the Global Seed Vault houses millions of crop seed samples to be used in the case of war or climate calamity. And it\u2019s not just climate efforts. Linguists and historians are making similar attempts to save various forms of cultural knowledge as they begin to disappear.<em>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p><p>Unlike other preservation efforts to forestall coming crises, the underlying logic of this approach quietly says: Disaster is already at our doorstep.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Like the Biblical Noah loading pairs of animals onto his ark, scientists and archivists are salvaging fragile bits of our world that are at risk of disappearing forever. They\u2019re doing everything from drilling ice cores in the Arctic and freezing endangered species\u2019 cells to encoding ancient languages onto tiny disks sent into space. And in the process, these new Noahs are posing profound questions about what humans believe is worth saving \u2014 and how to preserve something for a distant future that we can\u2019t quite imagine.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-frozen-in-time\"><strong>Frozen In Time<\/strong><\/h2><p>By the time a group of French and Italian glaciologists founded the Ice Memory Foundation in 2015, glaciers worldwide were shrinking at an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.climate.gov\/news-features\/featured-images\/2015-state-climate-mountain-glaciers\">accelerated rate<\/a>. That same year, the State of the Climate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.climate.gov\/news-features\/featured-images\/2015-state-climate-mountain-glaciers\">report<\/a> called the ice loss \u201cwithout precedent on a global scale.\u201d Already, cumulative mass loss since 1980 had reached 18.8 meters, or \u201cthe equivalent of cutting a 20.5 meter [67-foot] thick slice off the top of the average glacier.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>The Ice Memory Foundation\u2019s goal was deceptively simple: take samples from 20 glaciers over the course of 20 years and store them in Antarctica for the coming centuries. The first mission took place on the Col du D\u00f4me in the French Alps, where ice loss is especially dramatic. Glaciologists estimate that the Alps have lost a <a href=\"https:\/\/lameteorologie.fr\/issues\/2023\/120\/meteo_2023_120_37\">third of their volume<\/a> in just the past 20 years. Since then, research teams have partnered with Ice Memory to collect samples from Tanzania, Bolivia, Italy, Russia, Tajikistan and elsewhere.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cPolar ice caps are truly the archives of our planet,\u201d Claude Lorius, one of the founders of modern glaciology, <a href=\"https:\/\/fresques.ina.fr\/rhone-alpes\/fiche-media\/Rhonal00509\/les-apports-determinants-d-une-science-la-glaciologie.html\">once said<\/a>. \u201cWhen you dig deep, you can recover ice samples that formed during the time of Charlemagne. If you dig 100 meters, that\u2019s from the time of Jesus Christ.\u201d The deepest samples represent <a href=\"https:\/\/fresques.ina.fr\/rhone-alpes\/fiche-media\/Rhonal00509\/les-apports-determinants-d-une-science-la-glaciologie.html\">150,000 years<\/a> of history, according to Lorius \u2014 making them older than the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/ancient-humans-first-written-words-are-20-000-years-old-44505\">written word<\/a> by tens of thousands of years.<\/p><p>The ice doesn\u2019t just keep a record of the atmosphere as it once was; it silently transcribes man\u2019s havoc upon the world. Scientists can essentially see when the Industrial Revolution began just by studying glaciers. Cores containing European atmosphere from the mid-1800s bear the traces of heavy fossil fuel burning. Some samples from the 20th century show <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnri.dost.gov.ph\/index.php\/2-uncategorised\/765-scientists-discover-nuclear-signals-that-could-possibly-mark-the-start-of-the-anthropocene\">signs<\/a> of radioactivity, Larose told me. Many contain the ubiquitous micro-plastics of our age.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;These new Noahs are posing profound questions about what humans believe is worth saving \u2014 and how to preserve something for a distant future that we can\u2019t quite imagine.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/85887\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"These new Noahs are posing profound questions about what humans believe is worth saving \u2014 and how to preserve something for a distant future that we can\u2019t quite imagine.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Climate scientists can compare different layers of a glacier to understand how a warming climate affects biodiversity. Even historians can learn from the glaciers. One 6,000-year-old sample in Greenland <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20190417-preserving-ice-from-glaciers-being-melted-by-climate-change\">provided clues<\/a> about ancient volcanic activity.<\/p><p>Getting the ice samples, however, can be incredibly dangerous. The drill site on Holtedahlfonna was about 50 miles from the closest town, so Larose and her colleagues had to lug 1.5 tons of material \u2014 drills, replacement parts, tents, first aid and three weeks\u2019 worth of vacuum-packed lasagnas \u2014 on snowmobiles through whiteout storms.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Since help is so far away, the scientists even trained with the Red Cross to learn everything from CPR to how to treat burns from the snowmobiles or cuts from the drills. The temperatures atop the glacier, even in the spring, reached minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit. The mess tent was heated, but the individual sleeping tents were not, nor was the drill tent where they worked all day.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Only a few days into the expedition, when the drill had reached around 80 feet into the glacier, the usual sound of crunching through layers of ice changed. Now there was a sloshing noise. They had hit water. The team tried to drain the firn aquifer, doing anything they could to press on to their goal depth. In the process, they lost two drill motors because of water damage.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This was a disaster. Had they arrived too late? One of the drill operators, an Italian scientist, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ice-memory.org\/collecting-ice-cores\/2023-svalbard-norway\/\">later said<\/a> it felt like seeing the effects of climate change in real time.<\/p><p>As the water gushed from the heart of the glacier and the wind and snow still whipped outside, the team didn\u2019t know what to do. Should they try to push on? Should they wait until the weather cleared? After much discussion, they made the painful decision to move the drill to another part of the glacier and start over.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cWe couldn&#8217;t see anything,\u201d Larose said, recalling what it was like to man-haul the drill across the ice. \u201cWe were just in a cloud.\u201d By the time they dragged everything to the new location, her shoulder-length blond hair was entirely white, frozen over with snow.<\/p><p>After that, things went more smoothly: Within a few weeks, they were able to secure their deepest cores of about 250 feet \u2014 representing 300 to 400 years of atmospheric history.<\/p><p>It was a perilous endeavor, but a necessary one, the team says. \u201cThe science of the present is also built on the science of the past,\u201d Larose said. \u201cYou&#8217;re standing on the shoulders of the previous generations.\u201d And therefore, future generations will need to stand on her shoulders, too.<\/p><p>When early glaciologists such as Lorius first traveled to Antarctica in the 1950s, they likely could not have imagined that someday someone like Larose would be able to study antibiotic resistance genes within a glacier. We can\u2019t know what questions future scientists will ask. All Larose and her colleagues can do is send their samples from the white-capped mountains of Svalbard \u2014 like frozen messages in a bottle \u2014 into the future.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-comes-after-extinction\"><strong>What Comes After Extinction?<\/strong><\/h2><p>More than 4,000 miles from Svalbard, in a room no larger than a two-car garage, Marlys Houck has been handling a different kind of frozen material for the past 38 years. Houck is the curator of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance\u2019s Frozen Zoo. The collection holds the frozen cells of 1,300 animal species or subspecies kept at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014 all packed into a single room.<\/p><p>Houck, a petite blonde with straight bangs, radiates the patient, steady demeanor of someone used to guiding school-aged visitors through complex ideas. These aren\u2019t just DNA samples, she told me. Each pellet in each vial contains 1 to 3 million cells.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cThey&#8217;re <em>living <\/em>cells,\u201d she explained of the cell samples in nitrogen-cooled tanks dotting the room. \u201cThey\u2019re just frozen living cells.\u201d<\/p><p>Her team preserves animal genetic material, especially that of endangered species, both for current genetic restoration and for future research. Here\u2019s how it works: After an animal dies at the San Diego Zoo \u2014 or sometimes while undergoing veterinary care \u2014 the Frozen Zoo will take a tissue sample. (The Frozen Zoo also receives samples from other partnerships, such as through U.S. Fish and Wildlife.) From there, the team cuts the tissue into many smaller samples, then \u201cfeeds\u201d each with a nutrient broth. When the cells have multiplied enough for cryopreservation, they\u2019re introduced into the collection.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;The ice doesn\u2019t just keep a record of the atmosphere as it once was; it silently transcribes man\u2019s havoc upon the world.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/85887\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"The ice doesn\u2019t just keep a record of the atmosphere as it once was; it silently transcribes man\u2019s havoc upon the world.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>The Frozen Zoo has the largest collection of frozen genetic material in the world, but they\u2019re not the only ones doing this. Similar efforts are being made in <a href=\"https:\/\/cincinnatizoo.org\/conservation\/crew\/cryobiobank\/\">Cincinnati<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.izw-berlin.de\/en\/bio-cryobank.html\">Berlin<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zsl.org\/what-we-do\/science-research\/zsl-biobank\">London<\/a>. In Australia, scientists are even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barrierreef.org\/news\/news\/first-cryo-born-coral-babies-deployed-on-the-great-barrier-reef\">cryobanking coral sperm<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>Each day is different at the Frozen Zoo. The all-female team comes in at staggered times so that someone is available to \u201cfeed\u201d the samples throughout the day. The women even have to get babysitting coverage when they go on vacation, as each sample stays in the incubator phase for about a month before it\u2019s frozen. Whoever arrives first in the morning double checks the collection, making sure there\u2019s enough nitrogen and that everything is functioning properly.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cIt\u2019s not all that different from our animal care staff in that you come in and you check on the babies,\u201d Houck said. She scans through the growing samples to see which of the \u201cbabies\u201d need food and which ones have grown large enough to be transferred to storage.<\/p><p>I asked Houck how they choose which animals to preserve. Who decides what survives, and how? She told me they don\u2019t choose: They take what they can get. She estimates that they add about four species to the collection every month.<\/p><p>\u201cThere&#8217;s really very little forewarning, so we have to stay in this weird kind of triage capacity, taking everything we can, but with room to really stretch and take something else if we have to,\u201d she said. It\u2019s a question of opportunity, more than anything. The Frozen Zoo is especially keen to get samples from endangered species, but even that is a designation that\u2019s often in flux.<\/p><p>\u201cWe never know when the most critical thing might die,\u201d Houck explained.<\/p><p>This is a reality she has encountered firsthand. She remembers the moment precisely: It was Thanksgiving weekend in 2004. She received a call from the bird curator asking her to come in straight away. Usually, the ambiance in the Frozen Zoo is collegial, with the women helping each other out and monitoring the samples. But this day was different.<\/p><p>In the necropsy room, it was just Houck, the bird curator and the head pathologist. On the table in front of them was a tiny songbird with mottled white and brown feathers and a shock of black on the head. He weighed about an ounce. It was a po\u2019ouli bird.<\/p><p>For years, scientists had been engaged in a mad dash to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2022\/may\/04\/extinction-obituary-hawaiian-poouli-bird-aoe\">save the po\u2019ouli<\/a>. They scoured the corners of Maui\u2019s Hana rainforest to find the rare Hawaiian finch a mate. But nothing had worked. Lying on the necropsy table in front of Houck was the <a href=\"https:\/\/timeline.sdzwa.org\/2004\/2004-3\/\">last known<\/a> po\u2019ouli on Earth.<\/p><p>She couldn\u2019t save the species from extinction, but she could save the cells from a second, more final death \u2014 and allow scientists to continue learning from them.<\/p><p>At the time, however, the zoo\u2019s collection was mostly mammals. Houck knew how to collect an effective sample from mammal skin, but her team had struggled to do the same with birds unless they had a growing feather. She checked the po\u2019ouli \u2014 there were none. So she made an educated guess. Her predecessor had once grown cells from a whale\u2019s cornea. But this po\u2019ouli had only one eye, and it was the size of a blueberry. Houck tried anyway. She wasn\u2019t confident at all.<\/p><p>\u201cWe talked about it, about what it meant to lose the last bird, and the importance of trying to grow the cells,\u201d she recalled. Exchanging glances, Houck, the pathologist and the bird curator reckoned with what this moment represented. \u201cWe don&#8217;t have cells of the dodo or the passenger pigeon or the Tasmanian tiger because these methods weren&#8217;t known then,\u201d Houck said.\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n            \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Read Noema in print.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        <\/p><p>Within a few weeks, it became clear: The eye sample had worked. Houck was eventually able to grow the cells into a large enough sample to be stored. The po\u2019ouli became the first extinct animal to have its living cells archived in the Frozen Zoo.<\/p><p>\u201cPart of what we&#8217;re doing is avoiding that tragedy,\u201d Houck said. \u201cWe want to bank cells now, while the animals are more in abundance, because we don&#8217;t know which one will be the next one to decline rapidly, right?\u201d<\/p><p>In 2020, scientists were able to use a cell line from the Frozen Zoo to create an embryo for a black-footed ferret clone. The cells came from Willa, a ferret that died in the 1980s. This endangered species, which is native to the Pacific Northwest, has seen its population shrink to the point that all living black-footed ferrets are descended from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fws.gov\/press-release\/2021-02\/genetic-research-boosts-black-footed-ferret-conservation-efforts\">just seven individuals<\/a>. This poses a real problem when it comes to genetic diversity. But the cloned ferret introduced an entirely new gene pool \u2014 a major win for species restoration.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;She couldn\u2019t save the species from extinction, but she could save the cells from a second, more final death.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/85887\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"She couldn\u2019t save the species from extinction, but she could save the cells from a second, more final death.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>This kind of patience and persistence in the face of the unknown is key to what all of these ark-builders are doing. When Houck\u2019s predecessor painstakingly preserved Willa\u2019s DNA in the 1980s, she couldn\u2019t know what it would be used for. The first successful clone of any species was about a decade away from being born.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Kurt Benirschke, the founder of the Frozen Zoo, liked to quote the American historian Daniel Boorstin whenever people asked him what the zoo\u2019s purpose was. The quote, which now hangs on a poster in the zoo, reads: \u201cYou must collect things for reasons you don\u2019t yet understand.\u201d<\/p><p>Those who preserve things can never quite know how they\u2019ll be used. For more than 30 years, the tiny pellet of Willa\u2019s cells sat in a vial no larger than a ChapStick tube. And then one day, they were plucked from the collection, thawed and put to use. Just last year, Willa\u2019s genetic daughter, Antonia, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/11\/05\/nx-s1-5179961\/black-footed-ferrets-clone-endangered-species\">gave birth<\/a> to two healthy kits.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-saving-cultural-knowledge\"><strong>Saving Cultural Knowledge<\/strong><\/h2><p>Trying to safeguard the things we hold dear for future generations is a profoundly human impulse. Like Houck\u2019s predecessors, humans have always stored cultural knowledge for posterity.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This work has often accelerated in the face of a threat: a species on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fws.gov\/program\/california-condor-recovery\">brink of extinction<\/a>, an archaeological site in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/wbna20364988\">path of a hurricane<\/a>. Think of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/these-medieval-monks-scribbled-notes-in-the-margins-of-their-books-more-than-1000-years-ago-180986877\/\">Irish monks<\/a> more than 1,000 years ago who smuggled a collection of manuscripts to the European continent to protect them from Viking invaders. Or the real-life \u201cMonuments Men\u201d who hid art collections from Nazi looting.<\/p><p>There\u2019s a certain tendency to believe that the things we cherish as humans have been equally cherished by our ancestors: art, poetry, literature, music, mathematical proofs and sacred texts. But what is preserved often bears the idiosyncratic thumbprint of whoever decided to store it away in the first place.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Take the seventh century Library of Ashurbanipal, named for the Assyrian king of the same name. Located in Nineveh (what is now present-day Mosul, Iraq), the library contained a collection of some 30,000 clay tablets recounting the Epic of Gilgamesh and other literary works as well as scientific and legal texts.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Ashurbanipal wasn\u2019t a level-headed scholar calmly collecting texts, however. By most accounts he was power-hungry and paranoid, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/blog\/who-was-ashurbanipal\">known for<\/a> putting a chain through the mouth of a vanquished king and keeping him in a dog kennel. His library is full of sentimental items and many supposed magic spells aimed at maintaining his power.<\/p><p>A fire consumed Nineveh in the seventh century, reducing much of the city to ash. The fire had the opposite effect on the clay tablets of Ashurbanipal\u2019s library, however. Much like a kiln, the fire baked the tablets, making them harder and more durable. It is perhaps thanks to this fire that the collection remains one of the best preserved of Mesopotamia, according to historians.<\/p><p>These ancient examples carry with them hope but also many warnings of all the ways precious collections can be destroyed: by fire, by flood \u2014 even through sheer and improbable accident. Consider the 13th century monk who <a href=\"https:\/\/thewalters.org\/news\/lost-and-found-the-secrets-of-archimedes\/\">erased<\/a> a text by the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes \u2014 just because he\u2019d run out of parchment.<\/p><p>What lasts throughout the centuries is a mixture of evolving values, resistance to natural disasters and chance \u2014 or fate, perhaps. Even when we decide that something\u2019s worth saving, there\u2019s the challenge of how to keep it safe for 10 \u2014 or 100 \u2014 generations to come.<\/p><p>This is precisely what the Long Now Foundation, another group of ark-builders, is trying to achieve. Long Now created The Rosetta Disk: a nickel disk covered in microscopic text that looks like glitter. Each of the 250 Rosetta Disks in existence \u2014 ranging from the size of a dime to about 3.5 inches \u2014 was engraved with texts from more than 1,500 languages: Swadesh lists (words like \u201cmother,\u201d \u201cwater\u201d or \u201csneeze\u201d that exist in every language), maps showing where those languages are spoken and translations of texts such as Genesis I and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.<\/p><p>\u201cThe theory is, if you spoke one variant of the 1,500 languages that are on the disk, that you can go to the biggest library in the world and unlock all the information in that library, given enough time and study,\u201d said Andrew Warner, special projects director at Long Now. \u201cIt&#8217;s kind of the ultimate decoder ring.\u201d<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;What lasts throughout the centuries is a mixture of evolving values, resistance to natural disasters and chance \u2014 or fate, perhaps.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/85887\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"What lasts throughout the centuries is a mixture of evolving values, resistance to natural disasters and chance \u2014 or fate, perhaps.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/collection\/egypt\/explore-rosetta-stone\">Rosetta Stone<\/a>, a slab of granodiorite stela from ancient Egypt, served as the inspiration for this linguistic project. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacred-texts.com\/egy\/trs\/trs07.htm\">text<\/a> engraved onto the stone was banal, describing an edict. What was important, however, was that the text existed in multiple languages, including hieroglyphs \u2014 which no one understood at the time \u2014 and Ancient Greek, which scholars still read just after the Rosetta Stone was discovered in the 18th century. This allowed Egyptologists to crack the code of hieroglyphs and begin to learn this ancient language of symbols that had been completely incomprehensible for hundreds of years.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Like other ark-building projects, the Rosetta Disk was born out of loss. Linguists predict that by the end of this century, somewhere between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/culture\/article\/saving-dying-disappearing-languages-wikitongues-culture\">50% and 90%<\/a> of all human languages will disappear. The reasons for this are multiple and include globalization and the increasing dominance of languages such as English and Mandarin.&nbsp;<\/p><p>These lost languages hold more than cultural traditions. Crucial, environmental knowledge is often <a href=\"https:\/\/atmos.earth\/political-landscapes\/the-environmental-wisdom-encoded-in-endangered-languages\/\">passed down<\/a> through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/articles\/weaving-environmental-knowledge-and-oral-tradition\/\">oral<\/a> traditions. Just think of the hundreds of tribes native to North America who lived on the land for tens of thousands of years, developing sustainable land practices such as controlled burns and the cultivation of native plants. As ecosystems degrade, the native folks living within them often move away, leaving fewer speakers of their language. In turn, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-languages-lost-to-climate-change\/\">climate knowledge<\/a> held in those languages deteriorates, too.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cWe\u2019re living in this mass linguistic extinction, for which there\u2019s also this corresponding cultural and ecological extinction that goes along with it,\u201d Warner said.<\/p><p>Protecting languages is therefore not just about protecting dialects \u2014 it\u2019s about preserving those cultures\u2019 ecological knowledge, their literature and their wisdom. This can\u2019t be reliably achieved by simply encrypting thousands of languages onto a database and leaving it in a bunker. The Long Now Foundation brainstormed for years about the best way to preserve knowledge for generations \u2014 and ideally, for many centuries.<\/p><p>One of the main issues was the speed at which technology <a href=\"https:\/\/rosettaproject.org\/blog\/02008\/aug\/20\/very-long-term-backup\/\">becomes obsolete<\/a> in the digital age. Consider all the documents, songs and movies that we stored on floppy disks, cassette tapes or even CD-ROMS that are now effectively lost. The evolution and subsequent obsolescence of those technologies took place in the span of about 40 years \u2014 not 400.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This is why the Long Now Foundation decided to nano-etch their work onto nickel disks. Anyone who discovers a Rosetta Disk in the future will never need technology more complex than a magnifying glass to read it.<br>Long Now then sent these tiny disks to libraries around the world \u2014 and to more far-flung places, too. A Rosetta Disk exists on the <a href=\"https:\/\/longnow.org\/ideas\/rosetta-and-panlex-head-to-the-moon\/#:~:text=Last%20week%2C%20data%20from%20Long,1.5%20billion%20cross%2Dlanguage%20translations.\">moon<\/a>. Another is orbiting the sun on the back of a comet, waiting for someone to come along to read it.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-letters-to-a-distant-future\"><strong>Letters To A Distant Future<\/strong><\/h2><p>In thinking about how to store something far into the future, the Long Now Foundation turned to an unlikely source: nuclear waste management. Nuclear waste lasts for an almost inconceivably long period of time. The half-life of uranium isotope U-235, for instance, is more than 700 million years. Preserving something for thousands of years \u2014 or, as in nuclear waste management, protecting people from it \u2014 requires a similar capacity for imagination.<\/p><p>Methods that seem like obvious ways of marking something to protect it \u2014 \u201cplease keep this safe\u201d or, in the case of nuclear waste, \u201cstay away if you want to remain safe\u201d \u2014 are often not obvious at all. Some ancient Egyptians marked their graves with dire warnings that said, \u201cDon&#8217;t go here. Curse unto thee for all your generations,\u201d Warner said. And what did explorers do a few centuries later? Just barge right on in.<br><br>\u201cWe just don\u2019t have ways of really transmitting information across thousands of years without some kind of shared culture,\u201d Warner said. This challenge seems to have only accelerated in the present-day. The hustle of modern life is vastly out of step with the slowness required to think deeply about both the distant future in general and climate change in particular.&nbsp;<\/p><p>I spoke to Vincent Ialenti, an anthropologist and author of the book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/9780262539265\/deep-time-reckoning\/\">Deep Time Reckoning<\/a>,\u201d about this problem. \u201cWhen time accelerates, moments blur together; we lose track of how they fit into broader arcs of history,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then modalities like wonder and curiosity, introspection start to erode because they\u2019re slower modes of cognition, and we forget how to reflect and be still.\u201d<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;A Rosetta Disk exists on the moon. Another is orbiting the sun on the back of a comet, waiting for someone to come along to read it.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/85887\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"A Rosetta Disk exists on the moon. Another is orbiting the sun on the back of a comet, waiting for someone to come along to read it.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Ialenti argues that all people \u2014 not just scientists or scholars \u2014&nbsp;need to get better at thinking through deep time. He spent years observing Finnish nuclear authorities as they envisioned Earth 10,000 years in the future, and he has also implemented nuclear waste programs for the U.S. Department of Energy.&nbsp;<\/p><p>If knowledge is to be successfully passed on to future generations \u2014 and if Earth is to survive at all \u2014 this kind of thinking about time is necessary.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The most successful protection of cultural heritage tends to occur when it\u2019s held up as a \u201cvocation\u201d or \u201csacred knowledge,\u201d according to Ialenti. He gave the example of the so-called \u201ckeeper of the fabric,\u201d the person whose job it is to maintain cultural knowledge of a specific cathedral. It\u2019s a position that\u2019s been passed from person to person for centuries in British cathedrals, and it\u2019s a mix of maintenance, protection and oral history.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cWhy would it ever go away if ritualistically you have to do this?\u201d Ialenti said. \u201cSo myth, legend and ritual is the way to communicate things.\u201d<\/p><p>But what does it mean to create and maintain rituals in a secular world? Does the repetitive, iterative world of scientific inquiry form a ritual?<\/p><p>Larose, the glacier microbiologist, said we can look to the past for clues about the future. She suspects future scientists may use her ice cores in much the same way she and her interdisciplinary colleagues do now: studying everything from pollen to pollution, just with better machines. Or they could do something else entirely \u2014 something she can\u2019t even imagine.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cWhat they&#8217;ll actually measure in [the ice], hard to say,\u201d she said with a small shrug. \u201cWho knows?\u201d<\/p><p>Nearly all the ark-builders had a similar answer when asked why they do this work. It was always inevitably vague, requiring a real leap of faith.<\/p><p>There\u2019s something profoundly trusting in this shared unknown. These new Noahs do what they do because they think that someone should. And they know full well that nothing may come of their efforts. Climate change could very well cause the naturally sub-freezing storage in Antarctica to warm. The samples \u2014 so painstakingly drilled and preciously stored \u2014 could eventually melt into puddles.<\/p><p>The glacier sample extracted from Holtedahlfonna will eventually board an ice-breaker boat in Italy, crossing many thousands of miles to Antarctica. (The timing remains unclear, given the expense and complexity of such voyages.) A tractor sled will then drag it across the tundra. Another scientist from Ice Memory, a \u201ckeeper of the fabric,\u201d if you will, will place the ice core deep into a snow cave.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The Ice Memory Foundation calls this man-made cave its \u201csanctuary,\u201d a word that struck my ear in a certain way. It\u2019s not a \u201cbunker\u201d or a \u201cstrongbox\u201d or any of the other words we use to describe some precious thing that we are safeguarding from an imminent threat. Rather, sanctuary connotes a sacred place, hallowed ground, a peaceful place to quite literally bury the remains of a dying natural world.&nbsp;<\/p><p>There\u2019s an inherent loss here. But there\u2019s something else, too. A sanctuary is a place of safe haven, not a final resting place. And in this word, in this place, there\u2019s hope baked in: that someone, someday might see a glimmer of what we saw in the ice. Or perhaps, something we didn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n          \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Enjoy the read? Subscribe to get the best of Noema.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7179,"featured_media":85897,"template":"","wpm-article-type":[4],"wpm-article-topic":[22],"wpm-article-tag":[],"class_list":["post-85887","wpm-article","type-wpm-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wpm-article-type-feature","wpm-article-topic-climate-crisis"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.0 (Yoast SEO v25.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Ark-Builders Saving Fragile Bits Of Our World - NOEMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists and archivists are expanding their approaches to preservation \u2014 from freezing endangered species\u2019 cells to encoding ancient languages onto disks sent into space.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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