Melting glaciers in Swiss Alps reveals dead bodies

[Lestat]

Could be, QV, or perhaps something like unto the mexican festival of the day of the dead?

[skyblue1]

This is creepy but incredible as well. Some of the bodies are only skeletons and others quite preserved:

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/melting-glaciers-in-swiss-alps-could-reveal-hundreds-of-mummified-corpses/ar-AAprxMN?li=AAadgLE&ocid=spartanntp

Swiss police say hundreds of bodies of mountaineers who have gone missing in the Alps in the past century could emerge in coming years as global warming forces the country’s glaciers to retreat.

Alpine authorities have registered a significant increase in the number of human remains discovered last month, with the body of a man missing for 30 years the most recent to be uncovered.

Rescue teams in Saas Valley in the Valais canton were called last Tuesday after two climbers retreating from an aborted ascent spotted a hand and two shoes protruding from the Hohlaub glacier.

Rescuers spent two hours freeing the body with icepicks and their bare hands before a helicopter flew the remains to Bern. Forensics experts matched the DNA to that of a German citizen, born in 1943, who had gone missing on a hike in 11 August 1987.
The discovery comes less than a week after the bodies of a Swiss couple, missing for 75 years, were found in the Tsanfleuron glacier in the same canton. Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin had disappeared after going out to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin on 15 August 1942.

Last Thursday, the remains of a person believed to have been killed in an Air India crash more than 50 years ago was also discovered in the French Alps, on Mount Blanc.

Switzerland’s glaciers have been melting at an unprecedented rate, losing almost one cubic km in ice volume or about 900 bn litres of water over the past year. According to an investigation by Tagesanzeiger newspaper, eight of the 10 months in which the glaciers have lost the most in volume over the past century have been since 2008. Since 1850, when glaciers covered 1,735 sq km of Swiss land, the total area has shrunk by a half, to around 890 sq km.

Police in Valais expect the bodies of many more missing persons to emerge because of global warming. “It’s quite clear,” spokesperson Christian Zuber told the Guardian. “The glaciers are retreating, so it’s logical that we’re finding more and more bodies and body parts. In the coming years we expect that many more cases of missing persons will be resolved.”

He said a map that lists everyone who had gone missing since 1925 to the present day contains 306 names and locations, one fewer since the discovery of the German mountaineer.

At least 160 alpinists remain missing in France’s Mont Blanc massif, and the Morteratsch glacier in Graubünden is believed to contain the bodies of 40 mountaineers.

Zuber described the “great relief” at being able to pass on the information to the families “who would otherwise never know with 100% certainty whether their loved one had perished on the mountain. Finally when a corpse is discovered, you have an absolute guarantee,” he said.

He said that feeling had also been palpable earlier this year when a local woman was able to retrieve the bodies of her dead parents, the Dumoulins, who had disappeared when she was just four years old. “We locals are obviously used to the mountains, but such discoveries are no less emotional for the people here,” he said.

Rolf Trachsel, head of mountain rescue in Saas-Fee, who led the operation to recover the German man’s body, said it had been discovered in an area popular with hikers. “There was very little snow, and it was not very steep. It was about half an hour’s hike away from the next mountain cable-car station.”

He said although the team had to deal with the sad fact they were recovering a dead man, they also felt considerable relief. “If someone has gone missing, logic tells you their body has to turn up again one day,” Trachsel said.
“It’s obviously good that we can put our efforts into recovering someone, especially after 30 years, and knowing how important it is for the family to find out what happened.”

The body was taken to the Bern Institute for Forensic Medicine (IRM) by helicopter for examination and formal identification where it is still being held. Christian Jackowski, a scientist at IRM, said the discovery of human remains was now a regular feature of the Swiss summer holiday season, as climbers started to swarm the Valais region’s ice-covered mountains.

Usually bodies emerged from the ice at the top of the glacier, rather than its “tongue” at the bottom of the valley, Jackowski said. The extent to which bodies have been preserved by the ice depends on the circumstances of the person’s demise, with some human remains having been mummified by sunshine and dry winds before being engulfed in ice, while others have been reduced to skeletons.
The majority of bodies are trapped in ice, crevices or streams after an accident or a suicide, though some cases are treated in relation to criminal cases.

Other bodies could be the victims of military skirmishes. Though Switzerland stayed neutral in world wars one and two, the Mont Blanc massif became a front line towards the end of the second world war amid intense fighting between the German army and French resistance fighter.

In most cases, forensic experts face a race against time once bodies have been removed from the ice and start to thaw. Dental records and DNA samples are checked against a database of missing people to determine the identity of the corpse.

Since 2000, authorities in Switzerland have taken DNA samples of missing people’s family members immediately after their disappearance to facilitate the process.

what a story, nice

[Queen Victoria]

Could be, QV, or perhaps something like unto the mexican festival of the day of the dead?

When I was a child Día de Muertos used to freak me out.  There were TV specials on it showing people doing things to skeletons (don't remember now what it was), the thought of sugar candies shaped like skulls, etc.  Living in Texas we didn't see anything of the actual day, but I felt more comfortable with Nov 1 being All Saints Day.

[Lestat]

Dia de los muertos...THATs the name I was searching for. Was on the mental 'tip of the tongue' and I couldn't damn remember it at the time. Was thinking of the candy skulls too

As for all saints day...isn't that just a repackaged version of all hallow's eve?

Which is in itself, a bastardization of samhain (pronounced sow-aihn' (the 'aih' voiced as in 'hay' rather than as in 'eye'), by christianization basically thieving and dressing over pre-xtian 'heathen' and 'heretical' beliefs. Damnable bunch, early xtians, they claim to worship the one true god, call him the lord of all things good, unable to sin or do wrong, be all-loving, yet damns souls to eternal burning in hell if they don't kiss his arse, or commits genocide (I.e the sending of the angel of death to genocide the egyptian people's
first-born, including men, women and children all.

Love thy neighbor...unless this, that or the other, then stone them to death, burn them, genocide their children etc. Be nice....like your loving god, or your loving god will turn your soul over to the devil to roast in boiling lava for all time.

[Queen Victoria]

Maybe, Lestat.  All Saints Day  (Nov 1) is the Catholic answer to Halloween.  You were allowed to costume/dress as a saint in the lower grades at school.  Nov. 2 is All Souls Day.

"Faithful Catholics rise and go to Mass on November 1, then they head out to the cemeteries, to clean up and prepare their family tombs for November 2, the “Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed,” also known as the Feast of All Souls."

[Lestat]

Wonder if there are enough bodies around there, for anybody living locally (enough not to have to use fuel-powered transport) to go on a teeth-hunting expedition, since old fillings are silver amalgam, and the mercury can be distilled off leaving the metal behind from amalgams.

Just need to be close by, have a bag (preferably one that isn't see through, since I doubt people would be too enthusiastic about it if they spotted somebody hunting for the silver in dead men's teeth, even though the dead folk don't need them anymore, and it's removing mercury contamination from the environment),  ropes/climbing gear and a pair of pliers, maybe a small hammer and metal centerpunch for any tough customers

The silver would be more valuable, if after separation from the Hg, it were treated with a little nitric acid, distilled from stump-remover containing nitrates and toilet unblocker concentrated sulfuric acid, and (outside, NOx fumes aren't healthy) the Ag were to be made into silver nitrate and sold on ebay, since you might be able to get about £15 for 5g if your lucky maybe 20.

['andersom']

I wondered if grave robbing was part of why one of the cemeteries was less safe to walk around.

['andersom']

In a culture where the bodies of the deceased are held that dear that they get embalmed to last forever, grave robbing sounds a very cruel thing to do. Cruel anyway, but then even more.

And no, the dead don't feel it. Cemeteries are not the for the dead. They are for the living to remember the dead.

That said, I think I would prefer an anonymous grave, without any marking, in some peat pit. Hey me away from the carbon cycle for a while, and use me to make a fine whisky in a few millennia.

[Lestat]

It isn't grave robbing, if they have never been put in a grave, is it?

I wasn't suggesting digging people up out of cemetaries. Not worth it for a few measly teeth. Just going around the mountain area and seeing what you could chip out of the mouths of those unfortunate enough both to need fillings and to not to be using them again for the forseeable.

Not like teeth couldn't break during a fall naturally, or during freezing solid (since water expands as it freezes and cracks things) so it isn't like people would be upset unless they actually SAW you literally crouched over a carcass, chiselling out their filled teeth and looking for valuables. Something like a wedding ring, I'd return (if possible), thats different. But generic possessions/banknotes, fair game IMO.

[Bastet]

Let the bodies hit the floor let the bodies hit the floor.

[Phoenix]

Let the bodies hit the floor let the bodies hit the floor.

Drowning Pool?

[Lestat]

Yeah it is. Thats the refrain from the song 'bodies'