MEMORY

Glaciers are the archives of the past, veritable open-air libraries. Their ice crystals hide infinite riches: layers of dust, gas bubbles, oxygen isotopes. Some ice-core samples in Antarctica show chemical signatures dating back more than 800,000 years. Samples taken out of the long metal tubes contain evidence of ancient events. The scientific community dates them on a long time-scale: a volcanic eruption occurred several millennia ago; the clouds had a certain temperature when certain snowflakes fell and then crystallised. The crystals contain the remnants of the old atmosphere. The sky is in the ice. This is why the gradual disappearance of the ice sheets is making mankind a little more amnesiac every day. We are losing our own memory. And the present itself is fading before our eyes.

(Thinking Like an Iceberg, pp. 125-126)